Next week, for a podcast which I co-host, I get to interview artist Makoto Fujimura. Fujimura’s art has been featured in the New York Times and The Atlantic. He is cofounder of Kintsugi Academy and has served on the National Council of the Arts in the United States.
The foreward to Fujimura’s most recent book is written by theologian NT Wright. Here is what Wright says about Fujimura:
Makoto Fujimura is one of those rare artists with the ability to explain what he does, why he does it, and how his vocation makes sense within his larger worldview. Since this worldview is explicitly and intricately Christian, this makes him doubly rare.
Fujimura’s art and theological reflection describe much of what I refer to as “hopeful theology”. His book “Art and Faith” includes description of what he calls a "Theology of Making”
I now consider what I do in the studio to be theological work as much as aesthetic work. I experience God, my Maker, in the studio. I am immersed in the art of creating.
This “making” is reflective of the concept of vocation in hopeful theology. That is, a theology that emphasizes the heart of Christian (and human) identity is in vocation. Theology that has articulated the Christian call as salvation of the few and damnation of the many has presented a dark eschatology, a view of the completion of things that is almost entirely bleak. Fujimura’s art and reflection articulate instead that true Christian apocalypse (unveiling) is about beginning, not end. Making and vocation help us to see this.
Ivan Illich talks about the concept of “the assumption of scarcity”. Within religion this assumption often finds expression in the idea that only a very few people are “saved”. This is a way of seeing salvation that is transactional and self-focused. In education the assumption of scarcity finds expression in the relentless drive for higher education as achievable only for a few. Illich helps us to see that in previous centuries the church was seen to be the purveyor of salvation where as more recently salvation is understood to come by way of the university. Fujimura is one of the writers/artists who is helping point towards abundance rather than scarcity. He asks,
What if what is central to God’s reality is not the mechanistic, utilitarian survival of the species, but the exuberant abundance of Creation and New Creation?
The God of the Bible is the God of abundance. Therefore, Jesus’ preaching addresses the mindsets of scarcity-ridden, fear-filled followers. ‘Consider the lilies’, “love your enemies,’ ‘blessed are the poor,’ the many parables that assume abundance at the core of our lives - they all point to the greater love.
Fujimura, in his art and his writing, calls us to a hopeful faith. In a cultural context that is too often filled with arguing, accusation, vitriol and dehumanization he suggests, “Instead of debating, Christians ought to be involved in Making.”
If we could see our vocation through the eyes of the artist we could all, Christian (and human), “be involved in Making”. Jesus was the great Artist, calling us to open our minds, awakening our spirits towards love and leading us toward the promise of abundance.
It is the artist who puts a dew drop on a canvas or plants a rainbow in a dark cloud or brings our world alive with colour or puts the shimmer on a moon. It is the artist who discovers and creates and reinvents and renews.
If we look through the eyes of an artist, we, also, can experience God.