Are songwriters, painters, filmmakers, and other artists modern-day prophets in society and church? Can art be a vehicle of hope, stirring that wondrous if elusive capacity in human beings to imagine a more just, humane, and joyful future? Through critical and contemplative engagement with classics in music, film, literature, and visual arts, Christopher Pramuk�s The Artist Alive: Explorations in Music, Art & Theology invites us to explore these and other questions. Attentive to the deep longings of the human and spiritual journey, Pramuk posits the arts as a doorway into the life of spirit and sacred presence. Rather than proposing �answers,� he outlines a way of seeing, hearing, and praying through some of life�s most enduring spiritual and theological questions. With more than a dozen case studies featuring various artists, prompts for contemplative practices, and a focus on today�s most urgent social and spiritual issues, The Artist Alive weaves a spirituality of wonder, resistance, and hope: a prophetic response to the utilitarian, militarized, marketplace vision of reality that bears down upon and dehumanizes so many in our time. Through loving examination of artists and their art, Pramuk convincingly conveys the possibility of a more humane and joyful way of being in the world.

"Admired by Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller and Saul Bass, Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986) was one of the most innovative and unusual pop artist of the 1960s, battling the political and religious establishments, revolutionizing graphic design and encouraging creativity of thousands of people--all while living and practicing as a Catholic nun in California. Mixing advertising slogans and poetry in her prints and commandeering nuns and students to help make ambitious installations, processions and banners, Sister Corita's work is now recognized as some of the most striking--and joyful--American art of the 60s. But, at the end of the decade and at the height of her fame and prodigious work rate, she left the convent where she had spent her adult life. Julie Ault's book ls the first to examine Corita's life and career, containing more than 90 illustrations, many reproduced for the first time, capturing the artist's use of vibrant and day-glo colors."--Page 4 of cover.

"Brimming with optimism, John Frohnmayer journeyed to Washington, D.C., in 1989 to serve a cause he believed in deeply: the arts in America. Appointed by President Bush to be chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, he was abruptly fired two and a half years later in a storm of front-page controversy." "Leaving Town Alive is Frohnmayer's lively and startlingly candid account of his trial by fire in the brutal world of power politics. Taking over the NEA amid the uproar about Robert Mapplethorpe's sexually explicit photographs, Frohnmayer stood at the center of the emotional debate over public funding for the arts. On the left were staunch defenders of free speech and the artists whose confrontational works came under attack. On the right were Jesse Helms and the fundamentalist proponents of traditional values." "At first Frohnmayer assumed that he could negotiate anything and that everyone had the best interests of the country at heart. He was wrong: the White House, for instance, just wanted the problem of "offensive art" to go away, while right-wing fund-raisers wanted to keep the issue alive as long as possible. In the end, Frohnmayer's harrowing education changed him. He entered the fray a First Amendment moderate; he emerged a free-speech radical." "John Frohnmayer had an insider's view of Washington during the Bush years, and he writes with remarkable frankness about the bitter battles over the government's involvement in the arts. Passionate, witty, and wonderfully readable, Leaving Town Alive is, finally, an eloquent plea for the liberation of American culture from the narrow concerns of partisan politics."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

If you breathe and have a pulse, you NEED this book. -Cody Lundin Cody Lundin, director of the Aboriginal Living Skills School in Prescott, Arizona, shares his own brand of wilderness wisdom in this highly anticipated new book on commonsense, modern survival skills for the backcountry, the backyard, or the highway. It is the ultimate book on how to stay alive-based on the principal of keeping the body's core temperature at a lively 98.6 degrees. In his entertaining and informative style, Cody stresses that a human can live without food for weeks, and without water for about three days or so. But if the body's core temperature dips much below or above the 98.6 degree mark, a person can literally die within hours. It is a concept that many don't take seriously or even consider, but knowing what to do to maintain a safe core temperature when lost in a blizzard or in the desert could save your life. Lundin delivers the message with wit, rebellious humor, and plenty of backcountry expertise. Cody Lundin and his Aboriginal Living Skills School have been featured in dozens of national and international media sources, including Dateline NBC, CBS News, USA Today, The Donny and Marie Show, and CBC Radio One in Canada, as well as on the cover of Backpacker magazine. When not teaching for his own school, he is an adjunct faculty member at Yavapai College and a faculty member at the Ecosa Institute. Cody is the only person in Arizona licensed to catch fish with his hands, and lives in a passive solar earth home sixty miles from Prescott, Arizona.

This book is a celebration of tactile beauty and a tribute to human ingenuity. In-depth profiles tell the stories of 20 artisans who have devoted their lives to preserving traditional techniques. Gorgeous photographs reveal these craftspeople's studios, from Oaxaca to Kyoto and from Milan to Tennessee. Two essays explore the challenges and rewards of engaging deeply with the past. With an elegant three-piece case and foil stamping, this rich volume will be an inspiration to makers, collectors, and history lovers.

'What is a Self-Portrait?' features well-known examples of fine art and discusses how artists reveal themselves through their self-portraits.

Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts fiercely defends the liberal arts in and from an age of neoliberal capital and techno-corporatization run amok, arguing that the public university’s purpose is not vocational training, but rather the cultivation of what Fradenburg calls “artfulness,” including the art of making knowledge. In addition to sustained critical and creative thinking, the humanities develop the mind’s capacities for real-time improvisational communication and interpretation, without which we can neither thrive nor survive. Humanist pedagogy and research use play, experimentation and intersubjective exchange to foster forms of artfulness critical to the future of our species. From perception to reality-testing to concept-formation and logic, the arts and humanities teach us to see, hear and respond more keenly, and to imagine, or “model,” new futures and possibilities. Innovation of all kinds, technological or artistic, depends on the enhancement of the skills proper to staying alive