Refractions 4: Bert's Disappearing Weather Maps

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 4




Bert’s Disappearing Weather Maps

Every morning, Bert drew a weather map on the blackboard with his saliva. Carefully, he sketched out the exact weather map that he had seen the previous night in the news. I can see him now, tilting his head, limping slightly as he moved, and drawing using his index finger. This act, seen by many of his teachers as a stubborn annoyance, and what his psychiatrist calls his “perseverant” activities, caused him to be part of my class at EastConn, a school in central Connecticut for challenged teen age children. These were students who could not be part of regular public school’s special education programs. They were “special” special kids that I had the privilege of teaching, soon after I graduated from college in 1983.

What I noticed immediately, though, was the detail to which he carried out his task. He had an acute visual memory, but also interpretive and expressive ability to take what he remembered very clearly and turn it into his own visual language. Even the “materials” he used had a direct connection with the content of the weather maps. “Spit evaporates, “ he muttered to himself, “and becomes part of the atmosphere,” And he stood back to watch his mark disappear on the black board. To be sure, Bert was stubborn, but I recognized something else, too. He was an artist, drawing to make a careful and diligent trace of his memory in a map, and to somehow make sense of the world around him. As I watched his act every day, his ritual of evaporating drawing began to affect me.

“Hey Bert,” I asked him one day. “Yees, Mr. Fujimura, “ he replied in his bass voice, his eyes still childlike, despite his imposing stature and heavy workman’s boots. “How about we do a bulletin board project?” My task as the afternoon instructor was to develop the students’ creative and vocational interests. “What would you want me to do?” He asked, rather skeptically.

“Well, it’s up to you, but we got this whole bulletin board to fill in the hall way with nothing very exciting. Why don’t you do a mural of a weather map to start?” He was amenable to this, although this did not mean that he would forego his drawing on the blackboard first every morning. He took the markers I gave him, though, and worked on his colorful map in the hallway very enthusiastically. “No one’s ever asked me to draw a weather map before in school,” he said snickering, “they just complained about it.” I did get him to compromise on one thing though: he was to use a glass of water, rather than his spit, to create his morning ritual on the blackboard. After I explained the possible health risks of eating chalk everyday, he consented.

Some twenty years later, I think about Bert, as I watch my paintings dry today in my studio. Recently, I started to make videos of paintings drying as part of my exhibit. I find this act, as I am sure Bert did, to be healing. Watching the subtle movement of the surface of the water, and the watermarks made, stirs my heart, and makes me realize that in the frantic pace of life, how much we need this ritual. And what makes us truly human may not be what we do to accomplish a task, but what we experience fully, carefully and quietly.

Bert ran off one day, when I took the class for a walk in the park nearby. When he caught up to us near the entrance of the trail, I told him that I was upset and worried about him. “Don’t worry, Mako,” he said, “I have a map in my head, and so I am not going to get lost. Can’t you trust me?” I wanted to yell at him as he lumbered back with me from the darkening woods, his boots laces untied as usual, covered now in spring mud, but another part of me wanted to embrace him. Yes, I did want to trust him, to see where his intricate map was to lead him, and to journey with him. There, artist to artist, we can draw and watch our worlds disappear into the night. But I also knew that the society that would make Bert “useful” by giving him menial jobs after his graduation would not be as kind. We would have to account for our disappearance, and always be required to justify our art.

Makoto Fujimura, New York City
http://www.makotofujimura.com

Image: Makoto Fujimura, Net for Eternity, Corridor Press Digital Print

Refractions 3: Splendor

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Vol. 3




Splendor

Nihonga master Matazo Kayama (http://www.mitsukoshi.co.jp/kayama/) passed away about a month ago, and I wanted to pay homage to his legacy during my recent stay in Japan by visiting a special retrospective exhibit of his work in Tokyo. I studied under him during my graduate study years at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. When I heard of his passing, I began a painting called “Splendor” which will be exhibited this fall, in his memory.

Kayama-sensei began painting during the World War II years, eventually graduating from the same school I later attended. In countering his contemporaries’ trend of advocating the injection of western values into Nihonga, he instead took his inspiration from art in17th century Japan, of the decorative screen tradition called Rimpa. His idiosyncratic works represent Japanese aesthetics today. He is arguably the most important Japanese artist of the twentieth century. As I was leaving Japan at Narita Airport, I paid tribute again, as there is an enormous public art commission there that Kayama-sensei completed, which greets travelers.

In a special exhibit dedicated to his honor at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, I tracked his career from his early naturalistic works influenced by Bruegel to his later paintings directly quoting Rimpa screens. He was also known for combining nudes into exotic metallic patterns, works which hearken back to his childhood days in Kyoto, where he watched his father, a Nishijin master, design kimonos.

In Kayama’s memoir “Infinite Space,” he writes about gold and silver, which he calls “the third color”:

To me, gold and silver is the most mysterious of all the materials.
Initially, I could not see the use of gold and silver in my works…I considered it, foolishly enough, pre-modern and inappropriate for our present time… So you might say, my view of gold and silver has changed drastically. Today, as I use considerable amount of gold, having mastered the material, I believe that such uses of traditional materials redefined my view of Nihonga. Uses of gold and silver, in both leaf and powder forms, allowed a development of my own Nihonga expression.

When he gathered us students to teach us how to use gold, he had one of his assistants bring a clear piece of glass. He then proceeded to glue the gold right onto the glass. Lifting the glass, he showed us that the most pure gold is nearly transparent, as it cast a bluish light and halo.

When I was working on my MFA thesis painting “Twin Rivers of Tamagawa,” I used the best gold possible (which meant more than one month’s stipend would go into a painting) and layered them four times on one of the corners. I chose gold as my symbol of The City of God, descending into our world, transforming earth and heaven as described in some Revelation passages in the Bible. He later selected this painting for the prestigious thesis purchase award, and me as his only doctorate student for that year.

Kayama sensei continues in his essay:

The weight of gold and silver will capture even the passage of time herself. So one could find, within the visual space created by gold and silver, a moment of eternity.

Intensely focused on Japanese tradition, Kayama-sensei was once asked what he thought of the works that he saw in the US during his only exhibit in New York, compared to Nihonga. He answered, I am sure, with a bit of the gentle swagger I had always remembered him with, his long hair accentuating his small stature, “for me, Nihonga is painting itself; it is the one and only pictorial form.” I think of this conviction as I sprinkle gold powder onto Splendor painting. The significance of the Japanese notion of beauty is to me as clear as pure gold, handed to me by a great master.

Makoto Fujimura, New York City

Image: Splendor (for K.M.) 66x89” 2004 by Makoto Fujimura

Refractions 2: Second Wind

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions vol. 2

Second Wind


Dana Gioia, the current chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, recalls his years as a vice president of General Foods. “I would come home too late, and very tired,” he has stated in his interviews, “ but each night, I made myself sit down at my desk and simply copy the last paragraph of the essay I was working on, or the last stanza of a poem. Usually, I get my ‘second wind’.” With this “second wind” he became one of the most prolific, and influential American writers of our time.



I think of this when I, too, find myself exhausted by my “juggling act” of trying to make ends meet, raising a family in this wild city. And yet when I prepare a panel with freshly spread Kumohada paper, getting into the daily ritual of painting, I rediscover the joy of creating, no matter how tired I am. My spirit is renewed in the process. I find myself attuned to the details of life, rather than getting stressed by being overwhelmed. I find myself listening, rather than shouting into the void. This is our “second wind.” Such a state taps into what I now call eternal time-fulness.



Art is about being attuned to nuances and subtleties of life. I start by paying attention to the materials I use. I need to know them in the same way that a writer would know, and love, his or her words.



Minerals I use are like prisms, and they refract, more than just reflect. The color spectrum, and her subtle hues take a while to get used to, to truly see. The layering of these minerals reveals a mystery of reality; of a world full of life and enchantment. It is a world not of competition, but of complementation.


So today I pause, and consider the world around me, from the May irises on Greenwich St near my loft to the homeless (Larry) around the corner from my studio. When we do, and see the mysteries there, I think we, too, like Dana will find our “second wind.”


Yours for the hope of renewal,

Makoto Fujimura
http://www.makotofujimura.com

Refractions 1: Peacemakers

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 1





Peacemakers

As I spend time working in my studio, as I travel from Washington D.C. , to Japan and back to New York City, I’ve often wanted to have more opportunities to share what has transpired, and inspired me. This is my attempt to do so regularly. Refractions is a way to keep you updated on my journeys in art, faith and travels.

Recently, I have been invited to partake in a very important conversation on faith and life at Yale University lead by Dr. Miraslov Volf. If you are not familiar with Dr. Volf’s writings and work, I encourage you to listen to a recent interview by NPR.
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2004/03/11_volf/

Dr. Volf, in his book “Exclusion and Embrace” discusses the theological and practical underpinnings of reconciliation beyond strife and division. He is a true peacemaker.

Jesus stated, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9) . The Greek word for “peacemakers” is “eirenepoios,” so it can be interpreted as “peace-poets.” It certainly suggest that peace is some thing to be crafted or made. We need to seek ways to not just be “peace keepers” but “peace makers.”

Art can play a central role in our making of peace. Jim Hall, the legendary guitarist, in receiving the Jazz Masters Award this January, stated: “Jazz is our great peacemaker.” When jazz musicians travel around the world (they are more respected today outside of the US than inside), their music carries a message of collaboration, the freedom of improvisation, of community — really the fruits of democracy.

As I prepare for my next exhibit here in New York, called “The Splendor of a Medium,” I am thinking about (and listening to) jazz, peacemaking, and the hope of renewal in these days of strife. The gallery, Kristen Frederickson Contemporary was birthed after September the 11th, 2001, right near Ground Zero. Our efforts at TriBeCa Temporary http://www.tribecatemporary.com helped to pave the way for her to establish this gallery. Art does not shy away from divisive truths, but rather, as Dr. Volf would have it, gives opportunity for embracing of the “other”. We are, in the very nature of the creative act, exercising the making of peace.


Yours for the hope of renewal,

Makoto Fujimura, New York City
http://www.makotofujimura.com