I received an email from Urbana today focused solely on the arts. I had been wondering when they’d get back to this topic; it seems like more than a year since I’ve seen any art related content in their correspondence.

I scanned the articles, not having the time to dive into them (and finding the subject matter to be less than novel). The one thing that stood out was in an article titled Worship and the Arts in Ministry and Missions, where the author refers to a challenge he gave in 1999 to “250 Christians in dance, 75 Christians in music, 50 Christians in theatre and drama, and 25 others in visual arts, puppets and a few other artistic expressions.”

Twenty-five others in the visual arts, puppets et al. This small percentage of visual artists — and we don’t know how few of these are actually tactile artists and not digital artists — in comparison to the larger number of dance, music and theatre types is part of why I push so hard for the visual arts in the context of the Church (Other than the fact that my own interests lie, without a doubt, primarily in the visual arts.). I also find it interesting that, at the unidentified gathering, there are more dance than music people; it seems to me this would usually be the other way around, more music than dance or theater.

The three other links in the email are an Artsy Witness, Art and Soul, and Redeeming the Arts.

Urbana has created a second photoessay of the Arts Lounge via this link. I’m partial to this gestural, grafitti-esque work:

An accompanying article (which I’ve yet to read all of yet) by the Arts Lounge coordinator, Dick Ryan, can be read via this link.

Being an exhibitor I did not get to spend time in the Arts Lounge at Urbana 2006 last December. I felt then and feel now like I missed out on a great opportunity to encourage and connect with the upcoming generation, the generation with opportunity to influence the future of our visual environment:

I don’t lament exhibiting for Mission Data International, not in the least. I just wish I could have done both.

I actually received a follow-up email from Urbana 2006 — for signing up as a party interested in the arts. I did the same in 2003 but nothing came out of that conference that I was aware of. Urbana uploaded a “Photoessay” of the Arts lounge. I found the following image, apparently drawn by a delegate who visited the lounge, to be pretty compelling:

My wife and I lunched with Geinene Carson and her husband, Mat, while at the Urbana 2006 conference. Geinene launched ArtsLink a few years ago, and I talked to her while at Portland’s Missions Fest Northwest in 2005.

ArtsLink offers short-term mission trips for visual artists through OM. Geinene is a painter and has served with OM for roughly seven years now. Her aspirations for the program go beyond mission trips, however, and some of her other goals are particularly thrilling to me.

She mentioned that building rapport in the Christian art community has been difficult. Last year she mentioned a trip to a nearby Christian college art program where even the head of the department was weary — weary of the quality of the art. He assumed that the program would likely sacrifice quality and imagination for pious routine.

In response, she suggested that some of his own students become involved as a way to ensure the artistic quality of the projects.

One of Geinene’s prints:

With the bell of the New Year, the Urbana attendees took communion last night and the conference officially ended.

Hannah and I didn’t make it into any of the plenary sessions but don’t harbor any regrets. Despite slower traffic through the exhibit hall yesterday, the conference exceeded my expectations (the third day, the day when no seminars were offered, was the busiest). It’s a little disappointing that we were not able to exhibit in 2003 as well, or we might have one or two additional programmers right now and be farther ahead with some of the projects we have in mind.

The conference also confirmed the need for some of these projects. Finding an agency who has need for what you’re interested in can be a real challenge, and we have ideas for websites and internet tools which speak to this need.

Today we drive home and sleep in our own bed for the first time in 12 days after travel for Christmas and Urbana.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Alias: Newspaper with a really long name) ran an article about Urbana this morning. Read it via this link.

It’s a little curious to me the article more or less only talked about missions to Muslims or Islamic countries. I know anything to do with Islam is a hot-button issue, but it’s an awfully lopsided representation of the conference if it’s the only piece they print (or have printed) about Urbana. The conference and the organizations involved engage in a myriad of different ministries everywhere on the globe.

Yesterday was a shorter day for exhibitors and the one day of the conference no seminars were offered. Just about everyone was exhausted: attendees, exhibitors and volunteers. Hannah and I were able to bed down a little earlier last night though; it was the first night we didn’t have something or someone on our schedule.

The exhibit hall was busier yesterday and attendees asked more questions. The top of our display gets to the point: “internet + missions.” This phrase has drawn a lot of people in, programmers as well as people who claim they barely know where the power switch is.

Today will be long. We have lunch with the founder of ArtsLink and her husband, are back in the exhibit hall until 6:30pm and then tear down as much as we can. Sadly, Hannah has yet to find opportunity to sit in on a plenary session; hopefully we can do that today as well, even if only for a few minutes.

From downtown St. Louis:

A few more photos on my Flickr page.

Highlights from Urbana on Friday:

Crowds leaving the plenary session:

I had originally hoped to stay with friends while in St. Louis, however their schedule didn’t allow it (not to mention their two-week old infant). We were blessed to visit with them, however, before they drove off to Kansas for a wedding.

Instead we are staying at a bed and breakfast called the Park Avenue Mansion on Lafayette Square. We stayed here on vacation, and the least expensive room is nary more than hotels in the area (not to mention nice (real) breakfasts, free parking and no “hotel” taxes).

This morning at breakfast in the inn we met a Kansas City couple taking a break from their children for a couple of nights. They had taken the train (Amtrak) from their home with the intent to do, well, mostly nothing! One of the other couples at the table was quick to point out how nice it must have been not to drive.

I was very presently surprised at this latter comment. When taking a community planning course in college, our text (The Geography of Nowhere) made mention of people’s inability to qualify why they like car-free environments such as living history museums, or even Disney World. Thus, this comment (I believe it was made by a young woman from Boston) seemed very astute.

The couple who took the train said they played a game of Scrabble on the ride, and couldn’t believe there was actually time in their busy schedules for such a thing.

Highlights from the first full day: