Refractions 13: Finding Neverland

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 13
Finding Neverland: Inviting orphans into our theatres
March, 2005





From The Terminal to The Polar Express, old-fashioned innocence is back in Hollywood, winking her magical charm into our lives this year. But this charm seems most evanescent in Miramax’s “Finding Neverland,” which I recently happened to catch en route to Osaka for an exhibit at Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery.

Finding Neverland casts Johnny Depp (John Barrie, as the Scottish playwrite of Peter Pan) and Kate Winslet (dying mother of four children, including Peter) in a tender look at John Barrie’s life and offers a background (apparently fictional) account of the creation of Peter Pan in 1905. It offers rich reflection into the nature of creativity, of an artist’s struggle to incarnate his hopes, and an admirable exploration into the very nature of belief. Neverland is a place, if believed, all can enter into.

Believe in what, you might ask? And these latest Hollywood movies seem to want to convince us to believe in at least something (remember Polar Express, with Santa’s deep and resonant voice?), and the world would be a better place. These movies pit children’s innocent beliefs against our adult cynicism: saying something like “if you don't believe, you can’t really meet Santa or get to Neverland.”

But we may want to reverse that question to ask: “Where does this desire in wanting to believe in belief come from?” And that’s the imaginative landscape Finding Neverland really invites us into. By the way, if you ever doubted Johnny Depp or Kate Winslet’s ability to act with great depth, and incarnate that tension between cynicism and hope in a most serious manner, the movie greatly encourages a new assessment. You see, good art does move us to believe in the possibility of belief, whether in ultimate reality, or wanting simply to have hope in desperate circumstances. One Japanese commentator noted: “Though the actual historical evidence does not line up to the story told, this only goes to show how much a movie, any movie, is suspended belief in movie making itself. Neverland, the movie, is indeed the true Neverland to be believed in.”

John Barrie, in the movie, invites 25 orphans into the theatre for Peter Pan’s opening, with the plays’ financier, played by Dustin Hoffman, becomes irritated, as Berrie has the children sit next to Edwardian arts patrons. It’s the children’s innocent laughter that brings life into initial tense moments, as Peter Pan is unveiled. It’s their wonderment, as they see Peter Pan fly across the stage, that moves the respectable gentlemen to begin to be children once again. Believing, which Barrie insists to be most necessary for the children’s health and growth, must be incarnated into action. Neither this movie nor the character of John Barrie would be convincing apart from his own wrestling with this very question, and actually being torn by the gap between his own vision and the reality of survival, while also experiencing fully the cruelty of death. It’s in that brokenness, that Barrie’s own heart is moved to sacrifice his freedom to commitment, embracing the orphans into his own theatre of life.

The Greek word in the New Testament for “believe” is “pisteuo,” which suggests not belief as a sheer intellectual exercise of having “blind faith”, or to imagine and will us into irrational faith, but belief as a relational axis of trust. Good acting, and good art, moves one to this place of trust. What inspires us, after all, is not being force-fed to believe in belief itself, but to be moved to desire in believing, and exposing our deep need for trust in each other. That pisteuo compels us to a greater sacrifice for each other. Neverland brings us effectively to that place, to create a shelf for such a longing for a greater love. In that place, orphans are always welcomed into our imaginative enterprises, shocking us out of conventional comfort zones.

Now, if a movie can communicate all of this via the10-inch screen of a United flight from Newark to Osaka, and woo this weary traveler to land in Japan with joy and delight, that movie must be deemed successful. The word “entertainment,” after all, originally meant “giving rest to the weary”* or even hosting strangers into your home to nourish them. If Hollywood can begin to truly do this, we would be no worse off than that. It might even feed our orphaned souls, waiting for hope, waiting for Neverland.

Makoto Fujimura
www.makotofujimura.com


*Thanks to Dr. Bill Edgar for this insight.

Photo: from Nagasaki Koi Installation at Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery, Osaka

Refractions 12: A Visual River of Gold

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 12
“A Visual River of Gold”
February, 2005







On a grey February Saturday morning, I headed out to experience the unfurling of the “Gates” installation at Central Park. When I arrived at Columbus Circle, the thousands of orange gates (7500 total) lined up in the walking path, greeting us. Before the unfurling, you could see through the gates like some op-art piece, each rectangle repeating itself, creating a visual echo. Through the winter trees, the skies began to clear, with wispy cirrus clouds highlighting the evanescent sky.

The workers, wearing their grey vests signed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, waited for the first moment of unfurling, all time coordinated with walkie-talkies and visual cues. Watching them work, I realized how much of this project must have been an extraordinary, communal experience. Their excitement and dedication were palpable in how they moved together, stumbling through the details at times, but definite in united hearts and enthusiasm.

Their cries of glee went up as the first of the gates was unfurled, the worker using a long pole to unzip the fabric, with a cardboard tube falling with a thud (the rolls are rather heavy, and they were warning each other to make sure no one got hurt with them). When the first one fell, I was standing but a few feet away, and the tube bounced with a loud bonk, and startled me. But then, these bonks were heard echoing through out the park, a colonnade for a visual feast to begin.

“Wow, just like the drawings…” one of the workers mused as they continued to work along the path.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude have done public projects for years, the most memorable ones being the Biscayne Bay, Miami pink surrounding of islands, and the ghostly enveloping of the Reichstag, Berlin. They fund their own projects by selling lithographs and drawings, making sure that the art is free to be enjoyed by the public. These drawings are collage-like, overlapping photographs and charcoal drawings. I have admired them for their connectedness to landscape and city drawings of twentieth century post-war Europe and nineteenth century Hudson River painters. But this morning, I could not but agree that the drawings themselves have the power to create reality before they happen. As part of their artistic vision, they impart expectation for the viewer to collaborate before the project takes place. And the actual, transformative experience is in realization of that suspended belief crucial to their work.

The art of the early 21st Century may be remembered for its collective move from inside of the studio to the outside. Andy Goldworthy, in his Rivers and Tides documentary (now available on DVD), recounts how he began to create his works at the beach on the way to his art classes, and realized that the world is his true “studio.” Christo and Jeanne-Claude certainly paved the way for this paradigm shift. The most significant contribution of their works will be to help all of us believe that the world is the greater and more significant studio or stage, and, more importantly, to see that our own creative vision can directly affect landscapes and cities. As we journeyed through Central Park this February we, too, can collaborate with them with our own desires and dreams. Just like the workers contributed so in synch, we, too, can collaborate with one of the greatest idealists of our time.

I met Christo and Jeanne-Claude at a gallery opening in Ginza, Tokyo during their installation of the umbrellas in Japan. When I complemented him, he insisted on giving credit to his wife, to make sure she was included as an equal partner. Born on the same day (he in Bulgaria and she in Casablanca), and later meeting in Paris, they still live in a walk-up loft in Soho. Their affection for each other and their life-long partnership in creativity seemed rather unusual in the ego-infested, greedy world of art.

They insist on not taking volunteers, but paying them, and for this project they paid for all the police overtime pay. They insist that they do not benefit from the proceeds of the sales of merchandize, desiring that their art be free from the consumer mentality that drives the art world today. An exile from a former Soviet bloc country, Christo seemed always to be a consummate utopian, and Jeanne-Claude his greatest champion. Perhaps the greatest ideal that they uphold is the belief in their partnership in life, and their hope for a pure collaboration and communion with the public.

Christo called this offering “A Visual River of Gold.” I looked up this morning, as I was meditating on this idea of “gates”, that the scriptures use the word “gates” 111 times and “gate” 222 times, so to note their cultural and spiritual significance. Revelation passages speak of many pearly gates, on top of the golden streets of New Jerusalem. The City of God will apparently be a visual river of gold. I am reminded of my mentor Matazo Kayama (see Refractions vol. 3 ) pasting a gold leaf upon a class room window telling us that “good gold, without much silver, is ever so transparent, and true pure gold is liquid.” It’s important to note here that pure gold, as stipulated here in the scriptures, is liquid and not solid. We will be walking through gates, literally walking on a river of gold. In that day, metaphors will be replaced by the density of Reality, the vision of hope unfurled into a true and lasting city. These orange gates, therefore, seem to me to symbolize a cultural and spiritual passage from a solitary life to a community, from devastation to restoration. When Christo and Jeanne-Clalude first imagined the project 26 years ago, Central Park, once so magnificently envisioned by Olmsted and Vaux, was a place of crime infestation and dilapidation. Though, I am sure, the artists will insist that there is no singular purpose attached to the gates, we can surmise that their utopian ideals cannot let one of the greatest miracles of city design, called Central Park, sit idly in devastation.

As the workers passed out swatches of the saffron fabric at the completion of the unfurling to eager partakers of this art-communion, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s utopian ideals sowed seeds of imagination into us all, already to tackle the next project, wherever and whenever that may be.



Makoto Fujimura
www.makotofujimura.com

Photo: taken by Makoto Fujimura, Copyright Christo and Jeanne-Claude 2005

Refractions 11: Surfacing Dolphins

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Vol. 11
January, 2005
Surfacing Dolphins







In sunny Santa Barbara, California last December, I had the pleasure of being invited as a visiting artist at Westmont College. One morning, I got to take a walk along the beach, only a few minutes from a hotel filled with Charlie Chaplin posters. Home of multi-millionaires and legends of the arts (Martha Graham grew up there), it does not take long to get seduced by the blissful scenery. One of the professors at the college told me to look out for dolphins swimming in the morning, and sure enough, a group of them frolicked in the blue grey horizon.


As I began to interact with students in the art department, I began to assimilate into lives of youth and the limitations and potentials of a college environment. As I walked the beach, I began to ponder: “what really is art education?” I had in mind an earlier incident at one of the classes. A professor encouraged students to bring out their best works to show me and very few students seemed bold to volunteer. So I suggested to the students, “Bring out works that you don’t like.” In a few seconds, we had a portfolio of works rejected in student’s minds as unworthy. We may all have a closet full of works that we are not proud of, works that need permission to come out.

We live in a culture of perfection, or at least in the superficial resemblance of things perfect. When we look at ourselves, we are trained by our culture to cover up our imperfections and blemishes. At school, or in business of life, we are driven to compete against others to refine and perfect our art. Yes, we need competition to excel, but if competition does not teach us humility, but only shame, the very business of education can create a culture of death. The best critique I have received in my life came from people who taught me who I was not, not just what I was good at. Failures teach us more than successes. Isn’t education about giving us courage (the root of the word “en-courage”*) to take risks to fail?

James Elkins, a professor at the Art Institute of Chicago, wrote a book called “Why Art Cannot Be Taught” (University of Illinois Press), in which he comes to three conclusions:

1) The idea of teaching art is irreparably irrational. We do not teach because we do not know when or how we teach.
2) The project of teaching art is confused because we behave as if we were doing something more than teaching technique.
3) It does not make sense to propose programmatic changes in the ways art is taught.

We make assumptions about teaching art, apparently, that are not really justified by the very philosophy we have come to embrace in the art world: do we really have anything to say to each other if every effort to communicate is fragmented, as in Derrida’s labyrinth of languages? What are we pretending to teach, then? Aren’t we sowing more confusion, by pretending to teach while in such a fragmented state?

But as I walked the beach in Santa Barbara, one thing remained perfectly clear to me. As we are drawn to the sun, we will always believe in the significance of the experience of that light. Art depends on the light that reveals our gestures, surface tensions and even fragmentations. Irrational or not, just as the dolphins so predictably visit the bay, we will just as predictably come back to that light via our art. Further, it takes faith to see the significance of each surface movement, it takes faith to teach art, and it takes faith to learn.

Since Westmont is a Christian college, I also began to think about what allows a Biblical worldview to permit us to explore the mystery of each teaching moment. Since I make assumptions that James Elkins chose not make, and assumptions that our pluralistic colleges and universities would not assent to, I realized I was aided by the very “limitations” I have come to embrace. I can assume that such a thing as “teaching” is beneficial, because I have been wooed by this world-view to have faith in the God who communicates, and, as a result, to have faith in communication itself.

Our pluralistic society demands complex communication via various cultures and languages. If you have faith in a Creator that communicated via the pure “media” of stones etched with the Decalogue, you can make assumptions about communication, for instance, that 1) you can indeed speak and be understood, 2) what you hear is mediated by a benevolent mediator and not random echoes of an empty world, and 3) there are laws that govern our relationships and by accepting these boundaries, we communicate better. These presuppositions are what today’s pluralistic society desperately looks for, in order to communicate to each other, but cannot fully embrace. I have learned from scriptures to pay attention to works (in my life) of which I am not proud. They speak to teach us. I have learned that what the ancients calls “repentance” is a journey of coming home to a place where all of our wretched works rest, but also where our wretchedness is overcome by light. That reality can powerfully alter how we view our lives and our art. Even our wretchedness cannot confine us, ultimately, to reaching across boundaries of cultures. But indeed our wretched state may be what draws us together.

But really, you might be asking, isn’t it just your optimism, and not your faith? Aren’t you blind to the reality of our present condition to state such a rosy picture? Perhaps, and it will be optimism, and not faith, if we cannot take failed works and learn from them. Blind optimism cannot truly teach, because of the continuous denial of our failures. Faith is more honest. The honesty reveals our weakness, but, at the same time, points us out of darkness into the light. That’s what scriptures teach us. Scriptures teach us grace. Our world does not.

Take “Sideways,” a movie full of Santa Barbara scenery, for example. It is an ambivalent, brooding impasse of a movie, but with a few poignant moments. The characters play out their frivolities to a typical irreligious fervor noting along the way their obvious cynicism toward life. Just as professor Elkins continued to teach in art schools, despite his cynicism toward teaching, movie makers insists on making movies that celebrate how lost we really are in the light of the California sun. Perhaps a pluralistic society breeds cynicism, or even a false, Sisyphean brand of optimism, because so much needs to be overcome in communicating. Perhaps a “winner” today looks like a cynic celebrating in the light of a false Eden, drinking his pinot noir (all alone). Watching this movie reminds me that acting, as teaching, assumes much based on the zeitgeist swimming about. I can only hope that a college environment can challenge such normative paradigms of the day. We need to create an environment that can encourage even a cynic how to operate in a paradigm of a true, lasting desire, rather than continue to lie our way into fleeting desires. After all, how else can we entertain the presence of dolphins in our lives, playfully swimming in the refracting rays of Santa Barbara?


Makoto Fujimura
www.makotofujimura.com


Recommended reading: Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage (Gingko Press)
Read Schuchardt, www.cleave.com His essay “Splendor of a Medium” in my recent catalogue is a gem.
*from a friend/sociologist Tony Carnes

Image: Recent “drawing” from the studio

Refractions 10: Christmas Eve Edition

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions: Vol. 10
Christmas Eve, 2004 Edition
A Beer Toast at Sato Museum, Tokyo




Mr. Harada, the organizer of the “Considering Peace” exhibit last year, surprised me with a suggestion: “How about if we close our exhibit on the 24th, Christmas Eve?”

“Considering Peace” was a benefit exhibit of over 120 artists, mostly from Japan. I initiated this idea as I planned for a Christmas exhibit at Takashimaya Gallery in Tokyo. Mr. Harada was one of my first collectors when I began my career in Japan in the 1980’s. A fire-chief turned cultural entrepreneur, he kindly agreed to become the project’s chair. I and a few other New York and London based artists participated as part of a greater effort called Christmas in Peace. The works were donated and auctioned, and the benefit ended up raising over $36,000 for UNESCO for children in Afghanistan.

Considering that the majority of the artists were not Christians, we decided not to use the word “Christmas” in our titles. Many of us, who were Christians, wanted to, via art, experience Christmas in a new way, by serving others in a foreign city, therefore removing ourselves from the context of over-commercialized frenzy we often find ourselves in. We wanted to “consider peace,” ourselves.

So it came as a surprise to me when Harada san suggested this idea: and I was almost incredulous when he kept on going with his requests. “What if we had candlelight? I mean, isn’t that what you do on a Christmas Eve? Can we sing Christmas songs?” And then he, using very polite, honorific words, asked me. “We would be quite honored if you could speak about the true meaning of Christmas to us.”

Even with the polite culture of Japan, a culture in which they are expected to honor guests from abroad, this request surprised me. But the whole project seemed to take on a life of its own. Artists started to arrive from all over Japan, not just to donate their works, but also to volunteer so that the museum staff would not be overwhelmed. We sensed there was much more than politeness at work.

Earlier that month, Mr. Kei Tatejima, the chief curator of the museum opened the artists’ panel event, introducing the project this way:

“This ‘Considering Peace’ was a collaborative effort bringing together unprecedented efforts from Japan, US and UK. But I want you to know that the idea behind this is not just to raise money, but to celebrate Christmas in a meaningful way.”

Japanese public television came to cover the exhibit, and over 3.5 million viewers were introduced to art works covering the walls of two floors of the museum space. Apparently, an exhibit like this has never been done in a Japanese museum before. So unique was the effort that Mr. Tatejima had to inquire with the governmental officials about the legality of the exhibit. They told him that though it was indeed unprecedented, it was legal to do so within certain guidelines. Then, there was a buzz among curators of other museums and galleries to follow suit. They wanted to know what the guidelines were, so they could do similar exhibits. Many Japanese regional museums sit empty, built during the bubble economy of the late eighties. The funding dried up after the bubble burst, and many museums now have no resources to buy paintings, or even to mount a serious exhibit.

The art world there, just as it is in New York, is in desperate need of a genuine community. If museums could be a place of gathering where artists and the public can come together to work to benefit the world, then even with limited funding, they would benefit us all.

What inspired me most came from the mouths of the artists themselves.

“We do not have a forum to gather like this any more. I find myself all alone in my studio. I realized that I needed a community like this more than I thought.”

“ I did not think that there was anything I can do to affect the world’s grave situation. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I was wrong to think that way.”

We came to serve these artists, and they ended up serving us. They opened their lives and hearts to us, inviting us to their studios and homes. Via a small window of each individual pieces hung, we saw a glimpse into how peacemaking is indeed a creative process. In their sincere effort to participate, and honor us, we had deep and meaningful dialogue that transcended our cultural and political differences. The creation of a “safe space” where we can agree to disagree is crucial in the creation of culture and community. Such a space, filled with the art of hospitality, invites us all to be artists of peace.



So, on Christmas Eve on 2003, artists gathered at Sato Museum in Tokyo. There was quite a sumptuous spread of food. It was the first Christmas Eve party I experienced in which we started the evening with a beer toast. One of the artists arranged to have a huge Christmas cake made for the occasion, and it had Santa on top, skating in a pond of chocolate. After a singer songwriter friend sang Christmas melodies, I shared about what I learned spending my Christmas season in Tokyo.

“A Japanese pastor wrote that the most important message of Christmas is that Jesus was born as a babe, weak and vulnerable to the world. A baby is utterly dependent on a mother and a father, and others helping the baby to survive. Imagine, one who would claim to be the all-powerful Creator in flesh, becoming vulnerable and DEPENDENT on fallen human beings like us!

But when you think about it, a baby’s strength also lies in this weakness, as he or she draws people together. The message of Christmas is a paradox. It is through the weak that power is displayed. It is through the vulnerability, that true lasting security is gained. It is through being utterly dependent on others, that a true community is created.

The message of Christmas, then, can be applied to what we do as artists. What would our art look like if we truly believed that through our weaknesses, through even what we are ashamed of, we could create something that is lasting and meaningful, and incarnate hope back into the world. What if the power of a community is not in the display of power, but in the acknowledgement of our weaknesses? Artists can play an important role in helping a community to be authentic and honest. Japanese aesthetics already embraces the idea that weakness is beautiful: that what is wearing away and what is imperfect actually points to eternity.”




I had my own epiphany last December, while preparing for this project. I began to wonder if Japanese culture intrinsically longs for the true message of Christmas even more than our American culture. Less than 1% of the Japanese claim to be Christians. But, the Japanese traditional culture affirms vulnerability and loss. Japanese poems and paintings from the Heian period (794-1185) are full of sorrow and sadness, and their poetic tradition of “mono-no-aware” can be literally translated “beauty in the pathos of things.” They already recognize that, on this side of eternity, we must see the beauty in an empty cup.

As Americans, we immerse ourselves in our quest for individualism and champion material gains. We parade our “winners” and avoid being seen with the lowly “losers.” We want heroes that are powerful and self-sufficient, and not someone who chooses to be vulnerable. In searching for dominance, we would walk right past that babe in the manger today. In fact, baby Jesus may be the opposite of what we desire as a culture to worship. We are quite undeserving of this gift, but Jesus came to us so willingly. Among the messy, smelly, ordinary stenches, He became the candlelight in our dark, terror filled world. He came knowing that he himself would be snuffed out, betrayed and rejected by winners and losers alike.

Those who celebrate this birth know that this is not the end of the story. Today, when we open this gift of Grace, we are embraced by an eternal mystery. We open a gift of hope that breathes life into us, whispering that death is not the end. Such a message transcends our cultural blindness, and any nationalistic biases.

Christ came so we could fill the empty cup of sorrow with the wine (beer) of community and creativity. Christ came to fulfill a longing for beauty that the Japanese culture is already attuned to.

I was convinced that evening in Tokyo, that Jesus invited himself to be among artists who may not even know His Name (as Jesus is known to host some parties like this in his time). Some of these artists, I suspect, have already sensed his presence in their studios as they labored to create peace via their paintings. All gifts of creativity, like the Magi’s stars, point straight to a stable in Bethlehem.

One artist commented, “I never knew that Christmas Eve could be so meaningful and fun…why aren’t we doing this every year?”

Why indeed.



Christmas, 2004

Makoto Fujimura


http://www.christmasinpeace.net
http://www.cihope.net


Image: Akiko Urakawa, “The Vine”, from Considering Peace Benefit Exhibit

Refractions 9: Dances for Life

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 9: Dances for Life


On a balmy November day, we were privileged to attend the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities awards at the White House. Among the luminaries awarded were dancer Twyla Tharp, science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, writer Madeleine L’Engle, opera composer Carlisle Floyd, and remarkable architectural historian/teacher Vincent Scully.

One of our duties as National Council members is to recommend to the President recipients of the National Medal of the Arts. The initial nomination is open to the public, and we have simplified the process on www.nea.gov , so should you desire to make a nomination please nominate worthy individuals to us.

My highlight of the day was to be able to congratulate in person the accomplishment of Twyla Tharp whose revolutionary combination of classical discipline and ballet technique transformed modern dance. She noted that the last time she was at the White House was to accompany Martha Graham for her reception of the Medal of the Arts. She wanted to honor, in receiving her award, her mentor and to thank the N.E.A. for our long time support for modern dance.

When I was briefly considered for the position of Chair of the Endowment two and half years ago, I was interviewed by the assistant to the President in domestic affairs. Escorted to the West Wing of the White House (which, unlike the spacious image from a television show, is cut up into small offices so many can work there; cramped like a college dormitory.) I remember being interviewed by Margaret Spellings, now the nominee for the Education Secretary. As I spoke to her, I found myself insistently advocating for dancers. She asked me why I was so passionate about dancers. “Martha Graham said that ’the dance is the mother of all the arts,’ I know first hand a dancer’s struggle to continue their craft which is so limited by time and physical demands.”

But afterward, I did wonder, too, why I was so “passionate” about dancers. Perhaps it’s because I cannot dance at all, or know very little about the craft, and I have seen tears of young dancers involved in trying to make sense of why they continue to seek opportunities despite setbacks and financial difficulties. Getting to know young dancers at my church, befriending a fellow parent (Jonathan Hollander) at our children’s public school who is a choreographer, or going to see brilliant, aggressively physical performances of Elizabeth Streb with my children, I have begun to experience the world of arts in a different way.

Recently, at my current exhibit “The Splendor of the Medium” in New York, I stood in front of a new painting, speaking to Pennie Ojeda, the international liaison for the N.E.A., about how my own paintings have begun to be affected by dance. “I recognized that my own way of painting was a dance, moving about the painting laid on the floor, freezing, via my brushstrokes, the movement of my body, the drips, and spreading of colors. “ She then noted how the video of “Nagasaki Koi” seemed to be choreographed, Koi fish and colors slowly becoming, in their backward swirls, their splendid whole.

Scripture (Psalm 30) speaks of how God turns “our wailing into dancing.” Art is inevitably driven to our physicality, and both the potential and limitation of all of our craft will remain hidden in our bodies. In this fast techno culture in which engagement with the movements of our own bodies is restricted, we may be tempted to ignore such an age-old principle of our being. But I suspect that all artists will eventually return to explore the direct connection with the physical and ethereal. I suspect that, in that moment, we will again celebrate the “mother of the arts,” and applaud those who so sacrificially gave their energies, sinews and bodies to the passion endowed to them. In that sense, dancers advocate for our whole humanity as they dance; we, by advocating for them, affirm the gift of physical grace, though limited by time and space, and witness for but a fleeting moment, gravity defied.

Makoto Fujimura
December, 2004

“I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination. There is a great deal of outer space, distant from our daily lives, where I feel our imagination wanders sometimes. It will find a planet or it will not find a planet, and that is what a dancer does.” Martha Graham, Blood Memory (Doubleday)

Also recommended reading: Holding On to the Air, Suzanne Farrell, (recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, 2003) , UFP publishing

p.s., While I was at work on this issue of Refractions, I received a sad note indicating the passing of dancer/actor Gregg Mitchell. He collapsed while onstage with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Kennedy Center. Though I did not have the privilege of knowing him personally, I know that many Refractions readers did. May God comfort his family and friends at this time of sorrow: and may our longings be fulfilled as God turns “our wailing into dancing.”

Image: Splendor- Koi, 89”x66” Sumi ink, Gold powder, vermillion on Kumohada Paper

Refractions 8: Nagasaki Koi Voting Booth

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 8





Nagasaki Koi Voting Booth

“The Voting Booth Project: Where art and democracy collide…” was the title of a benefit exhibit at Parson’s School of Design that I was being invited to. Curator Chee Pearlman gathered fifty designers and artists to give each artist the infamous portable voting booths (with “chads” still inside!) from Florida in the 2000 Presidential elections, and was asking us to do whatever we desired to transform it.

Initially, I was reluctant to partake, being an apolitical artist, but after looking at the photo of the booth (strange, awkward but intriguing device), and learning that it was to benefit Declare Yourself, a bi-partisan voter registration organization chaired by former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, I decided to participate.

When I received the booth and set it up, I was struck by both the simplicity of the device and fragileness of it. It came as an aluminum suitcase, and four folding legs unwound themselves to be attached in the bottom four corners. The blinders, that created privacy to vote, were then opened to attach to the edges of the suitcase. Sure enough the chads were still there, gathering with dusts in the corners, a flimsy reminder of an historic election. I also noticed that the plastic enclosure that would have the voting cards inside reflected quietly from the dark enclosures of the booth. The florescent lamps, attached at the top, would have lit the punch cards as it was inserted, but in my booth, they did not work.

My art has been about precious materials refracting, and how that quite emanation speaks to both our souls and eyes. But faced with this device, I had no idea how I would begin to create. I did not want to paint it, nor deal with it in some plastic terms.

For The Splendor exhibit at Kristen Frederickson Contemporary Art in New York City, I had been developing a language of refraction into a video installation using a video I took in Nagasaki last December. It is a close up of Japanese Koi carps swimming in a pond near where the second atomic explosion took place. I had purchased small TV monitors to include the video in a boat like container.

I decided to have a cloth cover for the booth, and asked a friend, who happened to have graduated from Parson’s fashion school, to help. She was delighted to contribute to this effort, and created a grey veil for the booth. The idea was to enclose the booth, to make it even more private. I wanted to place the small screen inside, with the images of Koi inside, and let it reflect off the plastic enclosure of the all-important voting cards.

I wanted to create a sort of a prayer room in which enormity of individual decisions can be reflected (or refracted) by the images used. When a New York Times reporter contacted me, I found myself trying to explain what I had decided to do.

“So you received the booth, and set it up in your studio,” she asked me, “and then what happened?”

“Well, I began to think about the privacy when we vote. I mean we are all alone in there, in this darkness. We are supposed to cast a vote, which is a statement of a kind of faith, faith if not in a person, at least in a process of democracy.”

I later thought how much like a confession this whole process of voting could be, too. The issue of honesty, or integrity is involved in making a decision, however polarized and imperfect the decision.

“It’s an beautiful video that you installed…it is from Nagasaki?” The reporter continued.
“Why Nagasaki? “

“I am a ‘ground zero’ resident now, living three blocks from the towers, and after 9/11, I really was troubled by the use of this term. I later realized that in a sense all of earth is ‘ground zero’ in a sense that our failures and conflicts invade every aspect of our experience, leaving scars. Ever since, I have been dealing with this term in my work. I believe that artists can be an agent for renewal and healing, to play a small part in rebuilding the world…”

“So it’s not a political piece…but you are one of the few conservatives, or even considered Republican, are you not?”

“Yes…but in my work, I try to go beyond the screaming matches of culture war. I want art to be a place of dialogue.” I then emailed her an essay I wrote for The Splendor catalogue (partly because I felt so tongue tied during the interview).

A few days later, in the New York Times the reporter recaptured what I said:

“The only openly Republican participant, Makoto Fujimura, kept his political affiliation to himself in “Nagasaki Koi Voting Booth.” Peering through a small slit in the dark fabric which covers the booth, viewers glimpse a video of multicolored Japanese carp swimming in a pool near the spot where atomic bombs fell on Nagasaki in 1945. ‘This pieces is about history and tension and the issues we face today in this atomic age,’ said Mr. Fujimura, who lives near ground zero in Manhattan. ‘I wanted to create a hopeful image, an image that wasn’t sarcastic or even political but that reflects the private moment of voting. I consider it an almost spiritual event.”

I was surprised by the respect (despite her ‘angle’ of needing to interview the only conservative in fifty artist they chose) she’d given to what I said. Actually, she articulated what I said more succinctly than I could have surmised myself. I felt, as I always do in these newspaper interviews, forced to articulate what I had only began to understand intuitively. She even gave me the last paragraph of a long article in which she quotes Christo, David Rockwell and other luminaries. Evidently, I had a friendly interpreter, this time.

We may feel just as awkward walking into a voting booth. The flimsy voting booth may damage our trust for the process of democracy, or, in the future, the uncertainty of untested devises may create concerns. But then this lack of precision in the process should not prevent us from casting a vote. Voting forces us to chose, to put closure to decisions we may have been vacillating about. By casting our vote, we do put into motion into a world a stamp of an intention of our hearts. No matter how perfect the voting machines may become in the future, this act will always require a type of faith. Our small voices do end up refracting into a swirl of political and chaotic world. But even then, we may trust that these voices of privacy and, perhaps, our prayers for a better world, can be registered. Even in the awkward and biased refractions of our intent, in voting or in a newspaper interview, the core value of what we believe can still be manifested.

Makoto Fujimura

“The Voting Booth Project: Where art and democracy collide…” continues at Parson’s School of Design until November 15th at 2 West 13th St., NYC

The Splendor of the Medium opens this Thursday, October 14th at Kristen Frederickson Contemporary Art, 149 Reade St., NYC. Please go to www.makotofujimura for updated information on the exhibit and the catalogue.

Refractions: Special Election Issue : "L.I.B.E.S.K.I.N.D."

Photo of azurite rock by Ryann Cooley, used for my “Splendor” exhibit invite

Refractions: Vol. 8
Special Election Issue November 3rd, 2004





The P.S. 234 gymnasium, two blocks from Ground Zero, was nearly empty when I entered to vote. This is the same gym where my children played basketball, the same gym where they waited for evacuation orders on September the 11th. Except for a woman police officer, and several volunteers, the space seemed unexpectedly vacuous, as I had in mind long lines being formed in other parts of the country.

There was only one lady in front of me in the “A-M” line, and she tried several names before she had to move across the gym to the “N-Z” line. She had just gotten divorced, and her frustration could be felt in her silence as she moved away. As my turn approached, I put forward my driver’s license before I stated my name. I’ve learned over time that “Fujimura” is better communicated by visible means, rather than audible. I helped the officials to find my name in the black voting registration booklet, and began to lean forward to sign my name. The lady looked up at the next person on line.

“Libeskind…L,I,B,E,S…” I heard this voice from behind me.

“Libe…what?” The lady asked. As Daniel Libeskind started to spell his name again, more slowly, this time, I turned to face one of the most important architects of our time.

Daniel Libeskind was chosen over many other world-class architects vying for the design to replace the World Trade Towers. His design, which features a Freedom Tower soaring to be 1776 feet high, seemed to me the most transcendent of all the design ideas. Since the selection, the design process has been co-opted by a political process with the owner of the towers bickering with local and Port Authority and MTA officials. Now, although six major architects Frank Gehry (multi-arts complex), Santiago Calatrava (transportation hub), and David Childs (appointed by owner Larry Silverstein’s choice to work with the Libeskind design), and Arad and Walker Memorial Park, are now trying to work together in the same site, Libeskind’s design and vision will still be the most visible and important aspect of the new skyline.

Small in stature, wearing his long, square glasses and black outfit, he smiled broadly as I introduced myself. I complemented him on the designs of crystal-like towers, which are now being built only a few blocks away from the school. I told him I am a local artist, and gave him the invitation I happened to have in my pocket (artists: always carry your invitations cards!) for a current exhibit, also a few blocks away.

I told the poll workers that he is a very renowned architect, and started to help them with his name. “You are an artist?” asked one of the workers, still quizzical, to Mr. Libeskind. He said, very kindly pointing to me, “no, but he is,” and showed the lady my invitation card. He told me afterwards, outside the school, that the design of the card fascinated the poll workers (a photo of the front of the card is above, a collaboration with Ryann Cooley, a photographer friend). I thanked him for his generous spirit and as we parted, I noted how the fiery Japanese maple in the schoolyard was lit in the quiet light of this TriBeCa morning.

At the news conference in February of 2003 after his design was chosen for the site, Daniel Libeskind compared the “slurry walls” that surrounded the base of the towers to the resiliency of democracy. “The foundations withstood the unimaginable trauma of the destruction,” he stated then, “and stand as eloquent as the Constitution itself asserting the durability of Democracy and the value of individual life.”


Thus, two creative artists with strange names did cast their votes this morning, two blocks away from Ground Zero. I was fortunate that both of our names were hard enough to spell to have enough time for a genuine conversation with an important architect. No matter what the future holds, the voting process spells out names of countless faces, one by one, and all votes will be counted equal after all. Perhaps in that sense, it is good that the poll worker did not recognize us. They do not have to know who we are: they just have to identify our unique names in the black book, two artists trying, even with their votes, to honor those anonymous names etched in the slurry walls of democracy.

Refractions 6: Special 9/11 Edition

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Vol 6: Special 9/11 Edition
September 11th, 2004





The Disintegration Loops

“I thought I had been unwittingly commissioned do the sound track to the end of the world.” So reflected musician/composer William Basinski at a gathering in Greenwich Village to commemorate the first anniversary of September 11th. In the background played his melancholic composition, Disintegration Loops.

“ I had recorded these bucolic, pastoral tape loops off the Muzak station in the early eighties, and slowed them down a couple of speeds,” Billy recalled, “but at the time they were too perfect and finished for me to do anything with.” Some twenty years later, he rediscovered them, in the process of archiving tapes at the end of their shelf life. “What I heard now blew me away. Each one of the loops disintegrated in its own way, its own time, holding onto to the end to what made it individual, and yet letting go of unimportant substance. I realized I had recorded the life and death of each of these melodies. ”

On September 11, 2001, Billy watched in horror as the twin towers fell, peering over the East River from his loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He had even been scheduled to have an interview for a job at the World Trade Towers that morning. Finding himself numb to what he experienced, he now heard the Loops he was working on in a different way. “I put the tapes back in to start to edit. Then I realized that the work felt like an elegy to the horror I just witnessed.”

I listened to the Loops with Billy soon after, as we looked at the footage of video Billy took of the sunset over the smoke of the fallen towers (clip seen above). The sound of the Loops resonated and somehow completed itself in my mind. It affirmed an idea that came out of conversations with artists around my home and studio, what was now Ground Zero. We needed to gather our thoughts, pray, and reflect on what had happened as artists.

TriBeCa Temporary began in November of 2001 as a result, and held over 20 exhibits, Happenings, prayer meetings, and poetry readings until our closing exhibit in April of 2001. My studio mate, Hiroshi Senju, kindly contributed a small space. We called it our “Ground Zero Tea House.” We both could not work in the same ways we had been working. At least for a while, we need to pause and reconsider what was important to us. (My personal 9/11 journey is described in my essay Fallen Towers and the Art of Tea. www.makotofujimura.com)

Billy shared with me that he had begun to lose his desire to continue to work, or even to continue to live after that day. He, like many other artists, felt devastated by the experience. Just like the loops of his tape, he himself found his inner strength beginning to disintegrate. His heart was oppressed by fear and anxiety. But as he gave redemption to these loops, and as he helped us in creating TriBeCa Temporary, he himself began to find an echo of a greater redemptive grace. He began to hear the “still small voice” of God pointing him to eternal hope. He began to breath in trust, and dared to create again.

The release of the cd “Disintegration Loops” soon followed. Loops won numerous accolades, and is now featured in NPR’s “Weekend America.” One reviewer notes: “The Disintegration Loops still wield an uncanny, affirming power. It's the kind of music that makes you believe there is a Heaven, and that this is what it must sound like.” (http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/b/basinski_william/disintegration-loops.shtml)

When I listen to the Loops, I experience once again the disorientation we all experienced on that day. But through the very sound of disintegration, I also hear the refracting voices of eternity. Art offers such power to pause, and a potential to find healing in the remembrance of things past. Art may be, at times, the only true memory we own in our experience of disintegration. Art may even point to a greater, redemptive plan beyond “the life and death” of each of our melodies.

www.mmlxii.com
www.tribecatemporary.com


Makoto Fujimura, New York City

Refractions 5: A Parable of Roots (Beijing Journal)

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 5






A Parable of Roots (Beijing Journal)

Due to my brother’s wedding to a Chinese American bride, I had the opportunity to travel through China with my two boys. In Hong Kong, we visited my painting, “Golden Pine,” (read more about this painting at www.makotofujimura.com, under “works”) an enormous commission of 2000 at the Oxford House in Tai Koo Place, the home of CNN/Time Warner. We then traveled to Shenzhen, Kunming (a beautiful south western province) and then to Beijing.

I was relieved to find the “Golden Pine” painting to have done well in the public setting; the minerals have settled well, and the layers of gold and silver have taken on the transparency that I desired. The silver, on the bottom, was exposed intentionally to allow it to tarnish, creating a new sense of movement. The azurite now has a glowing quality, and refracted quietly in the humid Hong Kong air.

Then, as a first time visitor to main land China, I was stirred by the enormous flux of culture, the tension between the old and the new. After the cultural revolution, and the sociological impact from their “ground zero” of Tiananmen Square in 1989, Chinese cities now have become a capitalistic adventure more like Hong Kong. And yet, the sad result is that this remarkable feat of creating new techno-savvy airports and city infrastructures, highways and fancy malls is causing rapid inflation, and a growing schism between the rich and the poor. Many contemporary Chinese artists, like Hai Bo (exhibited at Max Protetch Gallery in Chelsea recently) are expressing from this divide, often subverting technology to reveal the inner tension of progress, and expressing a longing to understand their community and family roots in a new China.





What happens, then, in a country where pre-modern culture is thrust beyond modernism, and brought into the avant-garde of the 21st century? China has always been identified with her culture built on ideological unity. Two of Beijing’s symbols, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, now capture not only the past glory but the present tension. Communism worked, in a sense, like the Great Wall, insulating her citizens from the outside. But now, it attracts tourist worldwide, inviting people, rather than keeping them at a distance.

The Forbidden City, the enormous golden Imperial city in Beijing, is now surrounded and dwarfed by new buildings of 21st Century progress. China is still a Forbidden City, and she flirts with visitors, inviting and distancing them away at the same time. The tension is clear, the identity and the stronghold of communism dominates her past like the thick walls around the Forbidden City, and yet the sense of new nationalism grows ever more powerfully in the faces of Chinese. Even as the past is boxed in, as the enormous walls desperately protect a museum of the past glory, the future grows ever more ominous as Beijing prepare to host the next Olympics.
-----------

When I was finishing the Golden Pine in my studio in New York, one of the designers of the building came in to observe. She noted that the bottom of the painting is exposed paper, and that there is a subtle allusion to the roots of the pine trees. The silver that is on the right bottom, tarnishing now a little, was also intended to create a separate space. The pine, a symbol of longevity of culture, breathes in the golden air (a symbol of the City of God for me), but the bottom is of a different nature. She alluded to this and wondered out loud if the root was not to be seen, as in many Chinese paintings of pine trees, and giving dual significance of the painting.

Working intuitively as usual, I had not intended for any symbolic weight of the divide between the bottom and top spaces. It was simply a visual decision based on many years of visual language I had been developing. But now, having seen Beijing, I, too, wondered about invisible reality of a soil underneath.

When Jesus relates the parable about a farmer sowing in the Bible (Matthew 13:18-23), he tells us of the significance of roots. After my visit to China, I began to read this passage as a passage about cultural renewal. The farmer sows seeds (the “message of the kingdom”) and the seeds fall on three different types of soil. One type of soil receives the seeds gladly, but “since he has no root, he lasts only a short time.” I now read this and think of Beijing. This “root” is directly linked to cultural conditions, cultural soil. What Jesus implores through the parable is to pay attention to the roots growing underneath the ground, in places where we cannot see or observe. Thus cultivating and nurturing seeds requires attention beyond superficialities. Just as it takes years for a pine tree to mature, the sower’s job is more than just sowing, but discerning the soil.

China, for sure, is of rich soil. But the question that haunts me now is of the dual nature of the soil. On one hand, we have a country of enormous resources and curiosity: on the other is a country that is so willing to systematically wipe out spiritual interest, imprisoning missionaries and spiritual leaders, and thereby “cut” the roots growing underneath. Just like my painting, China has a dual reality. Just like what the designer noted, the question is about the invisible reality of the roots underneath. Just like in the painting, the answer to this question is not revealed but hidden beneath her layers. Breathing in the open air as my Kumohada paper is, the soil is rich to those who are willing to consider China as a parable of the 21st Century.

Yours for Cultural Renewal,

Makoto Fujimura, New York City
www.makotofujimura.com

Image: Golden Pine installation at CNN Asia - HK
Photo:Tiananmen Square, 2004

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