Katie Kresser

This December, in her Language Arts class, my fifth grader is retelling the Christmas story. And she can’t just write any old, kid-style paraphrase. Instead, my daughter’s story has to be from the vantage of a minor, or even invisible, character. What, my daughter must consider, did the Nativity look like to the overlooked? Well,…

(John Everett Millais - Blind Girl)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Girl#/media/File:John_Everett_Millais_-_The_Blind_Girl,_1854-56.jpg In 1856, the British artist John Everett Millais painted The Blind Girl, a captivating image of two young sisters in a rain-drenched field. Their clothes are threadbare, and the youngest has no cloak; she sidles next to her sister, sharing her covering. They clasp hands tightly and unconsciously, as…

In the mythology of modern art, there are a few old chestnuts that get repeated again and again. There is the time Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and then bore witness through confessional portraiture. There is the time Pablo Picasso unveiled his first masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and declared it an “exorcism.” (For…

In my life, there’s a lot of beating up going on. Personally, there’s the matter of my illness. As a recent survivor of stage 3B cancer, I get batteries of scans and blood tests every few months. Sometimes the numbers are alarming, and they feel like a punch to the gut. My whole self –…

In my role as an Art History professor at Seattle Pacific University, I have accompanied students to Rome, Italy six times. We stay there for about a month, visiting umpteen million churches, in addition to wonderful museums, grand palazzos, and major archaeological sites. Among these sites, the churches are the real treasures - pedagogically, artistically,…

Do buildings push your buttons? How does it feel to walk down a city street and feel gleaming glass rising on either side? What about towers of stone, casting long, dark shadows? How does it feel to see spires of commerce (think New York’s Chrysler building) rising like space-age cathedrals against a vast, blue sky?…

Everything is compromised. Nothing is worthy. Strip it down, strip it down. Take off the sugar-coating, the veneer, the gilding, the velour, and what is left? Nothing. Emptiness. Posing, pretending, preening, delusion.  Those of us who love – truly love – sometimes feel like the prey of shadowy hunters. We are huddled together for safety…

I’ve been teaching college students for almost 16 years. Make that 20 years, if you count teaching assistantships in graduate school! This vocation has had its ups and downs, along with ever-shifting dynamics. When I began, for example, I was almost the same age as my students. Now, I’m old enough to be their mom.…

As we celebrate the New Year, we commemorate the passage of the old. In the mass media, this comes in the form of top ten lists and “in memoriam” montages. In folk imagery, it is symbolized by Father Time with his sickle. (He even appears in Rudolph’s Shiny New Year.) Though often comical in recent…

Fra Angelico, The Nativity, Basilica di San Marco, Florence, 1441, https://www.wikiart.org/en/fra-angelico/nativity-1441 It is very difficult, today, for the ordinary, defensive and suspicious human being to understand Christ’s radical vulnerability, from his conception to his death on a cross. However, the mysterious Fra Angelico (literally, “the Angelic Friar”), a Renaissance painter who also happened to be a renowned…

Icon of the Visitation https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-visitation-icon-samuel-epperly.html Pantokrator icon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator_(Sinai)#/media/File:Spas_vsederzhitel_sinay.jpg Among all the manifestations of Christ’s church, the Eastern Orthodox tradition has been the most gifted in the realm of visual symbolism. Beginning in the early centuries after Christ, Eastern iconographers crystallized doctrinal truths into pithy visual form. The Pantokrator icon (meaning “Ruler of All”), set the template…

Simone Martini, The Annunciation with Sts. Margaret and Ansanus, early 14th c., Uffizi Gallery, https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/annunciation-with-st-margaret-and-st-ansanus Also, Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1898, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/104384 From the beginning of time, there were whispers. There was rumor even at the Fall, at the cracking of the world, when the face of God was hidden and the great rifting began. But…

(Choirs of Angels, Scivias I.6, https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/hildegard-von-bingen/scivias-i.6-the-choirs-of-angels/) Among medieval Catholic saints (think Catherine of Siena, Anthony of Padua or Joan of Arc), Hildegard of Bingen is one of the most palatable to modern tastes. She was not prone to shocking self-mortifications; she was not embroiled in muddy political disputes; and she has not been subjected to…

In 1863, five years before his death at age 86, the French painter J-A-D Ingres completed a small, jewel-like canvas he titled The Golden Age. It is a gentle, luxuriant fantasy, this little picture. Blue mountains rise in the distance, and the air seems hung with gilded mist. The afternoon light burnishes green trees to…

Among the modern artists my students resonate with most are the German Expressionists who worked mainly in the years just preceding and including the First World War. Something about their frank, garish and often gruesome work feels honest. With its jagged lines and dark narratives, it doesn’t sugar-coat or lie. It’s jarringly autobiographical, shamelessly confessional.…

Whatever rises must fall. Birds return to the forests of their birth, and salmon to the place of their spawning. Elephants (mythically) and humans, too, try to go home to die. Much of Creation is departure and return – but return in a different light. It is return, perhaps, with new maturity. Or return with…

Editor's Note: Due to an early morning link problem with the e-mail sent Thursday, we are resending Katie Kressar's post Friday, July 23rd as well.  In addition, the Christ Animating Learning Blog will take a one week vacation next week. We will return on August 2nd.  Thanks, PLG Like many academics, I’m a small-town kid…