By: Dawnel Volzke on September 13, 2015
I can’t say that I’ve ever been considered creative or ‘artsy’, beyond decorating and gardening. However, recently, my opinion on art has been shifting and I have begun to more deeply appreciate the personal reflection of the artists thoughts, feelings and ideas as portrayed in their artwork. Dyrness, in his book Visual Faith (Engaging Culture): Art,…
By: Jon Spellman on September 11, 2015
What More needs to be said?
By: Garfield Harvey on September 11, 2015
It has been years since I read a book that had such great substance and yet, I did not want to keep reading it. Whenever a book is written where the author chooses to make each chapter independent of itself, I know it is trouble for me. In this review, I chose to write how…
By: Kevin Norwood on September 10, 2015
As I approached this new book Doing Visual Ethnography by Sarah Pink, I attempted to do everything that I learned in the previous book about how to read a book. I read the introduction; I read the acknowledgement and table of contents. One of the things that I desperately needed to discover was what did…
By: Aaron Peterson on September 10, 2015
If I were to have posted this picture of my view of my classroom last week while reading, I would have written about it telling the reader about how it is a picture of my classroom. I would tell you what each artifact in the image means and represents. I would control this image and…
By: Pablo Morales on September 10, 2015
Images are a powerful thing. The picture of a child lying lifeless on a beach can move nations to respond with urgency to a refugee crisis otherwise ignored. Videos of police mistreating a citizen can now go viral on the web, forcing cities to implement systems of accountability otherwise unaddressed. Photographs of the forgotten…
By: Colleen Batchelder on September 10, 2015
Imagine the chaotic turmoil of war – lives vastly changed through one act of terror. Picture yourself on the city steps – bodies fall before your eyes. You can hear the bombs encircling overhead. You can feel the chill of the wintry breeze hitting your face. Your experience is written within the core of your…
By: Aaron Cole on September 10, 2015
Visual Ethnography by Sarah Pink was a very interesting read. I have to admit that the term “ethnography” was not one I had used or heard. Ethnography is simply put is the study and recording of cultures. Pink exhaustively shows how it is presented visually. The idea of this is very intriguing to me, in…
By: Marc Andresen on September 10, 2015
Have I been functioning as a visual ethnographer without knowing it? Every year my wife takes her 7th grade class on a field trip to Washington D. C. For several years I have gone along in order to take pictures and post a daily blog. The purpose of the blog is to give a picture of…
By: Claire Appiah on September 10, 2015
Visual Approaches to Knowledge and Experience Sarah Pink: Doing Visual Ethnography Sarah Pink is an accomplished ethnographer whose extensive work has effectively challenged and contributed to the field, notably through her research concepts and methodologies that emphasized fusing theoretical and practical elements in doing ethnography to enhance learning about the world. Pink observes that visual…
By: Rose Anding on September 10, 2015
Visual of the Real World “Ethnography is defined as the scientific study of human…
By: Jason Kennedy on September 10, 2015
We Are All Visual Ethnographers Now Laying in my bed as try to chase sleep, I often times find myself picking up my favorite digital device and taking a stroll through the halls of social media. As a pastor, this can be a dangerous walk. When I go to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any of…
By: Phillip Struckmeyer on September 10, 2015
Drawing Attention William Dyrness in his book, Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship in Dialogue, draws attention to the idea that there is a crisis in Christianity and its relationship to the Arts. Dyrness, in this intriguing text, ultimately is calling for a needed renewal. Dyrness writes, “We need a threefold renewal: a new vision for…
By: Mary Pandiani on September 9, 2015
When I taught Western Civilization to 10th graders quite a few years back, I loved talking about the middle ages and cathedrals, especially how stained-glass windows were the most significant medium for peasants/serfs to understand the gospel. The images, beautiful artwork, adorned the dark corridors of the oft-cold churches. Because Latin was a foreign language…
By: Nick Martineau on September 9, 2015
As long as I have lived in Kansas there has been an ongoing Kansas School Board debate about school funding. Like many other States, Kansas never seems to have enough funding and no more wants to raise taxes for education. A few years ago the School Board threatened to defund the theater/arts/music programs in our…
By: Dave Young on September 7, 2015
I think there are some Christians, in the ultra-conservative camp, who have an angst, an unspecified fear, of art. Emotions, after all, aren’t easily constrained, and if art does anything at all, it elicits an emotional response. An experience with something of beauty might feed my desire; desire awakened could arouse my passion—and that can’t…
By: Dawnel Volzke on September 5, 2015
My recent work has taken me into several Christian organizations that are struggling under financial pressures, and are experiencing declining customers or members. Their day-to-day operations aren’t driving successful outcomes. They’ve fallen into what Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, calls “the Doom Loop”[1], or a downward spiral. Hence, these organizations are forced…
By: Brian Yost on September 5, 2015
While reading Jim Collin’s Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t, I found myself placing the material into three district categories; Things I Liked, Things I Found Curious, and Things I Struggled With. Things I Liked Two things that I particularly liked were the Hedgehog Concept and the “Not-To-Do” list.…
By: Aaron Cole on September 5, 2015
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren was very foundational and somewhat elementary on the subject of reading and good reading skill. The content could be divided into two categories: basic understanding of reading (part one) and the practices of how to be a good reader (part 2). The…
By: Claire Appiah on September 4, 2015
Adler: How to Read a Book Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren are to be credited for showing the activity of quality reading to be an art, a science, and a skill. They have produced an outstanding and thorough work on techniques, levels, and types of reading that has become a classic model for informing…
