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    • Making Sense of Dakota
    • Imagining Icons of the Prairie
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    • Contributions from Religion 110
    • Students Of Sheila’s Studio
    • Theological and Teaching Assistant for Religion 110 – Lauren Sim

what is seeing dakota?

In this installation, we bring together the artistic process and works of a visual artist with the reflections of a theologian to cultivate imaginative and possibly transformative ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us. We intertwine not only two differ-ent professional practices of art and theology but also our two different ways of seeing Dakota. Our hope is that you who are seeing this installation will see Dakota in a new manner. We invite people to look with intention, to ponder the images and words, and to gather insight from the art and words.

selected works

Cattle: Icons

Ecclesiastes 3:18 “I also thought, where human beings are concerned, God tests them to show them that they are but animals 19 because human beings and animals share the same fate. One dies just like the other—both have the same life-breath. Humans are no better off than animals because everything is pointless. 20 All go…

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Perichoresis: A Choreography of Friendship

When they run and play, the three dogs know exactly how to move in a synchronized dance of delight. Brindle, a gray Standard Poodle, leaps with a lightness to her being as she bounds across the field. As the youngest of the dogs, she can outrun and outplay both of her senior male dog friends….

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Song Of The Open Road

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you . . .”   from the Book of Job “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven . ….

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Veneration of Smell: St. Christina (1150-1224) The Astonishing and Byron the Doodle

I’m relieved that St. Christina the Astonishing isn’t officially venerated as a saint by the current Roman Catholic Church. While she has inspired many Christians by the austere practices of her faith, I believe her sense of smell is what left her out of the official canon of saints. At an early age her parents…

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WATCH YOUR STEP

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters. “Watch your step!” Sheila’s warning coincides with my fall off the ladder, landing on my knees. She had told me not to come down the…

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The Wedding at Can(ine)

Ecclesiastes: “I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. . . So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the…

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