Meet the Presenters

Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, Kent briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and researched child development at the U of M. He’s been married for fifty years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves. Krueger writes a mystery series and has also penned four standalone novels. His work has received over a dozen awards and his books have frequently appeared on New York Times bestseller lists.

Dale served as professor of art at Bethel University from 1970 to 2012. He completed a Master of Fine Arts in painting at Michigan State University studying with Angelo Ippolito. For the next 40-some years, he combined teaching, travel, and the development of his own considerable creative gifts. He designed traveling art courses to the Dominican Republic. In Italy, he bicycled in the countryside around Florence and local fishing villages, staying in Catholic convents while teaching painting. For 18 years, he taught painting during the summers at the Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth at Macalester College, St. Paul. Johnson’s own paintings are represented in numerous museum, corporate, and private collections.

Emily Anderson is an impressionist landscape painter who works from her cozy studio in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota. Always curious, she loves learning about biology, the interplay between place and emotion, and the innate desire within us to seek beauty and adventure. Emily paints the forests and bodies of water of the northern Midwest, playing with color and shape to provide a bright, cheerful perspective of the natural beauty of our sacred spaces. Emily uses unexpected colors to represent these complex landscapes, surprising the viewer with a splash of vibrancy that is often not noticed until the individual components of the painting are each taken in fully, and hopes that you can find a little bit of the unexpected to fall in love with.

Sarah Elizabeth Riche is a multimedia artist from The Bluegrass. She is fascinated with pastoral subjects, and seeks to convey their beauty, whimsy, and humor through her paintings and drawings. Her affection to create stems from her fondness of God’s creative works and gratitude for who He is and all He has done. She considers her life full of grace and grit, in just the right amounts, and hopes you find great joy in the giving and receiving of her art.

Peter has been singing and songwriting full-time for over 20 years, performing in venues across the US and beyond. He writes songs for a small planet–songs about interconnectedness and the human journey–songs about life on earth and the mysterious and wondrous fact of our existence. He also writes songs about dress hats, pumpkins and pajamas, and other important stuff. His work has been included in song books, church hymnals, and folk radio playlists across the country. He is the recipient of fellowships from both the McKnight and the Bush foundations. Peter has eleven albums to his credit, and has sold over 100,000 of them. He lives in Stillwater, Minnesota with his wife and two daughters.