Fortress Press

Only an artist, pastor, theologian, and mentor like Maria Fee could present the work of Black performance artist Theaster Gates with such grace and wisdom. Her claim is bold: Gates's art of place-making--of curating places and material things in ways that reflect God's own hospitality--may serve as a model for reimagining Christian belief and practice in a secular age. The result is one of the best examples of practical theology I've read in a long time.

Maria Fee's Beauty Is a Basic Service confirms Theaster Gates as one of the most significant artists of his generation, and this book, diligently and sensitively written, is a landmark achievement for our "art+faith" conversation. Fee is a first-rate artist who has served in the long and daunting journey of serving the church and, in her long-suffering, has nurtured her "theology of hospitality" generatively, invoking the new creation.

In Beauty Is a Basic Service, Dr. Maria Fee models the theology of hospitality that she also locates in the work of Theaster Gates. Weaving together multiple theological traditions, art criticism, and art history with evocative, careful description, Fee offers an accessible, substantial, joyful introduction to Gates's community-oriented practice. Fee helps us see how Gates's work can be both critical of broken systems and generous in its love, calling on all readers--whether scholars, makers, or curious viewers--to do the same.

It is believed that the greatest gift one can offer is one's life. I see Maria Fee's book, Beauty Is a Basic Service, as one of those rare gifts that cannot be contained on a shelf or placed on a table in the living room. Beauty Is a Basic Service is a feast of good news. Fee compels us to look at our Christian walk more soberly by interrogating our "theology of hospitality" through the life work of social practice artist Theaster Gates. Her book takes us on a spiritual journey, and along the way she challenges Protestant belief structures and Christian dogma, and deconstructs these towers of faith systems that blind our vision of the full body of the kingdom. In the end she brings us to a place where we can see the "other" without fear drenched in stereotypic constructions, but through a lens of love, compassion, and understanding. This book beckons us to honestly see ourselves in a mirror, acknowledging the beauty within, and to offer thanks to the Peerless One who created us.

Through this insightful introduction to the work of artist Theaster Gates, Maria Fee reveals the ways art can make a place for God to dwell in moments of human making and community life. Fee invites readers into a theological reflection on hospitality in an age when we need it most, and does so through the embodied spirituality that only the arts can cultivate. Readers will come away challenged in how they understand their own practices in place and encouraged in the hospitable work of the Holy Spirit in the material world.

Maria Fee's focus on the life and work of Theaster Gates has expanded my imagination and understanding of how to approach social transformation in action. For faith-rooted leaders, her theological connections to creating, creation, and the created, set within the hospitality practices of Gates, offer community activists ways to engage in art and the public in an embodied way that lends itself to the spiritual encounters of both the Divine and neighbors. I am thankful to Fee for lifting up the work of Gates as a theological practice that pushes and challenges the way in which we see and dwell in our neighborhoods.

The work of Theaster Gates defies straightforward categorization, and his determination to have an impact beyond the borders of the contemporary artworld have made him an irrepressible voice for clarity, wisdom, and healing more broadly. Maria Fee's illuminating text provides the fullest, most holistic account yet of the richly theological connections issuing from Gates's profound efforts to renew land, labor, and community. She sets out a feast of insight and reflection that demonstrates how theologians might do justice to the far-reaching scope of Gates's distinctive vision and at the same time amplify the good of his work themselves.