Why Art?

I am down in Leesburg, Florida visiting my parents in law. My father in law, Terry Beebe, is on the board of Leesburg Center for the Arts, and invited me to speak to supporters of the arts. It was my delight to do so.

Here's what I spoke on:

Why Art?

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle




As an artist, I often find myself trying to answer “Why Art?” Why is art necessary in our lives and in our education? How can I justify spending so much of my time and expenses invested in being an artist, and helping others by advocating for their artistic expressions? Why do we need the arts here in Leesburg? We have now much research pointing to the economic benefit of bringing art into communities. We have efforts to scientifically prove that the arts help us directly in education, in improving children’s school grades, and helping them to engage better with their worlds. I can give you evidence of how the arts help slow down dementia and reduce stress. (see Gifts of the Muse, by Rand Corporation)

But usually, in these gatherings, I end up listening to people, by finding out what deeply matters to them. And I often find that in the areas that they are most engaged in, and most passionate about, art is already present in that conversation. The person I may be speaking with may not know anything about art in New York, but he/she may talk about their children’s dream to become a dancer or an actor. They may talk about a movie they just saw that affected them deeply. They may speak of their business enterprises and find out that now businesses are starting to realize that the “bottom line” is not really sufficient; but there is a “second bottom line,” or a third. Business schools are now inviting designers to discuss creativity and design, to apply these principles into business practices because worker are no longer content to work in “bottom line” driven companies, but they want their whole person affirmed, and they want community. What I hear these workers stating, is that they want their humanity back. And in that conversation, art always presents itself as an expression of that humanity.

I was recently speaking at a church in NYC, and asked the people what they enjoy doing on Sundays apart from going to church. And everything they listed had something to do with the arts and entertainment. Art is everywhere, from the food we order in restaurants, to clothes we purchase, to paintings hanging on museums. Aristotle defined the arts as “our capacity to make.” So we could broaden our discussion into medicine and sciences. Even if we do not include these sister disciplines in our discussions, one thing is for sure: Our cultural productions and our art will defines us, whether we like it or not. Art expresses who we are.

One of the most frustrating moments in recent memory, for myself as an arts advocate, was to see the Super Bowl half time show knowing, that for the first time, that Janet Jackson fiasco was being broadcast in China. What do the Chinese think of us now? We have come to define ourselves by how we degrade ourselves, and we have exported that vision to the world.

When I traveled with The First Lady to represent the USA at the UNESCO general assembly several years ago (http://www.amb-usa.fr/usunesco/DELEG.HTM), one of the the UNESCO officials told us of her fears in America’s reengagement with UNESCO: “We are struggling to believe that the US can bring more than McDonalds, Coca Cola or Hollywood movies (I might add pornography to that list, but she was too polite).” We tried to convince her and other UNESCO leaders that we have a very unique patronage system that encourages our democratic patronage of the arts like the NEA and NEH. But it was when she connected with our projects with Shakespeare and Jazz Masters programs and touring of Martha Graham dance troops that convinced her that we were committed to a higher vision. These distinctively American forms of art, I would argue, are the greatest fruits of our democracy. And we have every reason to celebrate and broadcast with pride what freedom has brought us.


Tolstoy stated “Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling”.


Art is a building block of civilization. A civilization that does not value its artistic expressions is a civilization that does not value itself. These tangible artistic expressions help us to understand ourselves. The arts teach us to respect both the diversity of our communities and the strength of our traditions. I encourage people not to segment art into an “extra” sphere of life and decorations. Why? Because art is everywhere, and has already taken root in our lives.

Therefore, the questions is not so much “why art?” but “which art?” We are presented with a choice. And this choice is a responsibility of cultural stewardship. Just as we have responsibility for natural resources, so do we have to take stewardship care of our culture.

What, then, does the current cultural ecosystem look like? NEA Research such as Reading at Risk, is pointing to a cultural epidemic of disengagement. The studies point to how we are reading less and less, but even more pronounced, in my mind, is how we are less engaged with civic activities, with nature (and even sports!).


The Columbine High School incident and 9/11 taught us that we can either use our imagination for destroy lives or to save lives. We have on the one hand a girl reading Macbeth (she wanted to be an actor) in the library, and on the other a teen pointing a gun at her head and asking her “do you still believe in God?” And she said “yes” and was shot. Her words affirmed the source of her life and salvation, and inspired countless others to express that belief: His actions prompted others to copy the destructive acts of horrors. On 9/11 we had, on the one hand, militant hijackers who took their imaginative vengeance into determined evil acts. On the other hand were firefighters who climbed the falling towers. We have to realize that before any of these acts were committed, they were imagined. We swim in the ecosystem of imagined actions. We do have a responsibility to that power. We do have a choice between saving lives, or destroying lives.

If we do not teach our children, and ourselves, that what we imagine, and how we design the world, can make a difference, the culture of cynicism will do that for us. If we do not take the initiative to love our neighbors by imagining better neighborhoods and cities, despair will take the imaginations of their children and turn them into destructive forces.

A few hopeful examples in the ecosystem of culture today:

1) Rafe Esquith, a National Medal of Arts recipient two years ago for his efforts
among the Hobart Elementary School children of inner city Los Angeles,
challenges immigrant children, many of whom do not speak English, to
memorize and perform Shakespeare. In the recent ceremony announcing
"American Masterpieces," a new N.E.A. initiative to bring masterpieces of visual art, dance and music to American cities, regional museums and
schools, the First Lady and other guests sat in awe as two of Mr. Esquith's students performed Henry the Fifth. Beyond knowing their demanding lines, they gave life to the words and elevated us all in the audience. Their childlike but confident orations had a beauty and a deeper resonance, something that this nation desperately needs to hear and understand today when these sounds are too often drowned out by crass commercial noise. Our children's voices can be elevated, drawing the world's attention to excellence, and the nobility of civilization.



2) About 20 years ago, Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, South Carolina woke up one day and realized that being a mayor means that you are the chief architect and designer of your city. He came to the NEA and asked for help because he knew nothing about design. What a humble man. He states: “We mayors exhaust ourselves with lots of decisions – political, personnel, budget. But 100 years from now, there will be no real evidence of how we made those decisions. In contrast, a decision about the physical design of a city will influence the city and its people for generations.” Now the Mayors Institute has helped over 625 mayors become the chief urban designers of their cities. 8 mayors are locked up in a room with 8 designers without the media or their aids. They share solutions, and dreams. Then they go home to their towns to see how the real life solutions can also benefit the environment and the general quality of life. This effort was so successful that it has grown to affect leadership at the state level. I just attended a press conference with NEA chairman Dana Gioa and Former Governors Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Parris N. Glendening of Maryland to begin a Governor’s Institute on Community Design that brings this transformation into the state level.

The Governor’s Institute is co-sponsored by the NEA and the EPA. Strange bedfellows? No, it’s smart to connect the two -- again, it’s the issue of stewardship. The best design is most efficient, and friendly to the environment. The best design considers what the community needs first, and even her voiceless inhabitants. The best design brings beauty into our lives.


A journey of an artist in the ecosystem of culture:


I get to spend my days, thinking and imagining, painting and writing. I think about a journey that started as a child, simply wanting to draw and express, having encouraging parents, and being blessed with a wife who suffers alongside with me. The life of an artist is never easy, but I take it seriously because I know that imagination has consequences.

But I do, on occasion, go back to that question Why Art? Because it was a question I addressed to myself in a diary for a creative writing class in college, many years ago. My professor, wrote back in his comments: “your questions are valuable, and I encourage you to push that question further, as many of the writers and artists have done in the past: Why Live?”

Perhaps that’s why we need the arts in Leesburg. By continuing to create and imagine a better world, we live .

Zero Summer: for the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima

Zero Summer

Zero Summer imagines the unimaginable horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet points to epiphanic awakening that transcend human imagination at the same time. T.S. Eliot, who coined this term in his “Four Quartets,” longed for that eternal summer, birthed out of the "still point," where imagination is met with grace and truth.

Image: Makoto Fujimura, Zero Summer, 89"x69" Mineral Pigments and Gold on Kumohada Paper

Refractions 16: Optimal Foraging Theory

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 16
Optimal Foraging Theory: Can you have your birds and eat them, too?



On the day that the Arkansas Democrat reported the sighting of thought-to-be-extinct ivory-billed woodpeckers, I toured the Tyson kill factory in Springdale, Arkansas where two hundred thousand Cornish hens are eviscerated each day. The director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture’s Faith as a Way of Life Project, David Miller, had invited us, as members of the project (see Refractions Volume 1 for more details of the Faith as a Way of Life project) to experience the inner workings of a Fortune 500 Company whose C.E.O. is now a committed Christian. Tyson, the largest producer of protein products in the world, has indeed been going through a major change in recent years, and is now known to be a faith-friendly company. The tension of living out one’s faith in the workplace seemed to swirl within the greater tension that exists between stewardship of natural resources and capitalistic interests. It seemed rather an ironic coincidence, that on the same day, the newspapers reported this remarkable sighting of woodpeckers that many still believe today to be extinct.

Upon entering the factory, with my hair net, smock and fluorescent earplugs, we saw small hens hung by their legs on a silver conveyer harness, parading in front of us with mind-numbing efficiency. The steamy, yellow odor enveloped us, mixed with bleach, and drips (we were warned) were felt keenly on our smocks as we toured.

Every thirty minutes, the tour guide told us, the workers rotate positions. They told us that this was one way to keep the workers engaged in their tasks, and a result of recent changes. The turnover rate for the workers was close to 100 % annually a decade ago, but after their reforms, now the rate is close to 30%. The workers, apparently, are finding the changes amenable and finding opportunities within the company to advance.

There was one room, though, where only a few workers were spotted. It was the “zero” point of where the birds are killed with laser beams slicing their throats. The birds are captured, hung and plucked, with increasing automation with each step. The hardest manual task, as it turns out, is actually catching the birds, several of them at once, and then hooking them onto the conveyer belt. But everything else is automated, including the actual point of life and death. As I watched the birds one by one approach the “zero point” of a laser beam aimed at their necks, there was an eerie silence about, the weight of life hung heavily in the dark room. The whole scene reminded me of Sue Coe’s drawings (http://www.graphicwitness.org/coe/meatpack.htm).

Then they brought in the workers so that the people on our tour could meet and interview them. Half were migrant workers (legal, they assured us), and others were local folks. They introduced themselves one by one, some with translators, and spoke of their experiences. They spoke humbly but rather confidently of their company experiences, and they seemed open to our questions, acting more like giddy school friends talking to outsiders than assembly line workers.

Many of them do start at a low wage, hard manual labor, and they spoke of having to build up much physical stamina to work there. But they each insisted on emphasizing how caring this company was for them. The workers were replete with testimonials of how much they found the company to affirm their individual value. Of course, these were selected workers who have succeeded in the company. But the sheer contrast between what many consider to be visual cruelty behind the curtains and the relaxed smiles of the workers, who found much dignity here, surprised us. Something is going on here that is unexpected, and even graceful. One of the managers told us, before the workers arrived, that they had for a long time struggled to integrate racial and cultural barriers, but once the rotations began and they implemented work reform, they began to interact, and some formed very close relationships.

One of the workers, Della, told us that she had a special project to benefit the needs of a local community. The cookbook was called “Randall Road Cooking: Sharing and Caring for the Future of the Babies” to benefit the March of Dimes. In the cookbook were recipes contributed by the workers: Aunt Carries’ Potato Salad, Pollo al Vapor, Tamale Pie… and, of course, a recipe for Cornish Game Hens by the Plant Manager.




The ivory-billed woodpecker has not been sighted for 60 years. But a group of Cornell ornithologists did spot one in the Cache River in Arkansas recently (see http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ivory/#). Larger than a crow, with distinctive plumage these handsome woodpeckers “need dead trees for nesting, and logging squeezed out the ivory bill, turning it into an accusatory ghost.” (James Gorman, NYT, Thursday, May 3rd)

When I was a student at Bucknell University, I studied Ornithology as part of a double major in art and animal behavior. I even spent cold, January days in a shack by the Susquehanna River taking data for “optimal foraging theory patterns of Chickadees.” Chickadees kept rather regular hours, as it turned out, coming in each day at similar times to forage, and this pattern could be interpreted with ecological significance. They, too, were efficient, saving their precious energies in a winter river-scape. It is a curious overlap, to see the vulnerable birds and their necessary efficiency, and the capitalistic efficiencies of our factories today. Both scenes mirror each other, overlapping in the needs of survival. Of course, we would be right to argue that our culture is a culture of wasteful efficiency. We have the capacity to alter and create the environment in ways that seem in some cases ridiculously destructive. In the wanton free-for-all drive to succeed, any capitalistic system craves for more and more. And in that kind of abundance, we are clearly in danger of damaging the delicate ecosystem, and losing our humanity in the process.

Does the spotting of the ivory-billed woodpecker represent part of the humanity we lost? And what did we really see at the kill factory in Springdale, Arkansas? Can we really eat our birds and save them, too?

Of course, as we toured Tyson, many of us might have pondered another obvious question related to this: Is it possible to be the CEO of a company and be a Christian? If the answer is yes, you might argue that finding one with much integrity is as difficult as spotting an ivory woodpecker (by the way, none has been spotted since the last reporting and the ornithologists are bickering over whether the proof of the last sighting is substantiated enough.) As skeptical as our group was when visiting the place, we had to admit that it took enormous courage for John Tyson to make his faith public did by weaving it into the core values of the company (see his core values statements: http://www.tysonfoodsinc.com/corporate/info/mission.asp). He was very honest with us about the tensions that he has to negotiate, the struggles he has gone through as the CEO and as a person. Questions filled our minds. Is it then possible to operate a faith-based company in which some million animals are killed each week? Are they “feeding the country” or simply being part of a consumer driven, capitalistic orgy?

Answers to such questions are never black and white. For instance, if these clean, efficient systems did not exist, avian SARS would have destroyed all of us by now. When Tsunami relief was given as an opportunity, this company filled the order, also with remarkable efficiency. They have the system in place to respond. And they are also able to export this system, whereby Cornish hens only require a month or so from hatching to the table. They are also providing much needed work to these local soils, creating a little city and culture, along with WalMart, in Bentonville, Arkansas.

And, perhaps most importantly, if the likes of the Tyson Company did not exist, I am not so sure that I could successfully chase a free-range chicken and catch it if I am hungry, let alone kill it and prepare it for the table. I would be the first to go extinct, in other words.

Perhaps we are just like the chickadees after all, saving their energies optimally so that we, too, can survive our winters. We are simply trying to do our best to survive in the competition of the marketplace, finding the most efficient means to eat. But there’s cost to this efficiency. All of the middle managers expressed how difficult it was to balance their family and church commitments with the stress of their jobs. These workers are enduring stress so that we can all celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. These holidays have, ironically, become the high noon of stress and death for many creatures.

Their company chaplaincy program, one of the largest in the country, addresses the various needs of the workers, including stress management. But there’s an inherent tension, and stress, in their own roles as well. The minister we spoke with told of a time when the workers went on a strike. He had to choose whether to march with the union or not (he did). After feeling the effects of intensity of the job, from low wage workers, to chaplains, to the C.E.O., I realized that those laser beams of consumerism were not just directed at the birds, but at all of us, and we are all being asked “what is our life about?”





We do long for a day, when ivory-billed woodpeckers will roam the dark shadows of Arkansas rivers, eating grubs and worms to their hearts’ content. Somehow, though, the ideals of that vision seem dream-like in the weight of the world’s conditions today. In the fiendish and ironic drama of survival and abundance, only the bottom line seems to matter. But what we need to think about is not just competitive drive of a successful American Company, but the issue of stewardship of our abundance. It is not the question of kill or not kill, but the issue of how much sacrifice, and for what purpose. The Bible points us to a place of abundance called the Shalom of God. The Bible does not prohibit the killing of animals. But it does deal harshly with our greed, our materialism, and the exploitation of those who are also made in the image of God. Instead, the scriptures point to a time when all things will be made beautiful, and every sacrifice is seen as the entry point of beauty. We need the ivory-billed woodpeckers in our lives, because we need appreciation of that fleeting vision of the beautiful, and what was lost. Their mysterious dark wings reveal part of what was sacrificed for our material abundance today. Further, the greater challenge may be to see that even a Tyson Cornish hen can point to that sacrificial need in our everyday lives. Can we, with grateful hearts, give thanks to the giver of life, not just for our capacity to survive, but to be given a vision of abundant grace, to thrive in God’s Shalom?

A youth pastor/writer member of the group commented: “Maybe we should consider sending our kids to observe this kill factory rather than some summer mission trip?” I nodded, and reached for my wallet to purchase one of Della’s cookbooks. I did want to, after all, participate in the communion of people of dignity, shared through their meals. They are the survivors of the ecosystem of consumerism. And I did want to know what Tamale Pie could taste like in Arkansas.

I do dream of seeing these woodpeckers someday, too. My search for them would be a fabulous way to honor Audubon, one of my favorite artists. These rare creatures are but a ghost of a time past, when survival of the fittest was the only reality, back when the harsh ecosystem might have killed more humans in winter than woodpeckers. Now, that reality is replaced by convenience and our comfort. Perhaps they were to be spotted only once, but in a fleeting moment. Perhaps they saw us, and understood what we have become, and they turned their backs on the world of Wal Marts and Burger Kings, spreading their wings to fly back in the hot, dark mysterious swamps of Arkansas, never to be seen again.

Makoto Fujimura


p.s. NPR recently commissioned a friend and a fellow collaborator in our journey of grace, Sufjan Stevens, to write a song on the ivory billed woodpecker, which he titled, “The Lord God Bird.” Check it out at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4721675

Image: Makoto Fujimura, Aijo, Collection of Tamaya Corporation, Japan, 1989