Episode 37: Mako Fujimura on art and creativity, the diversity and oneness of humanity and the divinity of making

David Brooks, a New York Times writer, wrote a piece not long ago which touched on my guest on this episode of the Life Well Lived Podcast. Titled "Longing for an Internet cleanse", Brooks’s short article lamented how we have come to view and experience time in the instantaneous “everything now” age we live in. The article was subtitled “a small rebellion against the quickening of time”, and Brooks wrote tellingly about the work and words of Mako Fujimura.

Brooks wrote:

"There is a rapid, dirty river of information coursing through us all day. If you’re in the news business, or a consumer of the news business, your reaction to events has to be instant or it is outdated. If you’re on social media, there are these swarming mobs who rise out of nowhere, leave people broken and do not stick around to perform the patient Kintsugi act of gluing them back together. Probably like you, I’ve felt a great need to take a break from this pace every once in a while and step into a slower dimension of time. Mako’s paintings are very good for these moments … Mako once advised me to stare at one of his paintings for 10 to 12 minutes. I thought it would be boring, but it was astonishing. As I stood still in front of it, my eyes adjusted to the work. What had seemed like a plain blue field now looked like a galaxy of color."

Mako Fujimura is a world-renowned Japanese-American artist, writer and advocate for creativity.

His fellow artist Robert Kushner has described Mako’s work as “a new kind of art, about hope, healing, redemption and refuge”.

Mako’s latest book, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making, is published this month by Yale University Press. 

It is an exploration of creativity’s quintessential—and often overlooked—role in the spiritual life. 

Conceived over thirty years of painting and creating in his studio, this book is Mako Fujimura’s broad and deep exploration of creativity and the spiritual aspects of “making” as he comes into the quiet space in the studio in a discipline of awareness, waiting, prayer, and praise.

During this conversation we try to explore this sense, of creativity and wonder and spirituality, and how those two things align.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• What the experience of creative flow feels like
• The gift of creativity, and how Mako no longer fears that gift being taken away
• The influence of memory and experience, both from his own life and the lives of his ancestors, on his work
• Global diversity, warring factions and the oneness of humanity
• The battle between artistic freedom and commercial success
• Why he writes
• What Mako learned about the universality of experience from some time spent in Cork, Ireland
• How religion and church doctrine has failed humanity, and where we, individually and collectively, might go from here

I hope you enjoy this conversation with artist and writer Mako Fujimura, about art, creativity, spirituality, beauty, freedom and life, as much as I did.

TIMESTAMPS

1:00: A small rebellion against the quickening of time
7:30: What creative flow might feel like
20:00: Does Mako fear the gift of creativity disappearing or being taken away?
20:45: His art and how it might be described, through Japanese lineage and training
28:00: Individual experience added to intergenerational and ancestral memory
30:00: Race, nationality, culture, individual expression and the oneness of humanity
39:42: How we might prepare ourselves for success
41:10: Lewis Hyde's book The Gift, and how the gift economy can peacefully co-exist with capitalistic society
49:39: The battle between freedom and commercial success
53:10: Why he writes
1:00:00: Church and religious expression and where we go from