Cows. Paintings of cows. Long faced cows, staring out at us, forlornly. Cows, representing the artist’s own fractured family. There’s an artist who looks at fields, from the vantage point of a driver on a lonely highway, and sees subjects for wonderfully flat paintings. Painting after painting, sculpture after sculpture, LDS artists finding inspiration in images and vistas and subjects I would never so much as consider. And transforming them.

The Mormon Artists’ Retreat this year was held, as in the recent past, at Aspen Grove, right up by Sundance, back side of Timp. We moved from cabin to cabin, making new friends, embracing old ones. The culmination of the weekend was on Friday night, when we gathered together for Show and Tell. We heard musicians I hadn’t heard before (and bought their CDs!). We saw a power point of the painters and sculptors and photographers, and saw the world through their eyes. And basked in art. In new art, old art, fresh art, spoken art, written art, painted and carved and sculpted and sung and played and acted art.

I needed this. This time last year, I was coming off my second surgery of what would be three, getting ever sicker and feeling more hopeless. This time last year, I had no gigs, no prospects for gigs, no inspiration. Now, a year later, I have two play productions on the horizon, a paper to write for a conference, a blog to neglect. The Artists’ Retreat blew a breath of renewal. I came away refreshed, inspired. Also knackered, but in a good way.

Saturday morning, after breakfast, a guitarist, Ben Howington, got up on stage and started playing the guitar and singing; the Battle Hymn of the Republic, that fabulous old abolitionist anthem. And then a woman I don’t know, Melody, a jazz pianist, went up to the piano and joined in, and they played together, passing solos back and forth. And Sam Cardon adjusted a mic so we could hear her better. Sam Cardon, one of the most distinguished of Mormon composers, playing roadie. And we started singing, a full-throated shout of praise and thanksgiving and determination. “As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free!” Sing it.

And then we’d gather, and talk. And it occurred to me; I’ve been going to this for twenty years. And in the past, there’d be talk about The World, and the kind of Worldly Art we Mormons needed to shun, or transcend, or generally avoid. This year, that was gone; this year, the rhetoric was about seeing the World, recognizing its glory, building on the best. The relationship between The World and The Spirit is not one of opposition. It’s a conversation.

Let the conversation continue. My people are doing great work, and so are people, everyone, everywhere. Mine eyes have seen the glory! Hallelujah.