From the most religious to the most secular, no artist ever knows exactly where their creative process is leading—but we all seem to have faith that we will get there. Many factors underlying creativity are also crucial to the act of having faith. These shared factors include ambiguity tolerance, openness to mystery, engaging with paradoxical thinking, perseverance, and questioning. Additionally, those who practice each (creativity, faith) share many guiding phrases, such as “take it one step at a time,” “go with your heart,” and “trust the process.” This interdisciplinary arts-based research project explores the experience of being a self-identified creative who practices a faith or religion. The exhibition combines methods from arts-based research, human centered design, and phenomenology to describe the intersections between the creative practices and faith perspectives of 15 individuals. The experience of our participants is that of creativity and faith combining—intertwining—to form an interactional, hybrid experience that is profoundly different from each experience on its own.
