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Selections from the visio-divina.com library, with the convenience of one-click purchase through the Amazon.com Associates program.
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by Mel Ahlborn
 
| The Art Spirit From Amazon.com Product Description: In this book are the essential beliefs and theories of a great teacher and American artist, Robert Henri. While it embodies the entire system of his teaching, with much technical advice and critical comment for the student, it also contains inspiration for those to whom the happiness to be found through all the arts is important.No other American painter attracted such a large, intensely personal group of followers as Henri, whose death in 1929 brought to an end a life that has been completely devoted to art. He was an inspired artist and teacher who believed that everyone is vitally concerned in the happiness and wisdom to be found through the arts. Many of his paintings have been acquired by museums and private collectors. Among them are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wichita Art Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery. About the Author . |
 
| Discourses
on Art : New edition (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British
Art) From Amazon.com Product Description: This standard edition of the "Discourses on art" delivered by Sir Joshua Reynolds is now reissued in a new format and with revised illustrations. It has long been recognized as an important text for the study of 18th-century English painting. |
 
| Senses of the Soul:
Art and the Visual in Christian Worship (Art for Faith's Sake) From the Back Cover: Senses of the soul explores the way art and visual elements are incorporated into Christian worship. It incorporates research conducted in Los Angeles congregations. THrough extensive interviews in a sample of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox congregations it looks into the way visual elements actually become part of the experience of worship. By looking at attitudes and experiences of beauty, art, and memories it suggests that believers appropriate images and aesthetic encounters in terms of imaginative structures that have been formed through worship practices over time. |
  | Visual
Literacy - Image, Mind and Reality Post-industrial humankind is inundated daily with visual images. Televisions transmit their blue haze into dark living rooms; advertisements and billboards bombard us at every turn; movies evoke tears, outrage, or hilarity; and the visual arts elicit strong emotional or intellectual responses. At almost every moment, several visual images are warring for our attention in order to make a claim, sell a product, or call us to action. Faced with visual overload, how do we interpret these images? What is happening when a picture moves us? What process takes place in our minds as we respond to such visual devices as close-ups, camera angles, and flashbacks?This book provides a foundation for answering these questions. Encouraging his readers to become “visually literate,” Paul Messaris takes them on a journey through four major conceptual levels of understanding: imparting visual literacy as a prerequisite for comprehending visual media; creating awareness of the general cognitive consequences of visual literacy; making us alert to visual manipulation; and promoting aesthetic appreciation of the images we see. Taken together, these approaches provide a comprehensive view of how visual images are produced and interpreted, and of what their potential social consequences may be. (Amazon.com) |
 
| A
Whole New Mind Pink, best-selling author of Free Agent Nation (2001) and also former chief speechwriter for former vice-president Al Gore, has crafted a profound read packed with an abundance of references to books, seminars, Web sites, and such to guide your adjustment to expanding your right brain if you plan to survive and prosper in the Western world. According to Pink, the keys to success are in developing and cultivating six senses: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. Pink compares this upcoming "Conceptual Age" to past periods of intense change, such as the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, as a way of emphasizing its importance. Ed Dwyer (From Booklist, -Amazon.com) |
 
| The Adventures of Johnny
Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need "What a ride! This story had me laughing out loud, nodding my head, and cheering all at the same time. It delivers a message I wish I had heard years ago when trying to figure out my "career". The surprising thing, is that the six essential lessons experienced in Johnny Bunko are still very powerful and very relevant to me-even after almost 20 years in the workforce. You can't help, after putting down the book, re-examining your life choices regardless of your age or life stage. " (review from Kenny Lauer at Amazon.com) |
 
| The Artist's Way With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity. (Amazon.com) |
 
| Art in Service of the
Sacred Art in Service of the Sacred encourages congregations to take seriously the role of visual art in worship and in the broader life of the church. This rich resource explores the dynamics between art, artist, and the church. It proclaims the power of art when used as art, reclaims the presence of religious symbols in worship, asserts the importance of the aesthetic dimensions of ecclesial space, and recovers the role of visual art to engage our senses and imaginations as we seek to encounter God in our lives. (Amazon.com) |
 
| Windows into the Soul -
Art as Spiritual Expression Windows into the Soul is a practical, hands-on resource for those who want to explore prayer and contemplation for themselves, approaching the process not as an artist but as a spiritual seeker. Readers will find projects in various media, including clay, charcoal, and acrylic, including not only technical directions, but a gentle guide to the spiritual gold to be mined from the experience. (Amazon.com) |
|  Celebrating Pluralism by F. Graeme Chalmers Chalmers describes how art education programs promote cross-cultural understanding, recognize racial and cultural diversity, enhance self-esteem in students' cultural heritage, and address issues of ethnocentrism, stereotyping, discrimination, and racism. After providing the context for multicultural art education, Chalmers examines the implications for art education of the broad themes found in art across cultures. (Amazon.com) |
 
| The
Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art Rothko longed to discover a new, post-Christian "myth" that could express a unified outlook on life by embodying "the world of ideals." Little did he realize at the time that the resolution of his dilemma would be based on a radically new approach to handling paint and using color. —Cathy Curtis (Amazon.com) |
 
| Walking
on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art Walking on Water collects 12 brief meditations by Madeleine L'Engle on the nature of art and its relation to faith. L'Engle, the beloved author of A Wrinkle In Time among others, has written and spoken widely and wisely about the connection between religion and art. |
| The
Manga Bible The Manga Bible is a Bible adaptation created in the style of 'Manga', which is Japanese for 'comics' or 'whimsical images.' The conecpt artist for the project, Siku, has published four different volumes. One volume is available for purchase in the United States. the others are availble through Amazon UK.
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Theological Aesthetics by Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen, 2004 Artists working in the fields of faith seek to resolve the same subjects as theologians, past and present. In Theological Aesthetics both art and theology find common verbal ground. Thiessen edits centuries of discourse in theological aesthetics into tidy segments that can be read in 20 minutes or so. In doing so, she breaks open the subject for visual artists to study, to practice, and to make their own. Highly recommended. |
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The Mind of
the Maker by Dorothy L Sayers, 1941 In this book, noted author Dorothy Sayers views the creative process through a Trinitarian framework. She successfully applies the concept of Idea, Energy and Power to the Creator, the artist and the audience. This book will prove worthwhile for artists serious about working in the intersections of scripture, faith, social justice . |
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Grace
and Necessity by Rowan WIlliams, 2005 "The human artist, in creating out of
love, never exhausts either herself or the world’s possibilities.
Something new comes forth, both in the artwork and in the artist.
God of course has nothing to uncover and Godself is perfectly
transparent to itself (Wisdom 7:23). But this is not the case
for us humans. The artist does not need to be a saint himself,
but without his art we cannot discern what sanctity is, the relation
of human making and God’s call that we love." from the
online review of Grace and Necessity by The Rt. Rev. Pierre W.
Whalon, D.D. more> |
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The
Art of God by Christopher Irvine, 2005 "The first chapter of The Art of God addresses the question of who we are in the visual terms of our being made 'in the image and according to the likeness of God.' Chapter 2 traces out the New Testament witness to Christ as the pattern of what it is that God is calling us to be and become as Christians. But this survey of the New TEstament yields something more, a visio of Christianity as a religion of transformation, change and transfiguration. It is this vision that casts light upon the meaning of worship, and for this reason, the book begins not with a discussion of worship , but an outline of that vision as it is shown in Christian art and witnessed to in Scripture and Christian theological reflection." - from the Introduction |
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Likeness
and Presence - A History of the Image before the Era of Art by Hans Belting, 1994 "Before the Renaissance and Reformation, holy images were treated not as 'art' but as objects of veneration which possessed the tangible presence of the Holy. ... In this magisterial book, Hans Belting traces the long history of the sacral image and its changing role - from surrogate for the represented image to an original work of art - in European culture." - from the back cover |
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