Rudy Miera, Harvey Buchalter, Karen Smart, Paul Atencio and Nasima Hadi knocked our socks off at the Spring Colloquium! Approximately 70 people attended the New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue’s 25th annual Spring Colloquium on March 26th. Our esteemed speakers from the three Abrahamic faiths tackled the topic, Visual Art as an Expression of Spirituality.

Rudy Miera, Harvey Buchalter, Karen Smart, Paul Atencio and Nasima Hadi each addressed the topic with insights from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faith traditions from their own relationship to their faith in the Divine presenting their particular focus in the areas of retablos, calligraphy, iconography, painting and sculpting. Each speaker’s brought some of their art work to the colloquium for all to see.

The questions considered at the Colloquium were:

• How does art reflect social and individual spirituality?
• What opportunities and constraints does religious belief or a faith tradition impose on artistic expression?
• What leads an artist to choose a particular form or type of creative expression?
• How important is viewer response to such art?

Here are some photos from the event. Attendees enjoyed wonderful food and fellowship over the course of the Colloquium.

The artist panel answer questions.

Rudy Miera with his retablos.

Harvey Buchalter holding the Torah with Gail Rubin.

Paul Atencio with his acrylic paintings.

Karen Smart with her Icons.

Nasima Hadi with her water colors and calligraphy.

Good food and thoughts were shared at lunch time.