The book Visions of the Sacred: Conversations with Bahá’í Artists began as a doctoral dissertation. I came to this topic because I had come to understand that the arts are not only integral to our appreciation of beauty, or to confront us with the challenges of the world, or to delight us, or to make us laugh, or to be invited into wonder… they also provide a kind of language that can teach us the connection between the world we see every day and the world of another reality.
Kim MacQueen
Kim MacQueen’s attentive and enlightening exploration into the work and methods of twelve Bahá’í artists allows us to examine how a shared spiritual inspiration can be translated into varied artistic forms and imaginative modes. In this study, she demonstrates that the creative impulse, even if drawing on the same essential source-the coherent framework of reality that the Bahá’í Faith provides-produces an array of artistic responses, like the array of colors that emanate from a prism by a single beam of light.
MacQueen’s rigorous labor of love and dedication thus proves a wonderful resource that enables us to appreciate how each artist discovers a form and mode that bespeaks how the revealed Word penetrates the heart and is reflected back to the rest of us. Her amazing journey into the minds and hearts of the Bahá’í artists represented in this collection is, first and foremost, an existential delight.
– John S. Hatcher, Professor Emeritus, University of South Florida
In Visions of the Sacred: Conversations with Bahá’í Artists, Kim MacQueen has brought a scholarly exploration together with a deeply personal journey, which has resulted in confirming the power, importance, and core connection between art and spirituality. I found this book to be a treasure trove of inspiration, insights, and wisdom. The Bahá’í Faith and the creative process of twelve artists constitute the lens through which she examines this connection as a skillful, wise, curious, and patient guide. As a qualitative researcher and artist myself, I found that the book helped me develop a deeper appreciation of how the creative process, although essentially and deeply mysterious, does have common threads and themes. In the end, this rich work reminds us all that the creative process is essential for us to ever transform ourselves, our communities, and the world at large.