Imagining Epiphanies of Artistic Action

We’ve finally reached 2026! Happy New Year! Perhaps, you’ve chosen a few new year resolutions. The endeavoring to start the new year with resolutions is an admirable one, even if those resolutions hold firm for only a few months at best. We often base our resolutions on our perceived shortcomings or our desires to change for the better. Often these resolutions don’t stick because we lose our desire or interest, we become distracted or lose focus. The reasons are endless.

What if we shift our focus from what we are lacking to what we can create? Instead of focusing on the beginning of a new year to turn over a new leaf, why not focus on the appearance of the idea, itself? What if we take the focus on that creativity one step further to meditating on ways we can artistically act to better not only our lives, but the lives, the community of which we are a part?

New Year’s Day is the eighth day of Christmas, liturgically speaking. But five days later on January 6 is the Christian holiday of Epiphany, when we remember the arrival of the Three Magi who visit the infant Jesus. It is the first public appearance Jesus makes to the world. It is not revelation, but appearance.

When we talk about creativity, we often talk about epiphanies, those unexpected moments of realization. How often do we have these moments, yet never act on them? What are the epiphanies we are having now at this turn of the year? About ourselves, our practices, our communities, our country? How can, how ought we artistically act upon them? What if in community, we can find inspiration and encouragement to act?

On Epiphany of last year, Creative Bond, St. Lydia’s Dinner Church‘s arts initiative, invited number of creatives, artists, and community activists gathered in Gowanus Brooklyn at for Epiphanies of Resistance: A Gowanus Arts Community Roundtable Dinner Against Fascism. It was exactly two weeks before the inauguration of Donald Trump into his second term. We knew it was coming. How could we creatively prepare for and resist the social and political changes that we could only imagine. After two hours of deep conversation, we returned to our own communities invigorated even as we were uncertain of the future. Over the course of 2025, the Trump Adminstration has created a climate of fear and oppression against the most vulnerable, shaking our country’s foundations, and seeking to suppress creative expression that dares to resist it and speak truth to power.

This year, Creative Bond is calling again to all people who are creative in whatever capacity the imagine themselves to meet to discuss our theme Epiphanies of Artistic Action. How can creative people, one year into Trump Administration, envision new ways of artistic action in our lives and for our communities? Today, Zohran Mamdani is inaugurated to become the mayor of New York City – our city! How, in our own ways can we continue and expand that grassroots, artistic action that propelled him to Gracie Manor and inspired a new energy and enthusiasm to make that change? For those who celebrate Epiphany as the public appearance of Jesus to the World, how can we use our artistic gifts for a theology of liberation?

This is an important time not just about epiphanies that we could imagine for ourselves, but to ask what are the epiphanes that we having now, in this moment, that we can creatively forward and put in action, as artists, as creative people for ourselves and for our communities. Come imagine with us! Perhaps, an epiphany will appear to you! Perhaps, you can inspire epiphanies in others.