How does a biblical worldview relate to the arts? Are the arts a luxury? Are they mere decoration? Diversion? Or do they represent something far deeper in human experience? The richness of a Christian understanding of the arts as culture, calling and revelation can open deeply meaningful corridors for our involvement in art as artists, critics and appreciators. The goal of the European Artists Network is to explore these paths together through sound teaching and the chance to develop sharpening and encouraging relationships with each other which will last long past the Forum itself.

The Network sessions are aimed at providing participants with a mix of theory (the general relationships of art, theology and philosophy), engagement (seminars directed at particular artists and genres) and testimony (examples of artists whose faith is central to their work), all in an atmosphere of dialogue and discussion. The content will be geared toward those with some experience in the field, and there will be some preparatory work. There will also be space for participants to present their own work for critical interaction. This Network will be led by Robb Ludwick, teacher and pastoral counsellor at L’Abri Fellowship in the Netherlands. Also teaching in this Network are Dr Adrienne Chaplin, Ellis Potter, Dr Ted Turnau, Jodi Hinds and Liviu Mocan. Prior preparation will be set for all applicants.

Robb Ludwick is leader of the European Artists Network. He serves as a teacher and pastoral counsellor at L’Abri Fellowship in the Netherlands. L’Abri strives to create a space for people to hear honest answers to their honest questions concerning faith and different aspects of human life. In addition to mentoring, lecturing and leading discussions in the community setting of L’Abri, he is a regular speaker for different groups in the Netherlands. The main focus of his teaching is cultural apologetics and personal spirituality.

Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin (PhD Free University, Amsterdam) studied philosophy, art history and violin in Amsterdam. She worked for Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF, a member of IFES) in the UK and taught philosophical aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) in Toronto, Canada, from 1999 until 2007. She served as President of the Canadian Society for Aesthetics. Her research interests are the problem of meaning in art, art and embodiment, phenomenology and theological aesthetics. She has published articles and chapters in Contemporary Aesthetics, Christian Scholar's Review, Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics and It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God. She is co-author of Art and Soul: Signposts for Christians in the Arts (IVP, 2002) and is currently working on a book on the interface between philosophical and theological aesthetics. She is married with two children and currently works as an independent writer and speaker in Cambridge, UK.

Jodi Hinds works as a contemporary social photographer in Sheffield, UK.  Previously, she worked with IFES (in the UK, UCCF) and then later for a church in Newcomer Ministries, reaching those who were new to the gospel and new to the area. She set up her photography business in 2002 where the opportunity to tell photographic stories of weddings, families and cultures became a reality.

Liviu Mocan graduated from the Academy for Visual Arts in Cluj, Romania, with a degree in sculpture and art pedagogy, after which he spent one year as an artist in residence at Anderson University and Mississippi College (USA). There he continued his sculpture studies, experimenting with different materials and exhibiting his work, while also teaching sculpture techniques. His field studies took him to Chicago, New York, St. Petersburg, Wien, Budapest and Samotraki. In 1997, he organised The Good Samaritan International Sculpture Symposium, the first event of the newly formed El Foundation. In 1999, he won the commission from his hometown of Clug-Napoca to create the city’s monument to the victims of the Romanian Revolution of December 1989.  While his work varies both in the media used (from wood and stone to bronze and glass) and in sizes (he has won awards both for small sculpture and for monumental projects), his main interest is in larger scale sculptures for display in public places. In his works he expresses as his life motto: "I strive to polish mirrors for heaven."

Day 1

Balancing the Calls of Success and Shalom: Spiritual Challenges for the Artist

Robb Ludwick

In a biblical vision of the artist's calling, an ambitious commitment to develop one's talents and gifts is certainly affirmed. It is all too easy, however, in our cultural climate, for this personal goal to distract us from the call to be agents of redemptive work in this world. Are success and shalom necessarily competing goals? With a brief look at some remarks from Jacques Maritain and Mark Rothko, we will consider in this session what the Bible has to tell us about our longing to succeed.

Discerning Music in History Through the Recorder

Ellis Potter

Many people think music is only an envelope for text or images and has no language of its own.  In this interactive session we will listen to music played on four different sizes of recorder, from four different centuries and six different countries (Germany, Italy, England, France, Austria and Holland). Participants will be guided in noting the various national and cultural elements which characterized earlier music, in contrast to the international blend of contemporary music.  At a more critical level, we will be asking questions concerning the expressions of form and freedom in Baroque, Classical and Romantic music, as well as the charm and humor of late 20th century music. What does music tell us about the people who made it?  What does music tell us about being human?  Can we bring the Image of God into better focus in ourselves through doing music and listening to it?  We will consider how both musicians and discerning listeners contribute to the Kingdom of God.

Day 2

Transgressive Transcendence in Modern and Postmodern Art

Adrienne Chaplin

Do Christians have a monopoly on Christian iconography? In this session we will look at a range of modern and postmodern works which have appropriated Christian themes and symbols in non- traditional or subversive ways. Artists to be considered include: Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Andres Serrano, Damien Hirst and Chris Ofili.

The Absolutes of God for a Relativistic Europe

Liviu Mocan

Today, European thinking has become secularised and relativistic. In 2009, a group of evangelicals created a monumental sculpture as a metaphor for The Ten Commandments that has been exhibited in Geneva since the celebration of the 500 year anniversary of John Calvin's birthday in July 2009. The sculptural composition is a travelling exhibition that can be displayed in various countries and cities to people who want to create manifestations of the great value of the absolutes of God for all humans. This session will include images of this work, which will be a starting point for discussing the artists’ choice of subject and form, the intention for a mobile exhibition and the creative process of artistic communication. 

Day 3

Beauty Transfigured

Adrienne Chaplin

Does beauty have a future? Since modern times art, beauty and religion have stood in a troubled relationship to each other. However, both beauty and religion have made a dramatic comeback in recent discussions about art, as have art and beauty in theological debate. This session examines different notions of beauty as they have featured in theological thought and considers how the ties between beauty, goodness and truth, which were severed by Kant, can yet again be restored.

Network Interactive: Calling and Critiques

Participants

One of the primary goals of the Artists Network is to encourage and sharpen each other as creators and critics in the world of art. We have therefore reserved this space in the Artists Network for an interactive session in which Network participants will have the chance to present selections of their work to the group for feedback. We want this session to be a time of questions, struggles and suggestions about these specific works and about our calling as artists and critics in general.

Day 4

Creating Authentic Christian Popular Culture: Learning from the Blues

Ted Turnau

If we are going to have an impact upon our cultures for Christ, then doing church is not enough.  We need to be producing popular culture that challenges and engages people’s imaginations with the Christian worldview.  But what does it mean to communicate the Christian worldview through popular culture authentically?  Too often, Christian popular culture slides into sentimentality or propaganda.   This talk will explore what we can learn from the blues about communicating the tensions inherent in seeing the world from a Christian perspective, and communicating that through popular culture.

1/125 Second of Reality

Jodi Hinds

The world’s best social documentary photographers over the last 40 years – Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Steve McCurry and others - share a common goal: to “show the human connection between all of us” and, through photographs, to “provide a credible witness to life” (the creed of Magnum, an elite photography circle founded in 1947). In their work we see a glimpse of what our world prizes and what they want us to remember. What is this human connection and this witness to life they are after? Can the Buddhist and atheistic worldviews of these artists justify the attention to detail and the value of memory they hold dear? In what ways is the Christian Gospel a powerful alternative motive for such work?