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Historically, many of us would associate religious art with the Middle Ages and the Age of Enlightenment. Recently, however, a new style of religious art is becoming more popular in our 21st century culture. In the Sixth Annual Vermont Conference on Christianity and the Arts on Saturday, April 26, five artists, one of them a vocalist who later performed at the College, came to speak at the United Methodist Church of Middlebury to share the major inspirations behind their work along with the impact that their art has had on the world.
The first speaker was Sandra Bowden, a painter who has had much of her artwork displayed in numerous museums such as the Vatican Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City and the Haifa Museum. As a passionate collector, Bowden presented many famous innovative contemporary religious artworks at the conference that she has found inspiring when creating her work. Many of the paintings were subtle in conveying spiritual meaning, but after intensively studying these works, Bowden said she has been able to see the deeper meaning beneath the colorful oil paints.
“It is important for artists in the 21st century to communicate to the people in the post-literature era with visual art,” ” said Bowden.
The next speaker, Elizabeth Ehmann, was also a painter and grew up in Vermont, though she later moved to New York City to pursue her career. Upon returning to her hometown for this conference, Ehmann had been excited to show off the new paintings she created. Some were portraits with colorful backgrounds, while others were rich, detailed, spirited paintings of natural landscapes with high mountains, green trees and sparkling blue rivers.
“From choosing the subject to work with to what I see in the subject, my spirituality has impacted much of my art,” said Ehmann. “I am able to see the inner beauty in the people that I collaborate with and that is reflected in my portraitures and paintings.”

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I  love nature’s wildness almost more than anything; its ability to restore me is incomparable. Last May, I found deep nurturing in an unexpected place: Death Valley National Park. During a five-day press trip, I explored its stunning water-colored landscapes on foot, horseback, and horse-powered van. Drinking in its profound quiet, I easily downloaded my 21st-century stress. The valley’s extreme geography, weather, history, and food made any notion that the desert is boring vanish like a mirage.
The desert got its name in 1849, when pioneers taking a shortcut to California gold country (sans map) nearly starved when they couldn’t find a viable route out of the valley. Forced to burn their wagons to cook their oxen, they departed on foot. They called the place Death Valley and the moniker stuck.
Gold was not plentiful here, but short-lived mining encampments have left several ghost towns. Borax, mined in the 1880s, brought some wealth but also displaced the Timbisha Shoshone tribe who had lived here for 2,000 years. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act into law, which returned nearly eight million acres in California and Nevada to the tribe. The act also acknowledged the tribe’s coexistence on the same land as the Death Valley National Park Service and mandated a partnership for cooperative policies on land issues and uses.

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