Accessible History
Book of the Year

The Year of Peril: America in 1942 is our history winner in another year of peril, 2020. Although I know the end of the 1942 story, author Tracy Campbell made me feel I was reading a novel in which it wasn’t clear that the hero would survive. It’s hard for us to believe now, but in 1942 War Production Board chairman Donald Nelson had good reason to say, “The awful realization was slowly coming over the country that America was losing a war.”

Out of desolation, fruitfulness

Q&A | An author and artist’s life

by Marvin Olasky
Posted 10/21/20, 06:33 pm

Canadian author and painter Michael O’Brien, 72, wrote Father Elijah and six other novels in a “Children of the Last Days” series. Seven other novels include Theophilos (set in Gospel times), Voyage to Alpha Centauri (sci-fi), and the magnificent (with occasional violence) Island of the World. O’Brien leaned toward atheism as a teenager and became a Catholic at age 21. For years he struggled to make a living as a painter, mostly on religious subjects in a neo-Byzantine style. He became a published author in his late 40s, after many rejections.

Inspired by a true story

Arts | Artist Michael Sherrill’s sculptures portray the pain and beauty of life

by Hannah Harris
Posted 3/26/20, 01:58 pm

Sculptor Michael Sherrill’s studio in western North Carolina is tucked under trees, nestled a few yards from a small waterfall. The soft, cascading sound of the waterfall met the snap of a wood-burning fireplace as Sherrill poured green tea into stoneware mugs and described how nature and faith influence his art.

A plea for beautiful buildings

Culture | Proposed executive order challenges soul-crushing architectural fads

Janie B. Cheaney | 3/12/20, 03:48 pm

Most of us don’t think about architecture unless it slaps us in the face. That may say more about bland, blocky public buildings than we’d like to admit, but several years ago I was slapped by the central public library in a Midwestern university town. The entrance, opening to a four-story atrium, resembled an upended, corrugated, glass-and-aluminum Dixie cup. The main body of the building, constructed of native red granite, sloped slightly inward, decorated with random strips of window.

Art in unexpected places

Lifestyle | Music and art programs offer creative outlets to the blind, disabled, and homeless

Marvin Olasky | 1/30/20, 03:41 pm

Austin, Texas, styles itself “the live music capital of the world” and a haven for painters and sculptors as well. So do other aspirational cities that have followed a New Urbanism script: gain an artsy reputation so the talented, young, and beautiful will follow. But what about those left behind yet also made in God’s image, including the blind, the disabled, and the homeless?

From Latvia to America

Art | A Christian refugee agency earns a mention in a Met Breuer museum exhibit featuring acclaimed artist Vija Celmins

Emily Belz | 10/16/19, 05:26 pm

A New York moment:

The Met Breuer (the contemporary arm of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art) has a wonderful show now from artist Vija Celmins, who draws intricate pencil renderings of waves, paints the sky, and makes replicas of rocks. She also has drawn airplanes exploding, and painted a man running from a burning car, allusions to her war-torn childhood.

Spider-Man split upsets fans

Lynde Langdon | 8/21/19, 11:13 am

A public rift between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures could mean big changes for popular superhero movies. Sony owns the movie rights to the Spider-Man character and just had its highest-grossing movie ever this summer with Spider-Man: Far From Home. The two studios have cooperated in recent years, with Spider-Man appearing in Avengers movies and Marvel’s Iron Man playing an important role in the Spider-Verse.

Time with Tolkien

Art | A treasury of J.R.R. Tolkien’s paintings and notes is on display in New York

Emily Belz | 4/30/19, 01:06 pm

A New York moment:

The Bodleian Library in Oxford loaned a trove of J.R.R. Tolkien’s sketches, doodles, and illustrations to New York’s Morgan Library & Museum, which calls it “the most extensive public display of original Tolkien material for several generations.” The exhibit closes May 12, and it has been packed in its final weeks, for good reason. Though the exhibit is contained in only two large rooms, I spent hours inside poring over Tolkien’s meticulous notes, maps, and paintings.

Portrait of a Christian artist

Art | Combat and Christianity helped shape Roger Blum and his work

Sharon Dierberger | 4/11/19, 03:09 pm

Artist Roger Blum, now 78, grew up in a troubled Seventh-day Adventist home in Northern California. That upbringing led him to register as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. In 1965, when he was beginning a master’s degree program and trying to establish himself as an illustrator, he received a draft notice.

On the streets where you live

New York | A New York artist leaves winsome messages in sidewalk chalk, and local media dig up a democratic socialist candidate’s ‘repressive’ pro-life past

Emily Belz | 9/04/18, 04:39 pm

A New York moment:

You see a lot of weird stuff on the sidewalks of Manhattan, from discarded pants to one-legged pigeons. One time I came across a steaming pile of potatoes, scattered on the sidewalk, a scenario that still leaves me baffled.