“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
-Albert Einstein

The MFA is the new MBA 1, according to Daniel Pink, and it might even be the new MDiv 2.

Pink portrays artists' conceptual skills, developed through drawing, color theory and eye-hand discipline, as essential to today's business skill set. America's boardrooms have begun to listen. Corporations like General Motors are training employees with workshops to develop their conceptual thinking skills.

In this morning's New York Times one workshop teacher talks about what happens when he goes into a Fortune 500 corporation and teaches the employees to draw. Brian Bomeisler says that in teaching people how to draw, "I am teaching them an entirely new way to see. They unbox their minds and absorb what's really there, with all of the complexity and beauty."

Bomeisler sounds like a minister. After all, one of the church's missions is to teach people how to see with new eyes. This blog carried an article 'With Eyes to See New Life' just two weeks ago. The 21st century church encourages the formation of merciful eyes because it seeks a merciful heart for the world. The church's aim is to show the world what the world 'most needs to see,'3 in all of its global complexity. And so, as the church moves forward in its 21st century mission, the MFA may just be the new MDiv.

On View: Contemplation I by Jerome Lawrence. 24x36, acrylic on canvas. BFA, Georgia State University. Jerome Lawrence's solo exhibitions in Georgia include galleries such as Sabra Gallery, Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech, Chances Gallery, City Gallery East, VSA Arts for All Gallery, and others. His artwork is part of the documentary Shadow Voices & Building on Faith by Mennonite Media, and he has been interviewed by CNN news, WXIA-TV and WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jerome Lawrence's work was featured in Visual Preludes 2006, an exhibition of Episcopal Church & Visual Arts for the 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church, Columbus, Ohio, 2006.

1 Masters of Fine Arts, Masters of Business Administration. Daniel Pink is the author of A Whole New Mind.
2 Masters of Divinity, the degree held by many ordained priests and ministers
3 Frank Burch Brown, Gesa Elsbeth Theissen, Theological Aesthetics, A Reader, 2004, Wm. Eerdmans, p. 268.

Transforming Journey - Recapturing Moments of Personal Change
by Robert J. Epley

Meaningful personal changes are often unrecognized in the moment in which they occur and aren’t recognized as such until much later. The images in this series began as photographs made for my own personal satisfaction and were done over a considerable time span. It is only by looking back at them recently that the change moments (transformational) became recognizable to me. What I see now is that these images are markers of change moments spiritual in nature.

Some of the images are given what is for me a new meaning by the way the film image is interpreted. What I saw in the camera’s viewfinder felt right intuitively. That was reason enough for me to make the photograph. Traditional, straight forward prints don’t convey the sense of their meaning. The images have been reinterpreted to better represent what I feel happened in those moments.

Robert J. Epley is a photographer living and working in Nederland, Colorado. His work has received numerous awards and is included in the collection of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. His work can be seen in 'Portraits of the Self,' an exhibition of Episcopal Church and Visual Arts.

On View The Road Not Taken, by Robert J. Epley. Photograph.

Synchronicity
A process of letting go

Carl Jung defines synchronicity as “meaningful coincidences”. I chose this title because it suggests the process that I go through to come to a final piece. The process starts long before I ever enter the print studio, it started years ago in fact. Even as a little girl I cut pictures out of magazines, saved greeting cards and “precious” objects found on a beach or at a yard sale. Through my adult life I have continued this obsession. When I pick up things at a rummage sale or find photos and letters in a box in my parents’ attic, I don’t usually know what I’ll do with them. It’s not until later when I’m preparing to go to the print studio do things call out to be together. I’ll spread out all my treasures, of lace, feathers, stamps, old books and photographs and see what pops out. Things call to be together and a story begin to emerge. As the artist I combine the objects to suggest a storyline, make an outline but it is the viewer who makes the process complete. You come to the piece and complete the story, flesh out the meaning. There is a part of the collective unconscious at play here that makes these pieces sing. They are more than beautiful works of art. They are a secret whispered, a snippet of song long forgotten, an old joke that still makes you laugh, a line from a poem deeply loved.

On View: Bird and Feather, 15" x 22", Monoprint by Lisa Marie Thorpe, 2008. Lisa Marie Thorpe is artist-in-residence at The Bishops Ranch in Healdsburg, California and a member of the ECVA-San Francisco Chapter in the Diocese of California.