Livin' in the Arts Village

In my post yesterday, I concluded by mentioning that I was planning on sharing more about my own role on staff at the Duke Youth Academy. I want to do that today by offering a bit about the our Arts Village.

There are a couple of ways to think about how art and faith relate to one another. One way - maybe the dominant way in our culture - is to think about how the arts can "enhance" worship or "add to" our faith. That's not the view we take at DYA. Why? Because when we think of the arts as an "add on," we are shortchanging the importance of beauty and creativity as an integral and deep part of God's creation.

So DYA brings in a group of professional artists-in-residence each summer to lead an Arts Village. Our artists take full part in community life, including offering their gifts in daily worship. They also lead workshops for our students, which invite them to learn and practice the arts as a part of their exploration into the richness and depth of the Christian life.

Our artists help the DYA students see how theology is inherently artistic because it is incarnational. It is embodied just as God's creation is embodied and just as God the Son became embodied in Jesus.

So let me introduce you to this year's Arts Village staff. All four of our artists have theological degrees from Duke Divinity School, and all four understand their artistic gifts to be the locus of their calling into ministry with and for the church. They are:

Katherine Owen, who leads workshops on pottery-making and working in clay. She has worked with the Arts Village for several years, and when she's not at DYA, Katherine spends most days covered in clay at her potter's wheel. You can find out more biographical details about Katherine here, and you can learn about her work at her Wild Extravagant Livers of Life website.

Tracy Radosevic, who leads workshops on storytelling. This year is her seventh with DYA. She has the gift of opening Scripture up in a way that allows others to hear it as if for the first time. Tracy has been a full-time professional storyteller for twelve years and in that time has traveled the globe performing, teaching, preaching, and leading retreats. You can learn more about Tracy here, the bio page of Tracy's great website describing her work & ministry.

Ronya-Lee Anderson, who leads workshops on sacred dance. Trained in modern, tap, jazz, ballet, and hip hop, she has danced both nationally and internationally with various performing arts companies. Ronya-Lee is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Dancing by the Power Ministries, a non-profit organization that aims to transform young people through dance. She is also the Director of Youth Ministries at Annandale United Methodist Church in Annandale, VA.

Carole Baker, who leads our workshops in the visual arts. She is a Research Associate at Duke Divinity School, where she gets to employ her theological gifts in working with such theologians as Stanley Hauerwas and Richard Hays. This is her fifth year overall working with DYA. As a visual artist and theologian, Carole is interested in the way imagery shapes the religious/theological imagination. (Read about her background and work here.) Carole's latest work, "Mary: The Paper Doll Project," is an interactive work of art that looks at the way the Virgin Mary has been depicted in different cultures around the world. It is on display during DYA and will be touring nationally in the coming year. (If your church or organization would like to host the Mary Project, I would encourage you to contact Carole.)

Not all our students may come here thinking of themselves as creative people. But what we try to teach them is that each of them is the created being of a creative Creator! We are all God's creatures, and we live in a physical reality that God made and called good.

So the arts are really about learning to see the exquisite beauty of the creation and recognize how we can glorify God through our artistic gifts. And that's something we can all do with joy and thanksgiving!