Caleb Stoltzfus was travelling by train to his tutor’s studio in Philadelphia when images of the Escalon—the saints’ resurrection—slid out of his head and into his sketchbook.
Read moreSIP Series: Adrienne Siegenthaler and Jamison Shimmel
Growing up in Cullman, Alabama, English major Adrienne Siegenthaler understands how true to life the snake-handling, charismatic characters of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction can be. She also sympathizes with O’Connor’s bemused yet appreciative attitude toward churches where the “gospel is the crazy, shocking, and unbelievable.” This theme became the crux of her 10 minute SIP presentation Thursday, March 19th.
Read moreWhen a Joyful Noise Has Four Corners
It is almost guaranteed that Sacred Harp singers will be the ones who wake the dead at the Second Coming.
Read moreCinderella Review
Ever see your college-aged friends squeal over coloring books? Watching Cinderella in the Majestic theatre felt exactly like squealing over coloring books, or like curling up in bed having bedtime stories read to you. The first day of spring, with Rita’s free Italian ice beforehand with four other girls, it was a fine day to take a break from being an almost-twenty-something.
Read moreTo Pimp a Butterfly
On March 16, Kendrick Lamar dropped his new album To Pimp a Butterfly a week early. The album was an instant success, shattering Spotify’s streaming records set only a few weeks earlier by Drake’s If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late. Despite its success, Lamar’s new album is much less accessible than his 2012 album Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. To Pimp a Butterfly sees Lamar shifting gears, working with producers such as Thundercat and Flying Lotus to make instrumentals that resemble old-school boom bap and jazz rap with a modern twist.
Read moreSIP Series: Peter Hennigan and Lynae Rockwell
Any decent SIP for the history department must contain at least a fair amount of “blood, sweat and tears,” in accordance with Dr. Jay Green’s favorite recipe. As senior History major Peter Hennigan investigates inter-racial conflict during the Harlem Renaissance, he has discovered that this is true in more ways than one.
Read moreSenior SIP Series: Zach Plating and Aften Whitmore
Senior English major Zach Plating is an aficionado of the graphic novel, and particularly appreciates the medium’s ability to relay difficult themes through both visual and literary art. For his SIP, the English major is analyzing how personal growth and identity are portrayed in “autographies,” or autobiographical graphic novels.
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Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
There’s a new girl in town—that girl being former doomsday cult member Kimmy Schmidt and that town being, well, New York City. The latest in Netflix’s new line of in-house TV shows, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, follows the story of a girl who has just been discovered in an underground bunker where she has spent the last 17 years of her life, thinking the world had ended. Rather than returning to her life in Indiana, Kimmy wants a fresh start and takes her middle-school-educated self to New York City where she hopes to stay out of the public eye and simply “be normal.”
Read moreAn Open Letter to Bekah
Dear Bekah,
By now it is quite clear that the damage done to your sculpture was not as malicious as we originally suspected. I still feel compelled, however, to speak directly to you about what happened last Wednesday night. Your piece has joined a sad club of defaced art, bruised by anger, ignorance, and the inflated ego of a viewer. Unfortunately this kind of vandalism has a long history, both at Covenant and throughout art history.
Read moreMorton/Morty/Jeff
They’re not footballs. That was the first line of critique Jeff Morton gave my still-life painting when I was a senior at Covenant and before he was hired. Indeed there are no terminal lines on soup can lids. Watch your whites. OK, the clouds in my small landscape painting were straight-from-the-tube of unmixed color and unconvincing. Pretty direct critique, it seemed, and blunt. And very on-target. That irritated me. It also convinced me he was a first-rate professor with an eye for painting that doesn’t get taught. His nonchalance was of a Yale survivor.
Read moreFairytales
People enjoy the bizarre. But what makes the bizarre bizarre? G. K. Chesterton states in his book Orthodoxy, "Oddities do not strike odd people. This is...why the new novels die so quickly and why the old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy: it is his adventures that startle him: they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal...hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately."
Read moreTea with Local Milk
“Hey! Wanna meet at my house instead?...I’m not in the mood to be in public.”
When I got this email from Beth Kirby, about 20 minutes before we were scheduled to meet, I lost it. All day long I had looked forward to meeting Beth, the artist behind the brand Local Milk, at a coffee shop in town. Being invited to her home for a cup of tea felt too good to be true.
Read moreComic Relief
Jamison Shimmel is restarting Covenant College’s semi-annual Comic Relief sketch show. The event is expected to be about an hour long, and will showcase a series of new skits and comedic short films.
Read moreGordon Parks: Selling Segregation
As an African American documentary photographer working for Life magazine in the 1950’s Deep South, Gordon Parks forged a new path for civil rights photography. Atlanta’s High Museum of Art’s exhibition, Gordon Parks: Segregation Story, features over forty color photographs the artist made of the Thornton family in Mobile, Alabama.
Read moreSenior SIP's
For a kid or college student on a museum field trip, what could be more tantalizing than reaching out and caressing the decoupage behind the sign: DO NOT TOUCH? It was instilled in us from kindergarten that with one stroke, we could send the David crashing to a sudden death. However, for senior visual art major Bekah Meyer, both the artist and the onlooker should be able to utilize their sense of touch when interacting with art.
Read moreA Spotlight on Senior SIPs
This SIP season, senior visual art majors must shape an artifact out of their history, particularly from their last four years on the mountain. For Beth Ann Fogal, this means tackling the question, “Why should we look at art that makes us ache?”
Read moreMilk Fruit Cress Gallery
As an artist, I have come to the realization that I do not always understand, enjoy, or agree with certain art pieces, and that is okay. I want others to know they’re not the only ones who have experienced feeling “behind” for not “getting” a work of art.
Read moreThe Phosphorescent Blue's Review
The Punch Brothers’ long-awaited album The Phosphorescent Blues was released January 28th under the direction of T-Bone Burnett, producer of Coen Brother’ Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack. So far, it has superseded the expectations of both fans and critics. In response to the release, Joe Breen of the Irish Times gushed that, “Listening to the Punch Brothers is an exercise in wonder… Where did that come from? What’s that reference? Is that Debussy? Is that The Beach Boys? Is that bluegrass, blues, jazz, classical, rock? Who cares because that tune’s just beautiful.”
Read moreEdith Stein Review
Edith Stein is a hard show to pull off. Its protagonist is a fiery Jewish scholar who embarks on a harrowing journey of spiritual self-discovery. Its antagonist is a misogynistic Nazi sociopath whose only inclination seems to be self-advancement. For two hours, the characters search for spiritual peace against the backdrop of one of the most vile genocides in recent human history—the Holocaust.
Read moreLive from New York...SNL Turns 40!
On Sunday night, Saturday Night Live heaven occurred, for fans of the show at least. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the late night comedy program, a three and a half hour chunk of prime time television was set aside for a special SNL celebration show.
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