What does it mean to be Bahá'í?

Tick. Tick. Tick. A seemingly invisible clock marks off the seconds inside a small bedroom, steady, metallic and clipped. The sound appears to be coming from the nightstand, but all that can be seen is a goatskin tribal figure and a small, worn book of Bahá'í prayers. Kim Kimerling—whose very name reflects the lyrical quality the artist loves—is a diminutive, silver-haired, unassuming presence in this intimate room.

“There were stories about both snakes and lizards being a messenger from the creative power, and that intrigued me,” Kimerling says. “I can’t separate doing the art, and the intellectual look at it, and the spiritual look at it.”

Art fills the room. There are richly colored acrylics on the walls and canvases propped by the neatly-made bed. The paintings, beautifully executed and visually stunning, show the artist’s fascination with circularity and interiors—many of Kimerling’s animal and human subjects are figures-within-figures, such as men impregnated with female forms.

Kimerling, an Idaho native who holds a master’s degree in art education, talks about his years spent teaching—in Belize working with Mayans and two years on a Navajo reservation. A look at almost any of Kimerling’s pieces reveals his deeply personal response to ancient story and symbol. Crows often appear in his work, not so much as characters out of a single myth, but as figures more generally representative of messages from God, and also of the guiding inner voice.

“When I listen to that, I seem to do all right,” Kimerling says of that voice. “And when I don’t, I get myself into a pile of trouble.”

It’s Thursday night, and Kimerling has opened his home to a small group of artists who, like he, are members of the local Bahá'í community. They are planning their annual art show, which will be held this year at Blue Lyon Art Studio and Gallery Feb. 21-22. They eat quiche and strawberries in the living room, which, with its lush reds, oranges and browns, feels like an extension of Kimerling’s body of work.

The show’s artists express through their work major tenets of the Faith—unity, peace, equality—yet the artists’ interpretation of Bahá'í principles vary widely, in the same way that Kimerling takes characters from myth and gives them personal meaning. Christi Bonds, a middle-age woman with a sweet maternal air, is a physician specializing in the integration of Western and Eastern medicine. Her colorful, abstract quilt-like works convey facets of ancient Chinese medicine, with fabric and images representing acupuncture points.

Bahá'ís believe that there have been many messengers of God—including Moses, Christ, Muhammad and Buddha—the last of whom was Bahá’u’lláh, a 19th-century Persian. Bahá'ís believe that the teachings of each of these messengers were right for his particular time. Now, in a culture of information technology and globalization, the world is ready, Bahá'ís believe, for unity, global education and an international “auxiliary language.”

“The religions of the past couldn’t conceive of a unified world,” says Dorrine Sedilek, one of the show’s organizers. “The world was flawed.”

And while the world is still flawed, Bahá'ís believe that it is moving forward to a time of peace and reason.

Violet McAllaster, another Bahá'í artist, says that Bahá'ís believe in “independent investigation of truth.” Children are raised with the teachings of all the world’s major religions and make their faith decision at age 15.

Kimerling’s mythological influences—Native American, Mayan, African—and Bonds’ Chinese influences might seem out of place in a show featuring "Christian art" or "Islamic art." With Bahá'í art, however, one learns of the Bahá'í religion in many ways, both expected and unexpected—from a worn book of Bahá'í prayers on a nightstand to a sleek black crow.