Context: The Maker Institute
Speaker: Ryan Lauterio
Language: English
In this thought-provoking lecture delivered in Richmond, Virginia, in December 2023, Ryan Lauterio of the Maker Institute of Studio Art and Theology explores how the arts can help us recover our imagination for the world as God created it. Titled Imagination Lost: How the Arts Can Help Us Recover Our Imaginations for the World God Created, the lecture invites listeners to consider imagination not as mere fantasy, but as a God-given faculty for perceiving reality and envisioning its renewal. Through biblical reflection, cultural analysis, and illustrations from art history, Lauterio demonstrates how sin distorts the imagination, binding it to fear, confusion, and self-interest. Yet in Christ, our imaginations can be renewed—reoriented toward beauty, order, and divine purpose. Drawing on texts such as Ephesians 4:18, Matthew 11:28, and Revelation 21:5, he contends that art finds its deepest power when it emerges from a redeemed heart: not merely to express, but to illumine, to comfort, to build, and to glorify God. In Christ, imagination becomes a vessel of hope, and the arts a foretaste of God’s promise to make all things new.
Interested in more? Check out R. Lauterio’s Made Makers.
