Everyday encounters with the sacred: Artist, action, and image

The purpose of this work is to explore how artists experience and express the sacred in art making. Sacred in this context means that which is encountered by the artists as a quality or experience of the divine that they recognize as significant. In this ethnographic study constructed from the stories of two artists' experiences, connections to the sacred are noted with people, places, processes of creating the narratives that give their lives meaning, and the complexities of relating to the presence of the divine in images. These themes illumine our understanding of how art makers experience the sacred, and then shape their encounters into visual expressions.; The narratives that are shaped from in-depth dialogs with the artists suggest there is meaning in the sacred encounters because they are not set apart from daily activities, but are embedded in everyday experiences. Through relationships, both with others in the community of like believers and with the images themselves, the artists experience an evolving awareness of their spiritual growth which subsequently affects the visual expression of the sacred. This research suggests that further studies of such art makers' narratives should be included in art investigations; for their stories offer an indispensable difference that broadens our conception of knowledge. An experience of the sacred as both a creative and transformative lived encounter in the life of an artist offers a unique perspective that has profound implications for art making, for art instruction, and most significantly, for further study of our own human nature.