The Seminary Explores

Gerald Christianson celebrates his 40th year as a host of the “Seminary Explores” with this interview of Amanda Garner. She maintains that literacy is not only a scandal, it’s an epidemic. About 800 million persons world-wide and 93 million Americans are functionally illiterate; that is, they read below a fourth-grade level, leading to job loss, poverty, unproductivity. With a limited budget, she depends on trained volunteers who can relate to persons and work with their needs.

Artists Chantelle Dinkel and Tanya Ortega talk with Katy Giebenhain from Seminary Ridge Review about the expanding role of arts in the national parks, current projects, and the Gettysburg residency experience. Dinkel is a Swiss-Canadian representational painter trained in Italy at The Florence Academy of Art. Ortega is a photographer and sculptor with a background in forestry, geology and environmental sciences. She is the Founder of the National Parks Arts Foundation.

Nick Collier, the current Gettysburg National Military Park Artist-in-Residence, speaks with Katy Giebenhain about sculpture, a contemporary twist on an Afghan Box Camera and what it is like to be a veteran spending a month on the iconic Battlefield outside of tourist season.