BRIGHT SPARK: The Reconciliation of Trevor Southey

This program was made possible in part by the Diane and Sam Stewart Family Foundation, the Lawrence T. & Janet T. Dee Foundation, and more than 80 individual donors.

A complete list of funders is available at brightsparkfilm.com.

To learn more about the artists in Bright Spark, see behind the scenes footage, extended and theatrical cuts, purchase the soundtrack and more, visit brightsparkfilm.com.

(gentle ethereal music) - [Trevor] One of the shocks to me when I came to America is I went to the New York World's Fair, and I remember saving the church's pavilion 'till last.

One of the few before then was Catholic pavilion, and there was Michelangelo's "Pieta" with Mary in marble, Mary holding the dead Jesus.

And talk about greatness.

That thing sears your soul.

(gentle ethereal music) And then I went to the Mormon pavilion and there were all these large illustrations of Joseph Smith and the Grove and things like that.

And they were just passive.

They didn't have any sense of courage, and certainly no pathos.

To me, there was a willful ignorance in this whole thing that they couldn't see the mediocrity that they were creating.

My whole dream was Zion would have the kind of appeal that the Vatican would have and that people would come from all over the world to see the beauty that involved mystery, and power, and passion and pathos.

It would be a place where the whole human experience could be expressed.

It would be a place where people would weep in corners 'cause they were so deeply touched by the sheer wonder of this place.

I became really, really excited about my calling, if you like, to make my art the servant of the Lord through the church.

(gentle ethereal music) (gentle music) - [Nathan] A few years ago as my daughter was approaching her eighth birthday, I painted a self-portrait I called "Self Doubt."

I was thinking about Caravaggio's 17th century painting of doubting Thomas.

The resurrected Jesus pushes Thomas' finger into the wound in his own side with visceral force in an attempt to erase all the doubt.

My painting is set in an art studio.

Canvases lean against the wall, my palette and brushes on a table behind me, and an empty easel to my left as I explore the wound in my own side, a collision of artistic and religious imagery.

(gentle music) My daughter was about to be baptized into the Mormon church, a rite of passage for Mormon children.

One that I had participated in when I was eight years old, as had in fact my family for generations.

And yet her impending baptism intensified strong feelings of religious doubt in me.

My wife and I worried about what lessons our daughter might take from the church and its strong conservative culture, values that clashed with our own.

I was used to this tension.

As an artist I'd always been a bit of a misfit in the church.

My art often explored ideas and imagery outside the cultural norms of my religious community.

Still, my faith was a key part of my identity so I lived with the tension.

(gentle music) But now it was no longer just about me.

About that time, Trevor Southey, was installing a major retrospective of his work at the Utah Museum of Fine Art.

I had known Trevor since I was a child, he being an old college friend of my parents, and so I was aware of his show and attended a panel discussion at the museum on opening night.

The panel discussed something called the Art and Belief movement that Trevor had helped found in the 1960s.

Four key members of that movement were on stage.

Neil Hadlock, Gary Smith, Dennis Smith and of course Trevor Southey.

As I listened to the discussion, I realized that for 50 years these guys had been asking the same kinds of questions about art and religion that I was grappling with.

I was blown away.

So I wanted to talk to each of them.

I want to know how they had reconciled this conflict between their art and their faith, and thought, well, what better way to do that than, or excuse to do that than to make a documentary.

(group chattering indistinctly) (bright music) One of the first things I decided to do was to recreate the kind of dinner and discussion this group had gathered around years before in their heyday so I could film them talking about the movement they founded.

We met in Gary Smith's art studio.

And even though it had been years since they had all been together like this, there was obviously a strong bond between all of the artists and their wives.

- Well, this is a little bit like- - Alpine days.

- It sure is.

- The days in Alpine.

- It is.

- One thing that we always had in Alpine was amazing food.

- We had amazing discussions that went into the middle of the night.

- Mm-hm!

It was that synergy.

We all did different things but we just couldn't stay away from each other.

And I read about movements in art and we were so lucky.

I just feel like I was just so damn lucky to meet all you guys.

- And for me, it's particularly amazing 'cause coming all the way from overseas to go to BYU and bumping into all you guys.

- [Nathan] Trevor Southey grew up a sickly child in the African British colony of Rhodesia in what is now the country of Zimbabwe.

He spent much of his childhood bedridden during which time he developed an interest in drawing.

- I was born in Africa and converted to the LDS church when I was 20, when I was at art school in Durban in South Africa.

(bright music) I love the church's sense of community.

I mean, I just loved going to church.

I'll never forget going to the chapel the first time on my little Lambretta scooter and almost scooting away again 'cause there was this group sitting on the steps.

But I walked up this path and these people opened up like an embrace and then they closed around me this wonderful, warm friendliness, and I was trapped.

(bright music) - [Nathan] Soon after Trevor joined the church, he decided to leave South Africa and journey to the heart of his new religion in the American West, a place sometimes referred to affectionately among Mormons as Zion.

There he would enroll in Brigham Young University to continue his education.

Before he arrived in Utah, however, Trevor embarked on a sort of art pilgrimage to Italy and the Vatican.

- And I'd gone to Italy and so blown away by the Vatican and all the art, the Michelangelo and so on and so forth, that it was embedded in me even before I went there then after that, it was really embedded in me.

So when I arrived in Zion, the first thing I did was go church office building and tell 'em I wanted to serve the church.

And they said, "All right, we want you to do a First Vision."

- [Nathan] Okay, let's stop here for a second.

If you're not familiar with Mormonism, there are a few things you should know.

First, the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in upstate York in the 1820s and '30s.

Religious revivalism was sweeping the United States at the time.

Joseph Smith tells his story of being a young 14-year-old boy right in the middle of all of this religious fervor.

Confused about which church to join, he went into a grove of trees near his home and he prayed to God for clarity.

He recounts that he had a vision, what Mormons now call the First Vision, in which God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him not to join any of the churches, and that the fullness of the gospel would be revealed to him later.

This event marks the beginning of Mormonism, and it's been depicted in dozens, if not hundreds of paintings.

Okay, back to Trevor.

- So I went to them and they said, "All right, we want you to do a First Vision and then come back and visit us."

So I came, went to BYU and very dutifully did the First Vision.

And they said, "Now go back and do it again.

But we want you to know historically how many buttons there would've been on his shirt," and I knew I was in trouble.

Then I remember talking to Dennis in the hallway out the sculpture lab, and we got, our knickers in a bother with those things.

- It all became so easy to me that what they wanted was illustration.

What I wanted was art, 'cause illustration answers questions, and art asks questions.

(upbeat music) - [Nathan] Like universities all across the country, Brigham Young University was bursting at the seams with new baby boomer students in the mid '60s.

There seemed to be a sense of possibility everywhere.

In the art department, the students found the perfect place to experiment and dream.

- They had some studios on campus.

It was in the Fine Arts Center in the old, down underneath the recital hall.

(upbeat music) - Everybody referred to it as The Cave.

And that was where we all had our own little nests in there.

That's where all the talking started, you know?

When you have a studio and you hang out, you work late at night, you sit and talk.

- For us, that was a very, very fertile environment fertile environment for thinking and for expanding our ideas of how to express what we felt about the world.

- We were all interested in excellence.

We were going for excellence.

And not just excellence, but high art.

- [Nathan] Even as the ambitious young artists of the Art and Belief group were finding some success in the late '60s and early '70s, there were seeds of conflict germinating.

The church they'd hoped to serve was growing at a terrific rate across the world.

And while the leaders of the church known as the general authorities, were thinking about how to communicate their message to their growing flock, they weren't really looking to push the aesthetic boundaries of fine art to do it.

In fact, they were involved in a process of centralizing and standardizing all of their communications.

They were interested not in high art, but in PR and message control.

And there were other more personal conflicts starting to emerge as well.

- When I was 19, the tradition was in my country, the gentleman would go out into the garden and fertilize it, urinate together.

And I said, "Dad, I've gotta tell you something."

And I'll never forget because our garden overlooked this great valley, and the African fires would flicker away at the bottom of the valley all the stars 'cause African skies were so clear.

(gentle music) And he said, "Yeah, what is it?"

And I said, "I think I'm homosexual."

He just said, "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that.

I knew several chaps in the army who were that way."

He'd just got back from the war a decade before.

And that was it.

(upbeat music) - I met Trevor when I was working on a master's degree in educational psychology when Trevor was just finishing his Bachelor of Fine Arts.

- One of the main reasons I'd come to America was not to get a degree so much, 'cause I already had diplomas, but so much as to find a wife.

- We had a very interesting short courtship, decided right away we wanted to get married.

- And again, me being the bright spark, we were married two and a half months after our first date.

We didn't pause for a moment.

The wedding was hysterical.

We had no money.

And I insisted we do everything including the wedding cake, which collapsed.

So there's little details like that.

But we were really good pals very quickly, - I had a crafts class with Trevor.

And (laughs) he'd met Elaine.

And he was still in limbo and he'd gotten some advice from a general authority that once he was married and had a continuous relationship with a woman, that all that'd go away.

- I was a product of Shakespeare, Hollywood movies, romantic novels.

I was gonna marry and go on and settle down and have children by gosh or be damned, you know?

And so my sexuality was this constant conflict because this is what I was going to be and this was not gonna ruin what I was going to be.

So that when I went to BYU and they gave me those instructions, I gritted my teeth, met this woman who would become my wife.

Two and a half months later we married even though three times I broke down crying because she wanted to hold my hand.

And I finally told her what was going on.

And basically between the two of us, we agreed that the Lord and the shrinks would make it work.

- I did know that he had had experiences before, but that was before he joined the church.

And he let me know that he was committed to the church, and he was committed to me and he wanted a family.

And so that was in the past, and I trusted him.

And it was in the past.

We had a good marriage for many years.

- [Nathan] As members of the group graduated, they began to leave Utah.

Gary was drafted into the army for the Vietnam War.

Dennis took his family to Denmark for a year to continue his studies.

Neil went to grad school in Arizona.

And Trevor and Elaine spent a year in Africa soon after they were married.

- And our plan was to stay indefinitely, but the fervor that had been built up around the Art and Belief group, it very quickly drew us back.

- [Nathan] Dennis and Valois were returning from Denmark, back to the small Utah town they had grown up in.

- Alpine was a small Mormon farming village, tucked up in the corner of Utah Valley against mountains on two sides and then hills that curl around.

It's almost like you're nestled in the arms of the geography.

(gentle music) - My good old pal, Dennis Smith, was raised in Alpine in Utah, and he said, "Come to Alpine," so I went to Alpine.

And I couldn't see anything that I really liked.

And then he showed me this house, scruffy looking little thing, with cinder block and old, I guess five gallon drums hammered down to make the roof.

And it was very humble, and a stream running through it.

And these beautiful trees, I thought, "You know, this could be it."

- [Nathan] Soon Gary and Neil relocated their families back into the area as well.

As they all settled into their new homes, they wasted no time setting up studios and getting to work.

- I went to the bank and borrowed $5,000 to build my studio.

We'd do waxes in the morning and dip about noon and then pour and grind and put 'em together.

It was heaven.

I mean, it was the best life could ever get.

Making art.

Geez, I'm making art.

So fabulous.

- [Nathan] Each of these artists had growing families who needed to be fed.

In order to support their vision of building the ideal artistic life, they set about making themselves as self-sufficient as possible.

- And so we had this little farm there together and grew this huge garden and, you know, kind of had a little communal thing going on there for a while.

- All of us were going through the same financial struggles.

I mean, art was, who makes a living at art?

- I was working with a Tivoli Gallery in Salt Lake.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - And they had sold a painting, and I don't know, they sold something to Neil something.

Anyway, we sent Karen and Judy up to collect.

(Neil laughing) - So Karen and I decided we're gonna go to Salt Lake and talk to these guys and tell 'em we have got to get paid.

- And they made such a scene in their gallery that was full of people.

This one guy, Grayden, called me and he says, "Pard, if we owe you money, never send your wives again."

(both laughing) But they came home with the checks.

- You bet they did.

- You bet they did.

- [Nathan] As Trevor, Dennis, Gary and Neil, all continued to follow their artistic dreams, Alpine developed a reputation as an exciting new art scene that drew in other creative Mormons.

Each month they held formal meetings and all sorts of people showed up, poets, musicians, artists of all stripes.

This growing scene retained much of the flavor of the old Art and Belief group, but in this new location came to be known as the North Mountain Cooperative.

- So it carried on.

It kind of evolved when people came and some stayed and some went.

But in Alpine was a pretty vigorous, enthusiastic continuation of the concept.

- Well, the more they talked, the bigger the vision got.

And they envisioned having an art center, and seminars and making an influence on the church, influencing the way the church uses art in teaching the gospel.

- [Nathan] And one by one they did begin to do work for the LDS Church.

- During that period of time, I did something like 65 different commissions for the church.

A lot of 'em were church history paintings and illustrations for The Ensign and all that.

So they became a pretty big part of my clientele.

And I didn't make much, you know, at it, (laughs) but it kept me going.

- So it is almost a business relationships, you know?

I certainly didn't feel embraced.

No, I felt people like me and the Art and Belief group were seen as, it made them nervous.

Who are these strange people with these strange ideas?

- Well, we were never really, even though we had a vision of somehow doing something that was acceptable, we never really were accepted as far as, we were in some ways, but we usually it was by altering your course just a bit in favor of the church.

- I think when we think of that whole era, we all aspired toward contemporary significance.

And that is a thing that we struggled with.

- [Neil] Sure.

- Through the early part of our careers was how do I get my stuff accepted by the general authorities in the church and at the same time in the Museum of Modern Art.

- [Neil] Yeah.

- And I mean that's a broad bridge to try to stretch across.

- Creative people have trouble with conformity.

And I think that we all have to find our place in that.

And some of us find it one way and some find it another way.

- The Mormon Art Festival they have every year came out of us.

- That's right.

- Mm-hm!

- You know, so we were accepted in a way.

But I was so determined that when I came to Zion, I was gonna do the right thing, the world would turn to Zion to look at art.

- Trevor really wasn't bound by the kind of tradition that most of us grow up with.

And you don't think about questioning the church.

You just grow up in the church and you live it, you know?

You don't think about how the church does its business or how the church, "the church" decides what art should be represented on the cover of an "Ensign" magazine.

You don't think about those things, but Trevor did a lot.

Of course, if I had not been naive, I would've known right off that that's a dangerous way to dream.

And you don't just go to Salt Lake to 47 East South Temple and tell the church how to do its business.

- [Nathan] There was one general authority that seemed to be particularly vocal about controlling the way that art was used by the church, an apostle named Boyd K. Packer.

- [Neil] I felt a lot of guilt when Elder Packer gave that talk about art.

- "And don't have your ladder up against the wrong wall."

- Right.

- I want to respond to a question that I face with some frequency: why do we not have more inspired and inspiring music in the church?

Or why do we have so few great paintings or sculptures depicting the restoration?

The reason we have not produced a greater heritage in art and literature, in music, in drama, is not, I am very certain, because we have not had talented people.

For over the years, we've had not only good ones, but great ones.

It's sad but true that almost as a rule, our most gifted people are drawn to the world.

They who are most capable to preserve our heritage and to extend it because of the enticements of the world seek rather to replace it.

They think that what they do is to improve it.

Unfortunately, many of them will live to learn.

And I repeat, many men do struggle to reach the top of the ladder and finally they arrive only to find that it has been leaning against the wrong wall.

- So I wrote him a letter and I got to see him.

And he talked to me for an hour.

- Did he tell you that he did not trust artists?

- No.

He just said to me, there will never come a day in our church where one of your pieces, 'cause I brought my portfolio, where one of your pieces will be in front of a church building.

I said, "I don't want that."

I said, "I could no more have the desire or could render a head of Joseph Smith, one of the millions that exists or thousands that exist.

I could no more do that than you could."

But I said, "I'm a craftsman and I have an idea of proportions.

What can I do?"

And he said, "We need a good sign."

And I spent $30,000, research and development and came up with those bronze signs, and we sent 'em out 4000 sets to the churches over a four-year period.

But I figured at that point I'd done my duty and I could pursue my own life now.

- Yep.

Well, I figured I'd done my duty too, let me tell you.

I did a "Restoration of Melchizedek Priesthood" sculpture.

- [Nathan] Okay, another aside, what you should understand here is that Mormons believe that the priesthood, essentially the authority to act in God's name, was lost to all Christians because of corruption shortly after the death of Jesus's apostles, and was restored to Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church by the resurrected beings of a few of those apostles: Peter, James and John.

- And Boyd K. Packer came out to examine it, and he immediately got upset and agitated because the feat of Peter- - [Neil] I was with you.

- You were with me?

- Remember you called me and said, "Can you be with me 'cause I'm given this-" - I don't remember that.

That's great.

- And feet were out straight.

- Well, he wanted the feet out straight.

They were standing on the air.

I said, they're standing in the air, not on the air.

"No, I want them out like this," you know, so.

- And he said, "We know that resurrected being have to stand on something."

(laughing) Those were his exact words.

I didn't say a thing.

Trevor was blah, blah, blah, blah.

(men laughing) - But the reason I asked asked you if he asked you he trusted artists is as I went out to his car with him, he turned the driver or something and said, "I don't trust artists."

And he didn't know I was there I guess.

(group laughing) And by then I was persuaded the feet would be like that.

And I went straight back in the studio and dropped them down the way they were- - But it still exists.

- Yes.

- [Gary] That sculpture still exists, Trevor.

- [Dennis] Are the feet down or up now?

- They're down.

(gentle music) - [Nathan] Despite some differences with church leaders, the artists continued to work and find success.

Though it became clear that some of their grander dreams like transforming Temple Square or building a large art school nearby, were beyond their reach.

- I mean, we had vision in one way, but in terms of practicality and how to leverage economics, we didn't have that kind of capacity at all.

And in fact, the thing that made it so that our dreams didn't ever fuse into anything is we recognized early on that we needed someone who would have the practical vision.

- Me.

- No, you weren't ever (laughing) practical.

- He was never practical in his thoughts about what we should do.

And money was always a problem.

Just paying the bills was hard, especially when he was so busy thinking about his dreams and what he really wanted to do with his art.

And I never wanted to pull him back down, but it was hard.

It's really hard being married to a dreamer.

But what's harder than being married to a dreamer is being married to a guy who decides he's homosexual and he's not gonna change.

(gentle music) - [Nathan] Trevor's homosexuality had never been a secret from Elaine or his friends.

And though he and Elaine had been married for over a decade, it was always simmering away in the background and often seemed to come out in his art.

- This is a crazy painting in many, many ways.

And suddenly at the last little while, I've had the courage to admit that I think what I was doing was saying, this is my family, my wife, my partner.

This is my ideal of a family because my beloved wife and I, we had a natural marriage by my standard.

And eventually broke down and "Eden Farm" died in a way because I'd get up every morning and going through my mind would be, and shot himself through the head.

(gentle music) Fundamentally, I'm a family man, but I also happy to be gay.

And so there was this conflict between these two parts and it was very, very painful.

- [Elaine] And we lived with that for a long time just because we were committed to each other and our children, and we loved each other.

But there came a time when he wasn't willing to not explore his homosexuality.

- [Trevor] By 1980 it was over.

And I think in 1981 we were divorced.

(gentle music) - They were married for many years.

And everyone knew what the situation was.

She didn't wake up one day and say, hey, something weird's just happened.

No, this was a long-term thing, you know?

- I have terrible...

Sometimes I wish I could have lived a lie, but I'm not good at lying, so it's just as well.

- Well, when we had those talks before you left, the main thing you always talked about was, "I can't do this to Elaine."

- Right.

- "And she deserves something better."

- Right.

- [Dennis] And it really bothered you.

- Horribly.

Horribly.

Because I loved her dearly, she's my best friend.

And I was in effect holding her back from a full life.

So it was terrible, terrible- - [Dennis] That's exactly what you would talk about then.

- I just thought was very strange the way he tells his story, and he says, oh, I had this wonderful home in Alpine.

I had this wonderful wife.

I had four wonderful children, and I had to give it all up.

That's the way it sounded.

Poor me.

I had to give it up.

Poor me.

And I wanna say, what do you mean poor you?

You had a choice.

(gentle music) Actually, he felt like he didn't have a choice.

But the truth of the matter was that he made his decision.

His life decision was an accumulation of many, many hundreds of choices that he made every day for several years.

And because of those little choices he made, it got to the point where he felt like he didn't have a choice when it came to the big decision.

- Elaine illustrated it once by saying, it was almost as there are two creatures demanding your attention.

And one of them was for the good of your life and the other was the beast that would destroy your life, and you chose to feed the beast.

Treating that part of my life as the beast, as beastly, was what so many gay people suffer so terribly from because of the self-loathing that comes because you're told repeatedly how disgusting and awful you are.

And the fact that the word beast was labeled was real shock and horrifying to me.

(gentle music) - [Nathan] Homosexual behavior was considered a serious enough sin that when it was brought to the attention of their local leaders, a church disciplinary council was convened.

And this court decided that Trevor was to be excommunicated.

This meant Trevor not only lost his church membership, but also the eternal family bonds the church promises to its members, essentially severing Trevor from his children in the afterlife.

- And this painting directly opposite this here is a very interesting piece that followed very soon after my divorce.

I have the mother and the child and the tulips and the geometry suggesting cosmic order.

And then we have this figure on the left.

And that figure on the left is me, I think.

This is what I was leaving behind, but it was still waiting for me at that juncture.

If I had made the choice, I could have gone back to that perhaps.

And so this figure here suggests the enormous tension and excruciating pain that I was going through, knowing what I was giving up.

For what?

But the one thing I can say is for integrity, for honesty, for clarity of vision that I simply didn't have when I was living the lie.

I gave up a lot, but I gained myself.

(gentle music) - [Nathan] Trevor moved to Oakland, California, soon after his divorce and set up a studio there to continue his career.

Elaine eventually remarried, went on to get her PhD and became a professor of social work.

Meanwhile, the other artists continued on in Utah in a somewhat looser configuration, building homes and studios in a close-knit community a few miles from Alpine that they called Bull River.

The intensity of the shared vision faded as the artists found their own individual successes and Trevor was no longer close by to add his unique energy to the group.

Over the years, even those who stayed in Utah drifted apart.

(gentle music) - This exhibition is an extraordinary honor for me.

To be able to have this body of work pulled together in the way that it has been done, is powerful.

(gentle music) - [Nathan] Shortly after the panel discussion that kicked off this film project, I got in touch with a cameraman and shot an interview with Trevor before his show closed.

- This particular bronze here, the title is "Brother's Keeper," and it's based on a war photograph from the Korean War.

And it has become almost a kind of symbol for me of the whole spirit of my work.

To my way of thinking, the human need for comfort, the human need for embracing one another and looking in into the hearts of one another is something we don't do enough of.

- [Nathan] It was particularly poignant that this exhibition had come together at this time for Trevor.

He'd recently been diagnosed with both cancer and Parkinson's disease.

He was living at his Oakland home and studio with his daughter Sarah and her son Jack.

As his health declined, he came to rely more and more on Sarah, who was both his caretaker and his art assistant.

But then Sarah began to struggle with an overwhelming health crisis of her own.

- She had a brain tumor that was removed surgically about 10 or 11 years ago.

And then it grew back and she had surgery again.

And then she had this boyfriend and got pregnant.

And while she was pregnant, they discovered that it was growing back again.

So she had the baby a month early, by design, so that she could go ahead with her surgery and radiation.

And just a few days after the baby was born, she had a third surgery to remove this brain tumor, and then six weeks of radiation.

- When I started this project, it was never my intention to be on this side of the camera and have it be about me.

But I have a brother, Paul, who lives in Oakland, near where Trevor Southey was living at the time.

And I told him I was starting this project, this film project about Trevor and Sarah and the difficulties that they're facing.

Paul happened to be in the bishopric or leadership council of his local LDS congregation or ward and mentioned that though Sarah had never come to church, he had seen her name on the ward membership roles.

The truth is, she hadn't been active in the church for many, many years.

- So here she is, a single parent with having just undergone brain surgery and facing six weeks of radiation with a new baby.

And somehow a member of that bishopric oh, this is, (voice breaking) I can't think about it without affecting me, a member of that bishopric in the ward where she lives somehow, and I can't remember his name, but he knew Trevor and made contact with him occasionally.

And he found out about Sarah's situation.

And for six weeks, but after that too, the Relief Society took care of her.

I couldn't go stay with her because my husband was needing my care 'cause he was ill with leukemia.

But every day, five days a week, someone would come and tend the baby.

Someone else would come and drive her to her radiation treatments and someone else would bring food.

- This went on for six weeks.

- [Neil] Wow.

- And then there was a break, and then there was another two, three week period.

So I just thought to myself, "I don't believe a thing, but these are fine people."

Mormonism is a wacko religion, but out of that wackoness comes this incredible group of people.

- Amen.

- With values.

You know, and I thank them profusely.

And they'd say, "Well, you know, we're just being kind."

I said, "There's lots of kind people on the planet, but kind people who have the Relief Society president making things happen, that's real kindness."

And so I started going back to church and I just sit there.

And I just love being among those people.

They're so fantastic.

And then they decided, very kindly offered me the idea of being rebaptized.

It was very strange for me in a way because I realized through the process that my belief was very nebulous.

And when I explained to some people that I was considering doing, in fact this very room, there was a small gathering of guys, gay guys.

And I mentioned to that I was considering doing this.

And I remember one guy just exploded and in effect accused me of be betraying the them and joining forces with the enemy, which is very irrational in my view, but I could see his point of view.

And I realized through my work, bearing testament to all these younger people that I was the leader without intending to be so, and that I had responsibility to them.

So that gave me first pause.

And then my daughter Mariana said, "Dad, I have to be honest, if you did this, I would have a hard time respecting you."

And I was a little stunned, and I said, "Why?"

She said, "Because you don't believe it."

And I thought of my interview with the stake president and how he's trying so hard to help me come to a place of good belief."

But later I realized it was almost as if my response was, not I believe it, but, well, that's possible.

Anything's possible.

And it just kind of broke my heart, but I had to say no.

- [Nathan] While Trevor's experience in Oakland was extremely positive, it represents the most generous and liberal side of the church's response to homosexuality.

The LDS church seems to struggle between softening its rhetoric and maintaining a hard line on this issue.

For example, they've been quite publicly involved in opposing gay marriage, and though they've since walked it back under public pressure, in 2015 they even announced a policy to exclude children who live with gay parents.

- On November the fifth, the church made some changes to its handbook in relation to same-sex marriage and its policy towards the children of same-sex marriage partners.

Could you explain why that was necessary?

- We regard same-sex marriage as a particularly grievous or significant serious kind of sin that requires church discipline.

- [Nathan] Like people all across the country, Mormons have more and more close family members that are coming out.

Like people all across the country and world, many Mormons are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their faith in the institutions they've grown up with, whether social, political or religious, particularly in a climate of extreme polarization, where finding a place to exist on one's own terms is increasingly difficult.

This is especially true of Mormonism, where there's a tendency to think of people as in the church or out, active members or inactive, believers or apostates.

But Trevor and his friends found a whole range of ways to approach their association with the church.

- Over the last six months, I've been really dealing with my own existential dilemma.

I mean, that uncomfortableness with saying things with absoluteness that I know that God lives and all of that stuff, I come back from the edge to a place where I feel totally comfortable, where I don't have to push my sense of the possibility of God totally away and enter into the atheist camp that I can stay proudly within an agnostic context and still be religious, still be a Mormon, and know that the two things fold into each other, that the belief and the unbelief is a part of what the whole experience is.

Suddenly it was okay for me to just like people and to be in church because I liked the people that were there and I was doing it on my own terms.

And it just felt wonderful.

- I really expected a feeling of loss when I quit going to church like Jesus didn't like me anymore.

(chuckles) I found just the opposite.

I found that those feelings went away and I felt like you can pray and be watched over and feel comfort and all of that when you're not a Mormon.

And I'm not cynical at all, but when I was going to church I didn't like myself because I was so cynical.

When I came home, I couldn't stand the anxiety that I felt when I walked in my house.

I couldn't let it go.

It was too much.

And so I said to Karen one time, "What's wrong with this picture?

I mean, I'm a good person.

I don't wanna break any of the rules, but I don't wanna go to church anymore."

She says, "Probably is what's wrong with the picture is you're in it."

(group laughing) - I just really, I really appreciated what Trevor said about people giving, because there is that aspect about the church.

The church demands certain things of you.

One thing it says is get out of yourself.

And they do it by, you know, saying you're gonna be a visiting teacher or you're gonna be a home teacher or whatever.

- And that whole event that I had- - And those things are good.

- Because they have that institution, they have that organization.

- Yeah.

And the the organization is not perfect, I mean, it changes, but we find fulfillment in it.

- But interesting thing for me though is that I converted to the church when I was 20 and I felt like I'd come home.

And then of course I was excommunicated when I was 42 and I felt like I had been abandoned, but I deserved it because, you know, I had violated the institution.

But then what was interesting is other churches took hold of me via my work, particularly the Catholic church.

And so there's this sense of religion spreads beyond those boundaries of individual institutions.

If you're just let, put the dogma back to sleep, put the brain to sleep and just let the heart think.

And that's what I've learned from those commissions with those Catholics.

And now going and doing that work, I felt I had gone home and now I feel like I've come home again, because, you know, the church is kind of home if we just let it be, but realize it's an imperfect home.

(gentle music) - As Trevor's health continued to decline, he and Sarah decided to move back to Utah to be closer to family.

Elaine helped pave the way for their return, setting up a place for them to live near her.

- Within the last week, you've moved back to Utah.

- And Elaine is my landlady.

- She has invited you to come and live in a condo there where she lives.

- How far is the condo?

About eight condos from hers with a swimming pool in between.

It's paradise.

Kids are in heaven.

- So basically you and Elaine's grandkids are all there in that complex.

- Absolutely.

- [Dennis] All of them are there?

- [Trevor] It is all of them, yes.

- [Nathan] Of course the reality behind this happy reunion was that both Sarah and Trevor's health had continued to deteriorate.

Soon it became impossible for Elaine to keep up with both of them.

Trevor's health worsened to the point where he had to be moved to a full-time care facility that happened to be just a few blocks from my house in downtown Salt Lake City, which gave me the opportunity to visit several times a week.

Trevor told me that among his few regrets was that he had one painting commission that he really wanted to finish and that he needed an assistant to make it happen.

I jumped at the chance.

As we worked together and he got weaker, I couldn't help but have the sneaking thought that it was this last painting that was keeping him alive.

We had worked on the painting in many different ways.

Sometimes in my studio, sometimes in his little room at the retirement home.

When he was weak, I would paint and he would direct me from the bed or couch.

- Put a tiny bit more pigment.

- [Nathan] More?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Other times I would get him set up and started and he would work away for an hour or so before he got too tired.

(gentle music) I painted that winter day and carried the painting closer every few minutes so that he could get a good look at things.

As I set the painting back onto the easel, Trevor announced that we were done.

We did it.

I figured he would change his mind as he had several times before and we would be back at it in a day or so.

I helped him to his bed and I tucked him in, got him a plate of cookies, leaned down to give him a hug, and left him with his tea.

It felt final somehow.

And I felt a flood of emotion as I slipped out the door.

I wondered if I'd ever see him again.

Two days later, he was gone.

(gentle music) If you find it's me you're missing If you're hoping I'll return To your thoughts Trevor's memorial was held at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

I found myself at the same place that inspired me to embark on this journey.

If he had failed in his dream to bring great art to the church, he now brought great spirituality to the Art Museum.

The museum had been transformed into a holy shrine for Trevor, pink ribbons already on exhibit by another artist fluttered in the Great Hall as the Salt Lake Men's Gay Chorus sang "God Save the Queen" and "Homeward Bound."

Bind me not to the pasture Chain me not to the plow Sadly, Sarah was too sick to attend her father's funeral and she passed away just a few days later.

And I'll return to you somehow When the sparrows stop their singing I'll be homeward bound again (gentle music) - [Dennis] Every time you put your brush in the paint and put it on the canvas, you are dealing with uncertainty.

And so I think that artists are very used to dealing with ambivalence and that's why it may be is easier to deal with ambivalence in theological matters.

(gentle music) - [Neil] We convey things to people through signs, and shapes and colors.

You know, you're painter, you put two colors together, you set up a feeling.

I realized that that was what I really understood.

That's what I really felt.

(gentle music) - [Gary] An artist is looking for their own voice.

They're looking for a way of expressing something that may be a little different, or at least your own unique point of view.

- [Dennis] Poetic communication is not regimented.

It is emotional, it's personal, it's intimate, and that is why it is significant.

- [Neil] I don't want anybody to believe what I believe.

I mean, it's okay if they do, and if they say, why are you this way?

Or Why do you make art this way?

I'm more than happy to tell 'em.

But they don't have to make art like I do.

I don't expect that.

(gentle music) - 'Cause I believe that art is spiritual.

I think what you put into it is the spirit.

And by doing that you can touch someone else's life.

(gentle music) - I mean, this is my question growing up.

It's like, well, 'cause I grew up Mormon, how does it work?

What is this balancing act?

I started this film with a question, how could I reconcile the contradictions between my art and my faith?

Yeah.

All right, go ahead, Trevor.

I never imagined that it would be a transformative journey of almost a decade that it would reshape the way I think about my art and drastically alter my own faith.

Trevor called his show "Reconciliation," and I asked him finally after everything, if he felt reconciled.

- I'm a real believer that the well-lived life addresses issues, these conflicts and reconciles them.

It's never perfect.

And every day, every week, every month, every year is a process of reconciling contrast and contradictions.

And as you'd be able to do that, you gain a certain peace that I think is maybe the greatest thing to be sought out in life, apart from the relationships with others.

And by the way, there's some of the greatest reconciliation that occurs.

So the painting came first with the title "Reconciliation."

And it's based on the concept of there must needs be opposition in all things.

We will never know beauty unless we know pain.

We will never know life unless we know death, stability unless we know instability.

So that sense of coming together within one's own soul and within the community within us, within our families and so on and so forth, is to me the great challenge of life and the great triumph of life.

And the answer to your question, yeah, I feel pretty reconciled in many ways, but I'm heartbroken in many ways too.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) This program was made possible in part by the Diane & Sam Stewart Family Foundation, the Lawrence T. and Janet T. Dee Foundation, and more than 80 individual donors.

A complete list of funders is available at brightsparkfilm.com.

To learn more about the artists in Bright Spark, see behind the scenes footage, extended and theatrical cuts, purchase the soundtrack and more, visit brightsparkfilm.com.

(upbeat music)