large and lively group packed the opening of the Lemonade Art Gallery at the FGC Gathering this past summer. The same thing has happened each of the three years the Gallery has taken form since 1998.

Looking over these crowds, I couldn't help thinking that, for most of the 350 years of Quaker history, all of us could-and likely would-have been disowned for being there.

George Fox put this anti-art attitude as plainly as any, in one of his fiery public epistles, in which he denounced:

All ye Poets, Jesters, rhimers, makers of Verses and Ballads, who bend your wits to please novelties, light minds, who delights in jests and toyes, more than in the simple naked truth which you should be united to, you are for the undoing of many poor souls, it is your work to tickle up the ears of people with your jests and toyes; this proceeds from a wrong heart where dwells the lust, and feeds the wrong heart and mind and wits, which brings them to the grave and dust, and there buries the minds and clogs the nature, which is a shame to all that be in the modesty and pure sincerity & truth and cleaness of mind. . . .

There is lots more like this in the first two centuries of Quaker writing, for those who can bear to look.

Yes, times have changed among Friends; but it was only in 1933 that Rufus Jones could write that,

We look back with mild pity on the generations of Haverford students who were deprived of the joy of music and art. The strong anti-aesthetic bias in the minds of the Quaker founders and the early managers was, I think, an unmitigated disaster.

This "strong anti-aesthetic bias" may have been largely overcome for us as individuals. But Quakers are still somewhat uncertain about how to relate art to the life of our faith community. Institutionally we remain largely stuck, in the words of Ben Norris-FGC stalwart and himself a distinguished painter-at the point of figuring out how to go "beyond uneasy tolerance" of the arts.

Types & Shadows is published quarterly by the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts PO Box 5865 Philadelphia, PA 19102 Email: fqa@quaker.org Website: http://www.quaker.org/fqa Chuck Fager, Clerk Esther Murer, Assistant Clerk Margo Gulati, Recording Clerk Doris Pulone, Treasurer Elke Muller, Records Manager Minnie Jane, Founder and Emeritus Clerk Subscriptions are available through membership in the FQA (to subscribe see address information above).

This gap, this point of uncertainty, may be where the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts (FQA) can play its most useful role, as a facilitator, support network, and general cheerleader. FQA began in the early 1990s when a handful of Friends in and around Trenton (New Jersey) Meeting gathered to support each other in their art work, and to help put on some joint projects. They mounted several exhibits and put on a few plays. After several years of mostly local efforts, FQA decided, in early 1997, to broaden its horizons and see if it could serve Friends with artistic concerns and involvements on a wider scale.

To this end, FQA has established a website (www.quaker.org/fqa); sends out its quarterly newsletter, Types and Shadows, to a growing international audience; and published a collection of recent Quaker writing, The Best of Friends, Vol. 1. We'd like to hear from Friends everywhere who are involved in artistic work. Perhaps most ambitiously, FQA set out in 1998 to create an art gallery at the FGC Gathering in River Falls, Wisconsin.

There had been an art exhibit at a Gathering in the 1970s, but no regular outlet for Friends' creativity in fields other than music. While FGC staff were supportive of the idea, the facilities at River Falls turned out to be a major challenge and obstacle to the effort: The promised gallery space was pre-empted by the drama department at the last minute, and the proffered alternative was a room filled with trash, half torn up for renovations, with no lights, air conditioning, or ventilation.

After some consternation, the FQA folks rallied and in about 24 hours turned this "lemon" of a space into the highly successful Lemonade Gallery. Their adventure, chronicled with photos on our web site, has become something of a founding myth, which gives us pride and determination each year as the effort is renewed.

It's gotten much easier, though. FGC has made the Gallery a part of the Gathering program, and the continuing warm reception from attenders shows that Friends want to see the results of ongoing efforts to explore and express our spirituality in visible form.

Thus FGC has taken a very welcome, pioneering step toward making the arts part of its corporate Quaker life. Perhaps this can be a model for other Friends groups. This past summer FQA learned of exhibits being mounted at Pacific and North Carolina Conservative Yearly Meetings, and we are hopeful such efforts can become regular events. We have heard from and about numerous monthly meetings where Friends gather locally to share and support their artistic work, and we'd like to hear from more. Write to us!

As the visibility of art among Friends increases, my own hope is that the engagement of our tradition with our creative efforts will become explicit and ongoing. There were, after all, some good reasons for early Friends opposition to the arts in their time, and some of their critique is still relevant today. Moreover, values like simplicity, proportion, and truth-telling are not really anti-aesthetic at all; rather, I believe they can shape a distinctive Quaker sensibility, something which can be discerned in the work of such varied artists as Whittier and Whitman in poetry, Edward Hicks in painting, James Turrell in his light works, and Sylvia Shaw Judson in sculpture. We have much to learn from study and discussion of these and others' work.

My hope is that the Society of Friends will not only welcome the arts as a vehicle of the spirit, but also nurture their manifold expressions as an intentional part of our continuing corporate efforts to mind the Light and answer that of God in all.

Chuck Fager is a writer who lives in central Pennsylvania. He is clerk of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts, and has been curator of the Lemonade Art Gallery.