Thankful for Five

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I’m not a regular contributor anymore, but I still love the blog and d****t, I paid for the lifetime membership, so here I am, storming back into the lineup to post my annual Thankful for Five.

(Previous years: 2013, 2104, 2015.)

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Good stuff has come to my attention this year. Here’s five of said stuff.

 

Brittany Long Olsen’s Dendo is a thrilling day-by-day recounting of her mission. But thrilling not because of, I don’t know, sustained action sequences and improbable plot twists, but because she has captured the day-to-day drag that makes up the most exciting eighteen (or twenty-four) months in a young Mormon’s life.

And the thrills go on.

 

I don’t live in Utah so these next couple are largely theoretical, but I love all I hear about Writ & Vision—what goes up in their galleries, the discussions of literature they host, you name it.

Right now Utahns can go check out their Small Paintings show. I would.

 

The BYU library’s Comics and Mormons show, curated by Trevor Alvord, may have been small, but it looks awesome. No one photo can give it justice.

BYU has been growing its comics collection like crazy. Trevor’s been buying books and original art and even commissioning artists to create new art for the collection. (He gave a fascinating presentation on these at the AML conference in Hawaii and later with me at San Diego Comic-Con International.)

Exciting times, in Mormon comics.

 

The Bay Area hasn’t been sloppy in terms of Mormon arts-related events either. The Bay Area Mormon Studies Council has regular lectures and such. One of my favorites this year was about the in-progress film Art & Belief about Mormon painters Trevor Southey, Neil Hadlock, Dennis Smith, and Gary Ernest Smith—as well as their wives and kids and mad utopian dream.

The film in its unfinished state shows great promise, and the story told—stories, really, each participant takes a different path—will certainly resonate when presented to audiences.

 

While my original intent was to share here an example of beauty that took years to create, instead I want to celebrate our ability to make something beautiful in a short period of time and share it with others.

The obvious choice is Annie Poon’s recent Instagram entries inspired by scriptures. She’s been capturing the emotional zeitgeist and I’m grateful for her voice.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you for making beautiful, meaningful, wonderful things.