Integrating Faith and
the Creative Arts
Rosenwald Classroom
It has been said, “Although art reflects a distinct aspect of human experience, it is not for its own sake. Artistic expression is not an elitist pursuit, encoded for a restricted circle of initiates. In art as in theology, gnosticism is unchristian.”1 Militant secularism has affected all aspects of modern life, but perhaps nowhere more profoundly than in the conception of the questions: what is art? and what is art’s purpose? This panel will explore the role of faith in creative art, and in fact, whether it can even still be accepted that there is such a role.
Moderator
Bethany Mills D’10
Bethany Mills '10 is majoring in Classical Languages and Literatures modified with Linguistics. She serves on the editorial board of the Dartmouth Apologia, and is a member of Christian Impact. Last year, she spent four months in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, teaching English for ChildHope International. Her interests include painting, hiking, and playing the organ.
Panelists
Matthew T. Dickerson, Ph.D. D’85
Professor of Computer Science, Middlebury College
Matthew T. Dickerson, Ph.D. received his B.A. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Dartmouth College in 1985. In 1989, he received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in Computer Science, where he also received a minor Old English Language and Literature. Dr. Dickerson is a Professor at Middlebury College in Vermont where he is a member of the Computer Science Department and the Program of Environmental Studies, and is the director of the New England Young Writers Conference at Breadloaf. He also co-founded the Vermont Conference on Christianity and the Arts, and the Gove Hill Christian Writers Conference.
Dr. Dickerson is the author of several books, most recently Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: the Environmental Vision of C.S. Lewis in 2009 and The Mind and the Machine: What it Means to be Human and Why it Matters—its tentative title—forthcoming in 2011.
Celena Sky April, M.F.A.
Professor of Theatre, Salem State College
Celena Sky April, Professor of Theatre, has taught at Massachusetts' Salem State College for 25 years, where she directs plays, acts, and teaches voice, dialects and acting. She has worked professionally in theatre in Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Poland, and Spain. Professor April received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre at US International University’s School of Performing Arts, and her Master of Fine Arts in Directing at the University of Texas at Austin. Her directorial credits include: The Miracle Worker, Crimes of the Heart, You Can’t Take It with You, King Lear, Into the Woods, Antigone, La Bete, Pirates of Penzance, and The Elephant Man.
Professor April also serves as Faculty Advisor for Campus Crusade for Christ at Salem State College. Each year, Professor April takes students from Salem State into MCI Framingham, the state's women’s prison, to share theatre and the love of Jesus Christ with women on the inside. Professor April also served for several years as Teaching Director in the Merrimack Valley for Community Bible Study, an international non-denominational organization. She lives in Haverhill with her husband, Paul.
Ben Frank Moss, M.F.A.
Professor of Studio Art, Dartmouth College
Ben Frank Moss, M.F.A. is the George Frederick Jewett Professor of Studio Art at Dartmouth College. Prior to Dartmouth he taught in the graduate program at the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa. He graduated from the Stony Brook School on Long Island and Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. Following a brief stint at Princeton Theological Seminary, he completed his MFA at Boston University with High Honors in 1963.
Professor Moss exhibits his work extensively throughout the U.S. and abroad. The Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle has shown his work since 1967 as well as the Kraushaar Galleries in New York and the Pepper Gallery in Boston. He has been an artist in residence at Yaddo, MacDowell, and the University of Melbourne, among others.
He has lectured at 96 institutions and his work is currently displayed in 43 public collections including Yale University, The Tacoma Art Museum, Everson Museum of Art, and The New Britain Museum of American Art.
In the fall of 2009, Professor Moss was awarded the distinguished alumnus award from Whitworth University, having already received the same award from Boston University in 1988. In 2007, he received The Charles Loring Elliot Award and Medal in Drawing from the National Academy Museum, NY.
1 Edmund P. Clowney, in “Living Art: Christian Experience and the Arts,” in God and Culture, ed. D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 1993.
