By Kelline Linton, Staff Writer
A couple entwined arms under the shade of soft-yellowed stone and smiled for the camera, while a small girl climbed playfully around a bubbling baptismal pool, away from her mother’s watching eyes. Across the path, a group of visiting parents gazed up at the metal ladder with angels and snapped
their photos.
They all had congregated at the Jacob’s Dream sculpture to appreciate the art and its surrounding meditative park.
“People are surprised that one sculpture on campus has made such a significant impact,” said Jack Maxwell, the sculpture’s creator and chair of the Department of Art and Design.
Jacob’s Dream has reminded people about the power of the arts to move and affect deeply, Maxwell said.
“Art is a way for ACU to embrace the community,” he said.
The different fine art departments around campus also have recognized this artistic influence in a Christian setting and are taking steps to promote a stronger focus on the arts through the proposal of a new center, the integration of arts in interdisciplinary classes and the increased availability of art-influenced programs and works.
Al Haley, associate professor of English and writer-in residence, sees art and Christianity as existing together in a fundamental relationship.
“Art is another form of being missional; it affects people,” Haley said.
The fine art departments have focused on this vocational relationship, using it as the basis for a recently proposed center for the arts.
-Pulling the arts together-
The Vision Leadership Team, a group established to help implement the 21st Century Vision, soon will recommend several spending priorities to Dr. Royce Money, president of the university, and to the trustees. More than 10 proposals were submitted by different committees to the team, including a proposal for a Center for the Christians and the Arts.
This center would involve the departments of English, Bible, art, music and theatre. It is an interdisciplinary project whose two-fold mission would be to “disseminate the gift of art to others on campus, in the region, in the nation and eventually throughout the world and to train, encourage and strengthen Christians in the arts,” according to the committee’s proposal.
The proposal argues that “placing artists in artificially separate realms overlooks the great thing they have in common – the effort all of them make to give creative expression to the human condition.
For artists to have the most impact, it makes sense for them to cross disciplinary lines and to join forces.”
The departments have attempted to work in an interdisciplinary way but often find themselves isolated in their own areas, working independently, Maxwell said.
Haley, chair of the committee that wrote the proposal, views a rapport among the departments as mirroring the bond among Christians.
“It would be Christ-like, a parts of the body vision, to put all the arts together,” said Haley. “We would work together in ways we’ve never had.”
The goal of the committee was to draw on the strengths of the individual departments and pull them all together to make the center a vibrant part of the campus, said Dr. Gregory Straughn, chair of the Department of Music and assistant professor of music.
“The arts have always worked together, but it makes sense to be more intentional about it,” he said.
The proposal’s main principle was to create a program so unique that it would draw gifted students to ACU and reflect well on the university, said Dr. Chris Willerton, director of the Honors Program and professor of English and honors studies.
The center would exemplify the national reach that ACU strives to achieve, he said. It also would be a base and support system that focused on Christians who specialize in art.
“It is mission appropriate because the arts have enormous influence; it’s important that Christians should be some of the best practitioners in such a field,” Willerton said.
The center would sponsor conferences, pool departmental resources, coordinate events and invite well-known speakers from around the nation.
“Think of the mentoring and workshops that could take place,” Willerton said.
The center also would sponsor events like Def Poetry Jam and FilmFest.
“We want to bring things to campus that would make people think about art,” Haley said.
It would be a first-rate facility that would look artistic and depict class, Willerton said.
“I picture texture on the walls and statues in the corner, a place where people breathe artistic effort,” he said.
The center not only would build interest in the arts but would allow people to see how things are connected.
“It would change the perception of ACU into one where we are seen as people, first of all, who take the arts very seriously, and secondly, that we’re even showing leadership and doing more with the arts than other Christian universities,” Haley said.
The idea for such a center has been in the works for about 10 years, but the reasons behind its more immediate need is the heightened interest that has been recently shown for the arts, the level of talent exhibited in those fine art departments and the marked presence of several people who are at their prime creatively in those departments, Willerton said.
“Supporters for the proposal believe this is the right time to do a multi-disciplinary program, but we also want to make a mark on the 21st century,” he said.
“It’s not a building; it’s a concept,” Hailey said. “It’s a real selling point; it’s a package of good faculty, personal attention and art on a daily basis.”
The proposal of a center specifically directed at Christians and the arts has created excitement among the various departments.
“I can’t imagine the impact the center would have at ACU, but it would be a fantastic sight,” Maxwell said.
This idea of an interdisciplinary center focused on incorporating many forms of art reflects a two-year-old class that uses the same concept. Honors Seminar in the Arts, developed by Joe Stephenson, associate professor of English, is a freshmen Honors class, which was designed as a fine arts course for non-fine art majors.
The class is hands-on and involves theatre, opera, ballet, music and literature.
“It would not surprise me that as the future curriculum’s interdisciplinary core took shape that more teachers wouldn’t try this format,” Willerton said.
This Honors seminar class is similar to a new course, Honors Cornerstone Class, that will be offered in the fall – a course that focuses on an integration of cross-disciplinary studies.
-Taking the place of U100-
The Honors Cornerstone Class will be a fall-only course that starts next year as a pilot for a larger project.
The faculty voted last year to reform the university’s core curriculum. Part of the package it approved was a three-hour cornerstone course for every major and every student, not just honors students.
The Honors Program will test the course for two years before the class will be applied across the board and eventually replace the University Seminar class.
“In three years that is probably going to happen all over the university,” Willerton said. The class will meet all the U100 requirements, such as discussing school history and learning time management.
“The conviction behind this is that it is difficult to talk about study habits out of context, and U100 is a notoriously unpopular course because it starts in midair,” Willerton said.
All of the cornerstone classes will use two standard textbooks, but each professor will customize the rest of the course.
The arrangement the faculty approved was that each professor would control about 60 percent of the course based on their individual expertise, but the other 40 percent would be standard for all students, Willerton said.
“A cornerstone class for a physics major ought to be different from a cornerstone class for a journalism major,” he said.
Kristina Campos-Wallace, chair of the committee that wrote the cornerstone curriculum, sees the similarities and differences built into the format as essential to the learning process.
“We want our students to have a common experience but still get something different out of the class,” said Wallace, assistant professor of communications and Honors.
The similar material shared by the classes will allow seminars and Chapel forums among classes, Willerton said.
The Honors faculty is optimistic about these first cornerstone classes because they look interesting, he said.
“Students will talk to their friends back home about what a cool class this is, how this is not high school anymore,” Willerton said. “The class will make students feel like university students and equip them for cross-disciplinary thinking.”
“It is not a waste of an hour,” Wallace said.
When the new requirements are phased into the curriculum entirely, every student will take a cornerstone class and three interdisciplinary core classes and complete a Capstone, an independent project or internship within the department of the student’s major.
The new cornerstone course will help facilitate a steadily progressing incorporation of the fine arts throughout the changing curriculum.
“The future of the arts at ACU could really get a boost from the interdisciplinary core requirements,” Willerton said.
-Envisioning an artistic future-
The Center for Christians and the Arts would affect the future of the fine art departments in significant ways.
The music department would want to participate in music competitions that integrate other forms of art within the perimeters of the new center, Straughn said.
“I want people to think of ACU as a place where not only the arts are vibrant and people see tons of concerts, plays, art showings and poetry readings, but that the arts are just part of the ethos of the campus where everyone is involved,” Straughn said.
It’s incumbent for universities to take a lead in supporting the arts because it’s an essential part of the Christian philosophy, he said.
“The center is an idea that would make us distinct; there are other programs that connect art and faith in very meaningful ways, but there aren’t any regional programs that do that,” Straughn said.
The art department also would want to use the center as a means of launching several projects, said Maxwell.
“Right now we have the strongest, largest and most talented faculty we have ever had,” he said. “We are on the edge of doing some really great things.”
One of the art department’s long-term goals would be to invest in a museum on campus that exhibited a permanent collection. ACU has world-class art that some people have never seen because the campus lacks a secure place to showcase it.
“The arts are well respected locally and regionally, but we need to let people know about our Christian arts nationally,” Maxwell said.
The art department also wants to increase the sculpture presence on the campus. The beautiful walking trail around the university is ideal for showing sculpture and the arts, Maxwell said.
“My vision is that because of the campus’ proximity to Interstate 20, people will just stop and spend an hour walking the trail and looking at art,” he said.
The setting can complement a work of art, Maxwell said. Jacob’s Dream is a key example of this idea; its beauty, symbolism and location have already drawn crowds of admirers. It represents an art that communicates on another level and teaches equally as well; art is a form of instruction, Maxwell said.
“Education is not just about facts and books,” he said. “It should change people and affect them in ways that make them see the world differently, like a good painting.”
