This post was written by Mako Fujimura. Makoto Fujimura is an artist, writer, and speaker who is recognized worldwide as a cultural influencer by both faith-based and secular media. A Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts (2003-2009), Fujimura has contributed internationally as an advocate for the arts, speaking with decision makers and advising governmental policies on the arts. Fujimura’s work is exhibited at galleries around the world, including Dillon Gallery (New York), Sen Gallery (Tokyo), The Contemporary Museum of Tokyo, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts Museum and Oxford House, Taiku Place (Hong Kong). Fujimura’s second book, Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art and Culture, is a collection of essays bringing people of all backgrounds together in conversation and meditation on culture, art, and humanity. Fujimura founded the International Arts Movement in 1992

New City Church has partnered with Mako to bring The Four Holy Gospels, and his piece Charis-Kairos, to downtown Phoenix in our New City Studio! The exhibit opens at 6pm and closes at 10pm. Makoto Fujimura has dedicated a large part of his recent years to the intersection of faith and world class contemporary art. His work titled The Four Holy Gospels is an exquisitely designed and produced edition of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the English Standard Version, published in commemoration of the King James Version’s 400th anniversary

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Mako writes:

As we move into our season of Advent, my thoughts are still swirling about my recent experience of illuminating the four Gospels in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Over a year ago, Crossway publisher (ESV) commissioned me to do five major paintings, 89 alphabet letters (as illumined letters for each chapter heading), and over 140 pages of hand illumined work, and I have been more or less sequestered in my studio to focus on what some have called the “commission of the decade.” However enduring or significant it will turn out to be, I am still in awe of what I experienced while embarking on this project.

There has not been a commission of an individual artist like this for some time, and excepting the likes of Barry Moser and William Blake, no one has really even tried to translate a contemporary visual diction into direct relationship to the text of the Bible. Of course, there are calligraphic visions (most notably the St. John’s Bible) that have adorned the Bible, but what I was interested in was the fusing of the contemporary, abstract images that take the influences of Rothko, Rouault, Pollock with the visual vocabulary of 16th Japanese paintings into a distinctive Twenty-First Century offering; I wanted to dare to create a new paradigm in visual language through this project. I also wanted the offering to be readable, accessible, and even useful in worship; every detail is a theological discourse as well as visual design.

Why would one take this journey? The only reason that I can even begin to think in such audacious terms is because I believe in the audacity of the Incarnation. The greatest mystery, and the miracle of miracles, is that God became a man to dwell among us—that he took on flesh. That was not simply a single temporal event in history, but because of the resurrection, it has become a continuous unveiling of an incarnational history in the making. That means that “taking on flesh” continues to be generative. The Bible makes this ontological journey to the birth of our Savior into a great, expansive adventure of grace that Christians recognize as the “Great Commission.” But the very development of portraiture, visual perspectives, and scientific discovery owe their initial impetus to the audacious claim of the Incarnation: that since God became fully human, individual faces can be celebrated, and, even in the broken universe, a consistent, individualistic and rational expression can be valid in a “closed system” of nature. As Jesus taught us in Matthew six, we need to “consider the lilies” before we can engage in the work of the Kingdom. That act of faithfulness through and to natural reality around us forces us to create in the “now,” to trust our senses, and even revel in the fragile beauty of our world. We, just like the Magi, need to follow the stars to their logical destination.

So in my studio, I “consider the lilies,” and take my Magi journey through the desert of the contemporary art world. I take earthly pigments (azurite, malachite, gold, platinum) and mix them with Japanese hide glue; I paint on hand-lifted Kumohada, made in the cold valley of Imadate, Japan, using brushes particularly made for heavy, granular pigments. As I pour these extravagant materials, I “paint with Jesus’ tears,” ephemeral and yet enduring, compassionate yet prophetic. Christ’s tears are embedded in every page (sometimes literally as a theme), as an offering of God’s incarnation in the Atomic age. Our imaginations, in the last century, lead to the greatest of destructions. The arts and sciences together have now a greater responsibility of not just creating something new, but reversing the curse created out of our own fallen intuitions and knowledge. That is our new Manhattan project, the star we follow into our new century, leading us on towards Christ’s generative Reality.