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by Makoto Fujimura

Explore how the arts and faith live together and how you can bring healing to a hurting world through your own creation.

Is there a world where artists and conservatives come together to create hope and healing for a hurting generation? What would such a place look like, and how can two groups of such different cultures communicate? Makoto Fujimura, award-winning artist, brings artists and conservatives, believers and non-believers, together in Refractions, a series of essays, thoughts, and prayers about faith and the arts. Become inspired by life, and learn how to bring healing to the world through your own creation.

Available February 1, 2009. Read more or purchase your copy at www.navpress.com or call 1-800-366-7788.

Author Bio:

Makoto Fujimura was born in 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts. Educated biculturally between the United States and Japan, Fujimura graduated from Bucknell University in 1983 and received an M.F.A. from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music as a National Scholar in Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) in 1989. During his years in the program, he experienced “a transfer of allegiance from art to Christ.” His book River Grace (www.rivergrace.com) traces his journey of mastering Nihonga technique, using carefully stone-ground minerals including azurite, malachite, and cinnabar, along with his deep wrestling with art and faith issues.

In 1992 he became the youngest artist ever to have had a piece acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Fujimura was appointed to the National Council on the Arts, a six-year presidential appointment, in 2003. WORLD magazine honored him as its Daniel of the Year in 2005.

In 1990 Fujimura founded The International Arts Movement (www.iamny.org), an arts advocacy organization that wrestles with the deep questions of art, faith, and humanity. His writings on art and faith issues have appeared in Image Journal, Books and Culture, American Arts Quarterly, and WORLD magazine.

Im reading “Blue Pastures,” by Mary Oliver, and this quote jumps off the page, grabs me by my reluctant neck, and says “Pay attention!” I hope it will grab your neck as well.

“…the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to
creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and
uprising, and gave it neither power nor time.”

What permission do you need to set aside time? I have one suggestion! Set aside June 5-9, 2009 for the Next Via Affirmativa Gathering in Colorado Springs …

Gary Bradley

Permission Granted!

by Christy Tenant

If I paint more excellently than any other, but I do not communicate love in my painting, I am nothing more than an offensive noise; like Pavarotti accompanied by an out-of-tune piano: a mockery of the beautiful.

If I possess divine insights and wisdom, and even if I have strong spiritual fortitude, but I cannot speak the truth in love, I am nothing to boast about.

If I am generous with my art, my talents, and my creativity – exhausting myself for the sake of my craft – but the people around me do not feel loved or served in humility, I have accomplished nothing to speak of.

An excellent artist can wait for her moment, though years in the making, because she understands that recognition does not equal excellence; Van Gogh never sold a painting.

An excellent artist is kind; he makes his gift accessible and available to all who love and appreciate beauty.

An artist devoted to true excellence does not envy those who are more accomplished than she is, nor does she boast to those who have not accomplished as much as she has.

An artist of excellence does not reek of arrogance, nor does he have a reputation for being rude.

A truly excellent artist works well with others, appreciating the unique gifts and insights they bring to the table, rather than immediately assuming her way is the only way. (And she doesn’t get an attitude if the team decides to go in a different creative direction!)

An artist who is excellent does not secretly get a charge out of others’ failures, but rather encourages those who have tried and failed to try again. By the same token, he does not offer false compliments or patronizing feedback. He finds a way to be gently honest and constructively critical, because he values truth.

An artist or creative catalyst devoted to excellence in his craft sticks with it to the end. She doesn’t give up out of ego or pride or frustration or failure, but keeps hoping and believing in the source of creativity, turning frequently to that source for sustaining inspiration and grace.

Finally, an artist committed to excellence understands that creativity does not happen in a vacuum. Rather, it flows from a deep, rushing river, created by God and fed and filled by others who have been given the creative gift as well. The artist who stays close to the river and drinks often from it, by looking to and appreciating the beauty reflected in others, grows in ever-increasing excellence.

This artist is truly excellent.

One might say each artist is connected to the river from which all creativity flows, sometimes as a spring and sometimes as a tributary, and through this connection we have access to an ever-flowing source of inspiration, grace and hope, available to all who come to drink.

Christy Tennant, of the International Arts Movement

Colorado Springs, June 6, 2008
VAF Gathering

Post a comment for Christy here  and see the IAM website at www.internationalartsmovement.com

“Art encompasses the satisfaction of words well used.

Poetry and rhetoric and just plain stories are definitely part of our artistic heritage.

Most of life cannot be reduced to watertight propositions or exhaustively described.

Our finitude guarantees error, whether or not we realize our mistakes.

But from Homer onwards, words carry and describe our deep engagement with reality and our deep longing to transcend our daily contexts.”

Writers?  You may start your typewriters/laptops and create some art!

Thanks Donald

by Gary Bradley and Donald McGilchrist
 
Long before men could articulate their ideas in written form they captured the divine experience, the mysterious, with art. Cave paintings, rituals, voice sounds, instrumental sounds and gestures were among the many attempts to convey the
abstract.
 
In “Art: A New History,” Paul Johnson writes, “The first point to grasp is the immense fecundity of humans producing objects of art.” It’s arguable that art predated not only writing but that it was closely associated with the ordering instinct which makes society possible, and therefore, that it has always been essential to human happiness.
“The artist was the first professional,” says Mr. Johnson.
 
It’s fascinating how God could have so trusted the spirit and ordering instinct of man to engage in His truth and convey the spirit of it to his neighbor. One wonders, “Why didn’t God invent structured writing ‘in the beginning’ so there would never be error about those mysterious eternal essences?” Somewhere in the human spirit there emerges a longing to express the divine artistically. Perhaps error was not God’s big concern with man.
 
What role did Christendom play in celebrating and/or crushing the iconographic urge?
For, to represent God in form through the arts seems to be inevitable, irresistible.
 
As I reflected upon the verses below, it thrilled me to see that God has entrusted the revelation of His being, though the ages, to the hands and hearts of those who longed to see Him.
 
“God, after He spoke long ago…in many ways…in these last days has spoken to us in His Son…through whom also He made the world…And [the Son] is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power …” Hebrews 1:1-3
 
Apaugasma (a- pow’-gas-mah); Greek word that expresses the visual radiance from a source; or effulgence: brilliant light radiating from something.
 
This has helped me to see that through both the written word and art, and many other ways, the radiance of the Divine shines forth and is seen.
 
What has been the history of the church in lifting up the works of the artist to express  such radiance? But more importantly: What will our role be in this endeavor? Have we paid so dear a price in our pursuit of error free living that we have placed the artist at the rear of the room of truth?

I have been thinking about this question of excellence for sometime now. My interest is in clarifying some terms.

For example, often you hear about excellence in reference to what is deemed to be ‘the best.’ Sometimes you hear about excellence in reference to ‘mastering’ a particular task or craft. These terms, if not clear for a person, can create some tension that hurts our art.

Again, for example, if you think that excellence means ‘the best,’ then you get into a competition with others that probably will come to no good. Regrettably, I think that is what is happening when you submit art to a show. Someone ranks the art as to what is perceived to be the best—but is it really? We all know that it is the judge’s opinion.

So I wonder; do we have a way of speaking of excellence that draws out of the artist something good, something that speaks of their talent as it is reflected in their effort or context? Contrastingly, and perhaps on a broader scale, few people in today’s cultural milieu seem willing to say that there is a standard of excellence. Anything seems to go.

Where has that led us and where is it leading us to?