Merry Christmas! I hope this note finds you warm and happy this holiday season. It has been quite a year for Agile Arts and the Ratliff family. We feel very blessed to have the opportunity to tell some previously untold stories, and learn a few new ones as well. Pilgrims on the Silk Road was [...]

A common question for people who have read the book or have seen the documentary is “What happened to the Mennonites who were deported from Khiva in 1935?” I devote a section of Pilgrims on the Silk Road to the issue. There are also a number of sources that outline the dramatic end to Ak [...]

This week, I’ve been working on finishing portrait drawings for clients who need them before Christmas. Here is the wedding portrait of a newly married couple. This one is obviously from a photo taken at the ceremony. Working from photos creates some unique challenges. For example, the only directional light in this beautiful, professional photo [...]

Google just released a new tool called Ngram that compiles keywords from their vast library of scanned books. It charts these keywords from the 16th century to 2008. This makes Ngram a wonderful tool for seeing the rise and fall of subjects and ideas over a period of time. For example, you can see that [...]

I recently came across an article from the Uzbek Academy of the Arts magazine about the first Uzbek photographer, and his Mennonite mentor. There are some great photos in the article, and it discusses a bit about Divanov’s relationship with Wilhelm Penner, the Mennonite teacher at Ak Metchet. Check out Through the Desert Goes Our Journey [...]

I leave in a few hours to head back across the Pond. Here are a few thoughts on a productive trip to AP’s HQ and the University of Westminster conference. On Friday, I went straight from the red-eye flight into AP’s offices, had some good meetings with the archive folks, and got invited to the [...]