In Shakespeare’s great tragedy, Romeo describes love—among other things—as “a madness most discreet.” The impassioned Montague recognizes that love is so powerful it can overwhelm with confusion, even to the point of driving a person crazy. Nevertheless, he believes love is worth going mad for. The Cross demonstrated that love and pain are necessarily intermingled. And although love comes with a cost and makes us “fools” for Christ, loving well is worth the suffering it brings. Paul names love as the most important of the three Christian virtues.

During this year’s Arts Week at DTS (October 20–24, 2015), we will explore the madness of love—the insane cost of knowing and loving God and others. (More information about DTS Arts Week: http://www.dts.edu/artsweek)

Dr. Esther Meek: Featured Chapel Speaker

Dr. Esther L. Meek, professor of Philosophy at Geneva College, likens the study of how we know (epistemology) to learning to ride a bike. The bike manual makes sense only when we actually get on the bicycle.

DTS has invited Dr. Meek to be the chapel speaker for Arts Week 2015 because of the seminary’s commitment to help ourselves and others better to love and serve (worship) the triune God and others by means of Scripture and our senses (arts)—that is, by better “knowing.” Dr. Meek will help us do so by guiding us through her topic, “Loving to Know/Create: Epistemological Therapy for Artists and Other Knowers.” The titles of her four lectures will be:

  • Why We All Need Epistemological Therapy
  • How Knowing (and the Creative Act) Works
  • Loving to Know: Covenant Epistemology for Artists and other Knowers
  • Inviting the Real, and the Real We Invite

I addition to being a professor, Meek is a writer, teacher, speaker and conversationalist. She loves to think and talk about how we know. In her work titled Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People, Meek introduces a biblical epistemology—how we can talk biblically about knowing reality and God. She dissects modernism and post-modernism and gives a realistic view of knowing God, people, and things.  She also wants to replace the notion of certainty with the notion of confidence—an approach DTS’s own professor Dr. Dan Wallace uses when arguing for biblical textual criticism.

In addition to our featured speaker, during Arts Week 2015 chapel will include many students leading in worship through poetry and music. Through our chapel program, DTS provides an opportunity for speakers from around the world to minister to students, faculty, staff, and friends. During the academic year, chapel is held in Lamb Auditorium every Tuesday through Friday from 10:40 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.  All are welcome.

Letitia Huckaby: Featured Visual Artist

The featured visual artist for DTS’s 2015 Arts Week is critically acclaimed local artist Letitia Huckaby. Entering a space where Huckaby has displayed her work, at first glance the observer sees hanging quilts and sculptural-like dresses of quilt material hanging on a clothesline. Framed quilts also cover the wall. But a closer look reveals that the fabrics have photographs printed on them. The artist has reconfigured and stitched together memories made into physical objects. Describing her work for D Magazine, Huckaby said her creations explore how the ritual of handing down, across time and generations, causes objects to become more than objects.

“In undergrad I was doing more documentary-type photography,” she said. “Then my father died shortly before I started graduate school. He was from this small town in Mississippi that was the fourth-largest producer of cotton in the country. After he passed, it got me to thinking about where I was from and how I got to be where I was. And I started to look at the quilts [my husband—also an artist] was painting differently . . .  And I started experimenting with images on fabric, and then quilting them together.”

At the age of eighteen, Huckaby was selected to participate in the prestigious Oklahoma Arts Institute two years in a row.  There, through exposure to a variety of other art forms, she began to pursue photography. After earning a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, she obtained a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston in photography and a master’s degree from the University of North Texas.

In addition to exhibiting locally and in a number of Texas galleries, Mrs. Huckaby has been chosen to display her work on both coasts of the US as well as Ireland and Austria. Of the pieces being exhibited on the DTS-Dallas campus during Arts Week she writes, “The basic premise behind my work is faith, family and legacy. It is a time capsule for the African-American experience. I am always looking at how the past relates to the present, and whether or not things have changed or remain the same. There is always a history built into the pieces, whether through process or actual materials. I often use heirloom fabrics . . . I am a photographer at heart; each piece starts with an image and progresses from there. Along with that, I love pushing the boundaries of photography—using a traditional practice in an untraditional way and hopefully creating a new visual language. “

Letitia Huckaby Wedding Dress

In addition to displays of her work in the Campbell Academic Center and Hope Coffee spaces, the campus will feature a longer loan from Ms. Huckaby on the first floor of the Todd Academic building in its gallery space. The exhibit will run from from Arts Week until December 17, 2015. For this space the artist is providing a piece she has never before shown publicly; it has been hanging in her home and inspiring all of her professional work.

You can read more about Ms. Huckaby in features written by the Dallas Morning News and D Magazine as well as her personal website: http://letitiahuckaby.com

At DTS, we want to help take the arts out of their compartmentalized siloes by encouraging theologians to integrate the arts into daily life—knowing and loving God and others through our five senses. We also seek to equip artists to become better theologians who know, love, and reflect the triune God.

For times and details about DTS Arts Week 2015: http://www.dts.edu/artsweek

About the Contributors

Sandra L. Glahn

In addition to teaching on-campus classes, Dr. Glahn teaches immersive courses in Italy and Great Britain, as well as immersive courses in writing and in worship. Dr. Glahn is a multi-published author of both fiction and non-fiction, a journalist, and a speaker who advocates for thinking that transforms, especially on topics relating to art, gender, sexual intimacy in marriage, and first-century backgrounds as they relate to gender. Dr. Glahn’s more than twenty books reveal her interests in bioethics, sexuality, and biblical women. She has also written eleven Bible studies in the Coffee Cup Bible Study series. A regular blogger at Engage, bible.org’s site for women in Christian leadership, she is the owner of Aspire Productions, and served as editor-in-chief for Kindred Spirit from 1999 to 2016. She and her husband have one adult daughter.