This delightful photograph of Richard and Claudia Bushman (taken by Jon Moe) is about as perfect a symbol as I can think of to explain what drives the Mormon Arts Center.  It's about love--for art, but love for the people making it, viewing it, studying it, supporting it, and bringing it to the limelight, too. I've noticed over the couple of years working on these projects that this affection for each other is a powerful buoying force. When one of us is overwhelmed and down, another senses it and comes to the rescue. 

Claudia Bushman is fond of telling us all about the value of publication. This makes perfect sense, given that she's written a mountain of books herself, but she was speaking more directly to the need to document history as it's happening. One of the Mormon Arts Center's priorities is publishing: old school, hold in your hand, turn-a-page books. Anybody who's ever written a book and seen it in print understands the thrill of it, but few can imagine what goes into making an object like that.

It's been fun to finally show people a detailed listing of what's up for the Festival. Over the last week, we've placed posters and a couple of thousand takeaway cards with many people in local church congregations near New York City. I like to watch their reactions to the cards. They invariably turn to the listing of events and are taken aback at the breadth of it all.

We were at an Advisory Board meeting for the Center in January, and J. Kirk Richards had an idea: what if we did something at the Festival that allowed multiple artists to make something together? At the 2017 Festival, we exhibited Kirk's multi-panel work, Cristo (2014), that brought together 161 paintings of different sizes together. These had been created by Kirk working with people in his community who were invited to show how they imagined Jesus Christ to appear; then Kirk reworked the images to unite them stylistically.

Hildebrando de Melo arrived at JFK airport from Angola via Lisbon and Amsterdam one week ago today. He is here to do an artist's residency, the Center's first. The resulting paintings will form the solo exhibition at the Festival in June. Our plan was to have him here early to give us a chance to frame works, create a catalog, and become acclimated to the works a while. Then, he'll come back in June for the opening. He'll also be giving a presentation/interview about his work at the Festival.

All the action is in the library. That's my experience as a student and author. Whoever invited the library was a genius. For the Festival, we had a meeting this week to plot out strategies: opening night, decorations, flowers, locations, flow, food. This team of Festival staff members is extraordinary. At the Italian Academy biblioteca, where some of the events will take place, we sat down together (from left to right): Jenna Holt, Marilee Moe, Alyssa Chard, Sharon Harris, Emily Doxford, Braden Burgon, and Allyson Chard.