Vision

IAM gathers artists and creative catalysts to wrestle with the deep questions of art, faith and humanity in order to inspire the creative community to engage the culture that is and create the world that ought to be.

Art is society's existential statement, in answer to the question, "Why live?" International Arts Movement works as a catalyst to inspire people to hope, engage deeply into the depth of culture's critical zones, and create a world that ought to be. We believe that artistic excellence as a model of "what ought to be" paves the way for lasting, enduring humanity.

Art inspires change to help society to engage deeply in suffering and joys. Great art, in short, creates the world that ought to be in all of her goodness, truthfulness and beauty. Artists act as a bridge between cultural divides, often giving society a language of healing and reconciliation. IAM empowers the growth of artists in the refinement of their gifts, in the fullness of what God intended for them. IAM fosters a dialogue among cultural catalysts to anticipate and invest in what is to come.

Noted critic and artist Robert Kushner has written about IAM founder Makoto Fujimura's art, "The idea of forging a new kind of art, about hope, healing, redemption, refuge, while maintaining visual sophistication and intellectual integrity is a growing movement, one which finds Fujimura's work at the vanguard." International Arts Movement is an outgrowth of this "forging of a new kind of art" and desires to collaborate with other influencers, empowering their work and growth.

Many have predicted that the 21st Century will be a Creative/Conceptual Age. We desire to act as a catalyst for the world so that in five hundred years, historians would look back to the 21st Century and say, "21st Century was truly a Creative Age, when we recovered our call to create for the celebration of humanity under God, a world that ought to be for our children, and not for destruction." Like Saint Francis, artists lead the way for reconciliation, humility and the recovery of hope, to invite the world to enter the "eye of the storm". There, at the still point, artists can present a case for what can be, and prepare the world for what is to come. Therefore, we desire to prepare artists to prepare the world.