First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Makoto Fujimura

Renowned artist Makoto Fujimura discusses the link between his Christian faith and his creative work. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 17 Mar 2011
Audio Format:: other

Renowned artist Makoto Fujimura discusses the link between his Christian faith and his creative work.

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

I just knew that there was something that I was born to do, and that created me with you as part of it. Twenty-seven years after Perth, I realized that that call was from this Creator God to give us the Bible. Renowned artist, Makoto Fujimura joins us today on First Person. Welcome everyone. I'm Wayne Shepard. Our guest lives and works in New York City. Makoto is an artist, writer and speaker who's recognized worldwide as a cultural influencer by both faith-based and secular media. His original artwork was recently published in the Four Holy Gospels, an exquisitely designed edition of the Four Canonical Gospels in the English Standard Version by Crossway, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. We'll begin talking with Makoto in just a moment, but first, especially if you are a new listener to First Person, welcome to our weekly program featuring the life stories of people who've been called of God to serve him. You can find these interviews archived online at firstpersoninterview.com. There's also a calendar there at firstpersoninterview.com. Makoto Fujimura excels at what he does and gives all the credit to the work of God in his life. His quiet but powerful witness to the world is remarkable and reaches far into an art culture with a simple message of the gospel. As we started the conversation, I asked Makoto how he responds when people ask him what he does in life. It's really a funny problem that I have when I'm sitting next to somebody in the airplane and they ask me what they do. I have to say I'm an artist and they say really? Does that promote conversation or shut it down? It usually leads to explaining what is it that I do. You can certainly understand if I say I paint or maybe illustration would be much easier than what I do in the contemporary art. The assumption is there's this automatic suspicion. You're one of those. You're one of those people. You paint things that my kids can do and put up on museums and have this big ego. I kind of have to anticipate all these questions that I try to say in a way that would explain what I do to people. It's such a privilege to be able to work every day creating something and to follow your passion. I'm one of the few I think in the world that can say that. I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about it, but it does take a few minutes to explain what I do. I know how fundamental your faith is. Really, your faith comes before your art, doesn't it? Also, in some ways, art preceded the faith that I have now and yet it goes together. I could sense God's presence whenever I was creating something. I just didn't know what to call that. I wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I realized that was this Creator God that gave us the Bible. I'm always aware in the Creator processing the tension of that. There is a starting point that originates out of time and space. It's this mystery that I cannot even come close to and yet through the Creator process. You're asking questions about who you are and the nature of reality, what it means to live today. How shall we then live? So artists are always delving into sometimes difficult questions that really have no straight answers to. But we are compelled to create objects or write songs that in some ways articulate. I think what all of us are feeling and looking for. It's very interesting because I'm hearing that the very act of creativity leads you to questions which led you to faith. Is that still happening as you create today? It's still leading you deeper and deeper? Absolutely. It's like diving into this deep ocean and you realize no matter how deep you go, it gets deeper. It's this mystery of discovery. Therefore, I think art is fundamentally necessary for faith. I'm not talking about the superficial decorative aspects of it. I'm talking about the questioning and those creative types are always able to tap into something that we can't really articulate yet. But everybody feels is there and that's why when we hear songs or when we see works of art that resonate with us, we are like, yeah, that's how I felt or that's what I have been feeling. These are the questions I have been asking all along. I just didn't have words. I just didn't have images or songs to sing. So that's the gift of a creative person. Tell me about the home that you grew up in and when did you encounter Christ as the answer? I grew up in an agnostic house. My father is a well-known scientist and my mother is an educator. I grew up in this very creative environment where they affirmed my creativity to such an extent that I didn't know that that was not normal until I went to middle school. It's the great leveler. Isn't it middle school? You come home and you realize, wow, I get to space and time for doing all these creative work, which was always assumed in my home, but it's not true out there. So it took me a while. I went to undergraduate college in Pennsylvania and that's where I met my wife. So I began this journey through literature and sciences and I was asking, exploring these questions. In fact, my first exposure to the Bible was a King James Bible, which I read I had to read because of Shakespeare, Milton and William Blake. We'll come full circle of that in a few minutes, by the way. It really is significant for me. I really didn't understand half of it. The language is beautiful, but what is this guy Jesus saying about? Was there someone that came into your life that helped you then? Well, absolutely. My wife had a deep spiritual side and she introduced me to all these people. When we went to Japan, I received this national government scholarship to study there for six and a half years to master this technique on the Hongga, which is this thousand year tradition of using pulverized minerals and gold and paper and so forth. My wife began to attend this interdenominational church and I went with her at some points and heard the gospel there. It really didn't connect until I went back to what I was reading in college days, Milton, Shakespeare and William Blake. All of a sudden, it sunk in that this God that they spoke of and they knew this person of Jesus Christ was so consistent. The message is so consistent throughout history. Meanwhile, at the same time, I'm studying Buddhist text and scrolls and copying them to master the techniques of these artworks from 15th century. I can see and follow me in the syncretic nature of all religions, Shinto, Buddhist, that Christianity didn't share. Christianity had this absolute consistency. It was radically different. It was radically different. I was struck by it and they kept on telling me, "Have you really looked at Jesus? Have you really considered him?" They were like, "Sure, I know who he is." I didn't know. I kind of went back to reading these books of poets that I respected. They were artists, like me, who questioned deeply about nature reality and doubt was part of their faith. They went through ups and downs, and yet at the end, especially William Blake, landed on this orthodoxy. I felt when I went through that process, I had a kind of a guide into faith. If this Jesus, throughout so consistent, throughout history, how he defined love as the sacrifice that I would not know unless somebody died for me, that kind of sacrifice, then I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to know that love because, as I said, creativity leads to these deeper questions. Actually, I was making these beautiful paintings using these amazingly extravagant materials. I could not understand or justify this beauty that I was making because I knew in my heart that I didn't deserve it. There was just tension and dissonance. Every time there was one time I was painting, I had just completed this very large landscape. An assistant professor just walked in and announced, and he took a look at my painting that I was working on. He said, "This is so beautiful. It's almost fearsome. It's almost scary and walked out." What I did was to wash the painting down, destroy it. I just could not accept that praise. I was in a place where, to be honest with myself, and with the ideologies of our days, where aesthetics, you go to art schools or you go to study art and the critical dialogue today is that their beauty is to be distrusted. If there is goodness or truth involved, it is suspect. Irony and shock is the only way to approach today's dialogue. I was in that camp. To hear my professor tell me I was creating something beautiful. What raised questions you didn't want to answer? No, I did not want to go there. I destroyed the painting. That was kind of a beginning of this journey. We'll learn more about this talented artist, Makoto Fujimura, coming up on the second half of today's first person. When you join us next week, you'll meet author and speaker, Eric Metaxas. We've been in a culture that's so secular with the cultural gatekeepers. They don't understand this stuff. And I said, "That's not right." And I really felt a passion to use the gifts God's given me as a speaker, as a writer, to speak into the culture. The biographer of both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Wilberforce, Eric Metaxas joins us next week on First Person. When Makoto Fujimura joined me in the studio, we continued talking, and I asked him when he first made the connection between his faith and his art. I was reading a poem by William Blake. I had been going to attending this church that my wife was involved in. And I was beginning to see the consistency of the message, you know, the gospel. And I decided that if that love that Jesus was offering was true, there's nothing more that I want. Now, I didn't realize that's when I became a Christian. But looking back, it took a year of really people asking you questions. But at that moment, I knew that my life was completely changed. I knew that the direction, the questions were changing. And therefore, my art was changing. Everything was new, you know, and a new purpose, new direction. I wanted to let everybody know that this is what I found, you know, in this reality of Jesus 2000 years ago was so significant and powerfully present at that moment. There was nothing I can do but to speak of him, you know, every day. And people probably thought I was, you know, nuts. And then, you know, and then the other side of it is I go to my church and really nobody understood what I did. I was not. So I was double exiled. You were a man without a country? No, I was absolutely not. And I felt really alone and isolated. And I had my wife, but she, you know, was perfect. You know, was praying for me, but she didn't know what kind of follow Christ. I would become, you know, and I am kind of this all or nothing kind of guy. So once I decide on something, I am 100% there. And so every day, you know, I would be immersed in reading the Bible and going to all these meetings. And so I knew my life has changed. Now, I didn't know what to do with my expression. I don't know what that was going to become without becoming missionary, you know. And I was open to all that at the time. But eventually dawned on me that, you know, I had this prestigious national scholarship that, you know, only very few people in the world is selected to. And I was in this lineage program that spans back a thousand years. And I was selected the first outsider of the university, that alone first foreigner, to be part of this. Only two people get selected each year. And I was one of those people. So God entrusted that with you for a reason. That's right. And, you know, it didn't, I guess, take me long to realize God has intentionally done this, that he had this plan way ahead of my understanding that, you know, he would bring me back to Japan to become a follow Christ. And that I would be immersed in this technique, you know, that had I planned it for myself, I would not have chosen. And yet. I love to hear your story of coming to Christ. Talk more about this technique, this specialized training you receive. You are one of the world's leading artists using this now, right? That's right. And it's called Nihonga. And it's an interesting problem that Nihonga has. It's a traditional 1000 year tradition. But now with, you know, all that's happening with pollution and, you know, so-called advancement of, you know, cities and so forth, we're losing a lot of the traditions. And so it's in a sense a disappearing world of painting. But you're using minerals and gold and silver and on the paper, it's actually a collaboration with nature and craftsmen and goes way back. The glue you use is this Japanese hide glue that has been refined over time. And just everything. It's slow art. Well, this is one of those times when you literally have to see it to believe it. And I think the best we're going to do is put links to your website on our first person interview.com website where listeners can go and view some of this tremendous art and God inspired art that you do. But it's also come together very recently. Now, you mentioned earlier that the King James version of the Bible was the first Bible that you read. This happens to be the 400th anniversary of the King James 1611 Bible. And that has led Crossway in you to come together, Crossway Publishers, in a very special project that you opened up for me a few minutes ago here in the studio. And it just blows my mind what you've done to describe the project. Crossway Publishing publishes the ESV version. And ESV is the, as far as linear, just concerned, it comes straight from the King James Bible. So for the 400th anniversary, they chose me as the artist to be commissioned a lume in the four gospels. So I have been working on this for last year and a half. It's called the four Holy Gospels Bible. It's oversized, it's very large, the printing is just as extraordinary. Oh, it is. It's remarkable. They came to me saying that we will, you know, spend our expenses. We want to do the best possible printing that can be done. And of course, I get suspicious when people say that, but they really meant it. And so each time I will get the proof done and the process is excruciatingly complex and long. So I've been sequestered for last year and a half, working on five major paintings, one for each of the Gospels plus a cover piece, 89 letters for each of the chapters, specifically designed for each of the chapters. Every page of this Bible has some of your art, 140 pages of hand, contemporary art that goes thematically with what's being said in the text of the Bible on that particular page. It's just astounding to look at and so aesthetic, so beautiful. Congratulations on that. And again, we'll put links on our website so our listeners can check it out. Just before we have to wind up here today, I want to touch on the international arts movement because I know you feel strongly about this as well. Describe what it is and what you're hoping to accomplish. Yeah, I began when I find myself isolated as an artist operating at a high level in the art world and I realized whenever you feel isolated, you begin a movement. That's just what you do. No one else can do it. And I just said, okay, yes Lord, I don't want to have this Elijah complex of being depressed and complaining all day. So I will pray towards peers that it doesn't have to be visual artists, but it could be any field operating at the highest levels and yet keeping their faith together. And I began to run into a few people and so international arts movement began as an effort to make that into a movement, a catalytic movement. Fellowship and you have conferences. Right, and we really do this as an art organization in the public square, so we're not even explicitly questioned, although we let people know that we are operating from a biblical perspective. But we want to create a rehumanized dialogue that allows for safety for people to ask deeper questions. And so we welcome people who are artists, or even entrepreneurs. We have a lot of creative catalysts to our CEOs, companies, their teachers, their mothers are involved. He's a catalyst in many ways. If you'd like to learn more, we've placed links to Makoto's website at firstpersoninterview.com. In addition to his website, there's also a link to the four holy gospels recently published by Crossway with Makoto's beautiful original artwork. And by the way, it's available as a digital download as well. Look us up online at firstpersoninterview.com. A very special welcome this week to our new listeners with several new radio stations now airing First Person. Each week, a guest joins us to tell their story of Faith in Christ and their call to serve the Lord. You'll find a calendar of upcoming guests as well as an audio archive of all past interviews on our website, firstpersoninterview.com. Next week, our guest will be author and speaker Eric Metaxas, whose book on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been extremely well received as one of the key books of the past year. He also wrote Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce. Eric Metaxas next time on First Person. And now with thanks to my friend and producer Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepard, we'll meet here again next week for the First Person. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]