Makoto Fujimura - Culture, Art, Faith, and the Theology of Making

Foreign.

Welcome to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton and joining me today is a special guest. This is someone whose art I really respect and was recommended by my producer, Producer Aaron. We'll just call him Producer Aaron. Producer Aaron found and recommended this guest and so I had a pretty interesting conversation with him and I'm excited to share this with you. So joining me today is Makoto Fujimura. And Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose process driven refractive, slow art has been described by David Brooks of the New York Times as a small rebellion against the quickening of time. Robert Kushner in the mid-90s spoke of Fujimura's art this way. He said the idea of forging a new kind of art, an art about hope, healing, redemption, refuge while maintaining visual sophistication and intellectual integrity, is a slow growing movement, one which finds Makoto Fujimura's work at the vanguard. So Fujimura has his art collected and featured widely in galleries and museums around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Huntington Library, the Ticotin Museum in Israel, Dylan Gallery, and Waterfall Mansion in New York, along with a number of others that, I mean, the list is quite extensive, to be honest. He's one of the first artists to paint live on stage at New York City's legendary Carnegie hall as a part of an ongoing collaboration with composer and percussionist Suzy Ibarra. He's also an arts advocate, a writer, a speaker, he's written a few books. He's recognized worldwide as a cultural influencer, and he has done some really interesting things. His books have won numerous awards, including Alder Gate Prize for Silence and Beauty. And his highly anticipated book, Art and A Theology of Making has been described by poet Christian women as a real tonic for our atomized time. So this is a really interesting conversation. And.

Makoto comes from a lens of, of Christianity. And in his book Art and Faith, he's sort of posing a question of how can creativity, this is what a lot of his life, a lot of his work is about, is how can creativity, how can art support us in mending trauma, support us in mending cultural divides, support us in returning to a kind of face, religious or spiritual or otherwise? And so some of his perspectives are through the lens of the Christian church. And so you'll hear some of that, and some of his perspective is through the lens of the artist, of the creative. And so you'll hear that. But this is a very interesting conversation about the intersectionality between art and faith, between creativity and culture. And we dive deep into some of the current cultural divides that we are experiencing or the cultural wars, and how artists and creative play a role in mending that divide. And then we talk about pain and trauma and how art and creativity can help lead us back to a sense of healing and belonging. So this is a really interesting conversation. I hope that you enjoy as much as I did. And without any further delay, please welcome Makoto Fujimura.

It's great to be here. Thank you.

Yeah. Such an honor and pleasure. And I've actually been following your work for a while, and my producer loves your, loves your work, and so he was equally as excited to have you on the show. So this is, this is one of those conversations where I feel very inspired and honored. So, uh, let's, let's kick things off as I always do, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Yeah, I, I would, I was thinking that.

To, to prepare to answer that, I, I, I, I would choose several things, but one definitely is 9 11. I lived in downtown Manhattan since the mid-90s and moved my family there, my children as an artist. I had a studio and was working with downtown artist scene. And then we, all of a sudden, on September 11, almost 20 years ago, we became ground zero residents and my children became ground zero children.

Definitely.

Created.

Redirection, certainly. And in what I have been thinking about, and many of my books come out of that reflecting on restoration from ground zero experience. And I pursue that, even connecting to ground zero in other locations such as Japan. Obviously Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes to mind. But, but, you know, in a sense, I was always circumnavigating the device. And I was born in US Went to Sweden for a while and then to Japan and then to US back to US where I went middle school to college here and then went back to Japan for graduate school to study traditional arts, notably 16th and 17th century art of Japan. So I've been applying that to my contemporary work. But that was also seminal as well.

Yeah, I mean, there's a, there's a lot in there to unpack.

There's a few different directions we could move in there. But I think the first thing that comes to mind is, you know, being a parent in a traumatic event like that and having, you know, having your children.

Yeah.

Go through something like that. I'm curious, you know, how did you face that as a parent at the time? And what, what decisions were you sort of struck with, you know, being so close to that kind of really severe Trauma.

Yeah. How are we facing it? You know, continue to really. Trauma like that really lingers. And even, even though you may think you recovered somewhat from it, that there's new normal, there's always these hairline fractures that you didn't even know existed until later on.

So my journey has been tracing those fractures and also honoring them in some way. My children all became creative, resilient, imaginative, community minded kids, and I'm really proud of how they turned out, especially due to going through that together and, you know, trying to do what we can to find restoration and hope in the midst of very, very dark times. And I feel like now with the pandemic and with social unrest that we are experiencing, these children who grew up in that kind of an environment, who had the privilege of coming out of it with resilience, has much to say to us about how we may move forward in our time of darkness. So those, those things are ongoing. Yeah.

Well, well said. Well, and, you know, I think one of the reasons why, one of the main reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is that what I find fascinating about you and your work and your. And your creative process is that you seem to look at the intersectionality between art and faith and art and. Or creativity and mending trauma. And I love this because I think in a lot of, you know, you look at somebody like Carl Jung, very prominent psychologist. I mean, he, he worked a lot with getting his clients to draw or create or write or dance or whatever the medium was, but it was, it was an expression of trying to let the pain almost in a way, speak for itself in a creative endeavor. And I think that's very potent. And so I'd like to start with the intersection between creativity, like, how do we nurture creativity to mend trauma? And then we'll look at Art and Faith, which is actually a book that you just.

We'll get into that in a second here. But, but tell me a little bit about this concept, this idea of the how we nurture creativity to mend trauma, to mend our suffering. Where did that come for you? And like, how do, where do we even begin in this process?

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. When Yale Press looked at the manuscript that, you know, I submitted, it was initially called Theology of Making, which became the subtitle, but they came back, well, what if we called it Art plus Faith? And.

Obviously as an author, you can't see the macro picture, so that made sense to me. But I think you're right. I think it captures kind of what I have been trying to do for certainly last 25 years. And yeah, I'm ending what I talk about when I talk about theology, a new creation or this hope that we have in the Bible or in life. It is finding the rubbles in front of you, walking over the ashes of ground zero and where do you look to and how do you create something new out of that? And that has been an ongoing theme. Something really took hold of me, I don't know for some reason the Columbine incident that in, you know, two years prior to 911 had significant psychological impact on my, my life and my art. And I began to paint these very delicate Columbine flowers, which the school is named after, as kind of a motif toward asking that question, you know, what, after horrific events, what do we do? And that has indeed become kind of a theme of my work. And I've done recently a collaboration and a series of paintings called Walking Water, which is these monumental size paintings that I started after the 311 tsunami and earthquake disaster in Japan, Tohoku, great earthquake. And trying to ask the question, you know, how do you walk on water after a tsunami has wiped away a whole entire village that existed for, you know, hundreds of years and generations that were wiped away. What kind of art, what kind of thought. Prayers can resonate in such a time as that. And art doesn't necessarily give you clear answers, but art helps, I think, to ask deeper questions. So, so when I find myself thinking about these matters, it really certainly was. I was forced to being facing ground zero every day coming back from my studio, which is also in Tribeca area. And you know, how do you paint? You know, the honest question is you can't face with that kind of disaster. But, but then slowly you began to think that, you know, painting is an act of hope, painting to, to face a blank canvas or any, any of the arts, when, when you are creating something, you have to have faith, at least in the future that somebody will see your work, somebody will resonate with your experience. So that in its step, the, the, the first step for an artist is to be honest and to the very realities that you're facing and document it, name the fractures, try to understand it in a deeper way than perhaps you yourself or the media or even the community around you is unable to see. All this antennae and the listening skills and perception that allows them to see between the cracks and, and to be able to capture something beautiful out of devastation. So those are things you certainly think about. It's easier said than Done. And it takes a lifetime of really discipline, daily discipline to go into your studios and just, just ask these questions in, you know, in front of, in my case, in front of painting surface, whether it be canvas or paper or so, and try, try to be, try to be as honest as you can.

Yeah, well said, well said. I mean, I'm, I'm curious about this intersection between creative endeavors and, and healing. And I, I think that we've reached a point where, at least in modern psychology, we've sort of made it hyper ego identified, hyper individualized. And there, there's a sort of like narcissism that seems to be perpetrating modern psychology in a way. And it almost feels like there's a call for artistic expression to break us free from that very linear modality that shows up that we kind of get stuck in. Right. We're a very rational culture in Western society. So for you, when you, when you are endeavoring to create a piece of art or, you know, how, how does it impact, like, how does your healing show up in the creation of, of a project? Like, I don't know if I'm looking for specific, like, I don't think I'm looking for like specific details of like what that your process looks like, but more so where those liberation shows up with the creative process.

Well, thanks for going in deep there. I really appreciate that because yes, this collective, you know, the depth psychology of young has I think, done a lot to reveal something of the unconscious of, you know, even dreams and things that we normally don't talk about. And you're right that it's not just psychology, but art and culture has become so atomized in individual individuals assessment rather than looking at a communal or collective cultural fruit that we need to be looking at. So when we talk about culture, you know, culture today is culture wars. Protecting your own belief and ideology or whatever they may be, assuming a limited resource environment and you know, trying to somehow fight your way out of it. But as we've seen this week, it is culture wars. Rhetoric will lead to real wars. When I wrote a book, Culture Care, I was responding to culture wars rhetoric in culture because artists are often conscripted into the front lines of culture wars. And we are told that, you know, you have to do work that shows either our values or transgress against them in some new way. And you know, honestly, as a whole, even though we might be branded as egotistical narcissists, you know, are not really interested in doing that because we are tapped into the collective realities and we are intuting something of cries of our hearts, cries of our communities, and we just have the sensibility to not only identify those cries, but be able to articulate through them. And you know, I, I think those ways that artists have, and I'm, I'm talking about, I'm using the word artist in a very broad sense.

Not just, you know, what I do as a visual artist or writer, but jazz musicians, theater, dance, any kind of expression. You could argue that science, as my father was a well known research scientist and he thought that scientific research requires a type of divergent creative thinking far beyond what is typically granted. And I think he would understand Jung in the same way. And so I wonder if there is a way for us moving forward to talk about cultural output as a communal reality, not just individual. And when you go to art school, you're taught to self express, but you find out very quickly being an artist in the world.

You'Re not really self expressing at all. You know, the part of it is that, but, but the more you try to find yourself, the less you find yourself, the more you are able to surrender and humbly listen to the world.

Whatever comes out at that point seems to me is a true voice that you'll find. So there's reality that's much bigger than yourself, certainly. And you know, artists trapped in their egos and self expression really has something enduring to say to the world.

Yeah. Can you, can you say more about that idea of the more more you try and find yourself, the less you find yourself? Because I think that that's, there's sort of this catch 22 or illusion within personal development or self help that, that says that you're, you're. At some point I feel, I feel like there's like this part of, of that culture that almost says like, you know, you're, gonna, at some point you're gonna realize yourself, you're going to self actualize, you're going to find, find you. And it's, it's a bit of a misnomer and it's kind of like an illusion in some ways. And so can you just unpack that a little bit more from the creek?

Yeah, no, it's, that's an interesting thread. I, I do think of it as, you know, self actualization ultimately leading to transcendence and beauty rather than like yourself, you know, like, like actually you actualize yourself in a single package. You know, when we discover ourselves, we are part of a bigger community, bigger picture, bigger reality of transcendence. And, and that makes us beautiful and so artists are all trying to do that in some way, you know, somewhat crumsy, you know, clumsy at times because we don't have the, I think, articulation that we should have in culture about the value of artists in society as a way into those integration points and a way to articulate not just your self actualization, but the communities actualization into what we need to be. You know, we have made education into a very pragmatic, individualized thing. And.

That has slowed us or paralyzed us even in thinking about, you know, really true knowledge is a collective knowledge. And we, you know, even if we might discover something ourselves in scientific discovery. But you know, when you look at the sociology behind that and you look at the history, you find out that no, this person discovered this because he or she stumbled onto this in community. So, you know, where is that connection? I don't know. I think that's an interesting question that to me goes back to culture war versus culture care. You know, culture war is this atomized reality in which we have to defend our turf and we try to self express in that way to, you know, create ideological lockdown on a fixed result, fixed way of looking at the world that is immovable and stubborn. And anybody who do not agree with you is wrong. You know, and what I term culture care is a generative way of thinking about yourself. Even if you have ideological principles that you care about, you should express your care first rather than saying that you are the only right person in the universe about this. Because a knowledge base is always shifting. You know, we, first of all, we will find ourselves changing over time. But also, you know, when you're fighting culture wars, you don't realize the damage you're doing to yourself and your children. You know, I, during the 90s, I began to, I moved into New York City, wanted to minister to my fellow artists by, you know, really being present in, in their lives. And you know, I find like most of them grew up in the church. You know, these are atheists, these are radical left, they might be called, you know, but they grew up in the church and they, they're trying to find transcendence and spirituality desperately because they missed that they or they, they may never had it in growing up. And they, I listened to their cries and I'm like, you know, I asked them, you know, tell me about the God that you don't believe, you know, claim to be an atheist. And they tell me about the church experience and I say, well, you know, first of all, your understanding of God, if my God was your Definition of God. I wouldn't believe in that God either. You know, I will run as far away as possible from that kind of an oppressive community. But I, you know, I then, and therefore I understand the cries of your heart. I really share that now, especially.

With understanding the world over time and, you know, working through ground zero conditions of not just New York City, but other places. I understand why these things happen. So. So when people fight culture wars, I don't think they understand the generational impact and damage that it has. It has, you know, and you're still trapped in it if you, let's say, fight from the other side. Yeah. So we need to have a language and communal conversation that move beyond that experience of pain, you know, and having lived and worked in ground zero for so long, I understand the trauma and effect of trauma, which causes to make decisions based on fear and anxiety and limited resources. And.

So I totally get it. But at the same time, my understanding of the world as an artist, as I face my canvas, is that, yes, there is communication. Seems impossible, but it is possible. And I'm going to make my attempt every day to communicate, hopefully out of love, not out of fear.

Yeah, I mean, it's. I think what you're saying is interesting. Reminds me of. There's a gentleman named Richard Rohr who's written a few books, and in. I think it's in Falling Upwards, he talks about, you know, stage one and stage two of. Of life and of faith almost, and how in stage one, we sort of get caught in these culture wars and the semantics of the ego almost, that are externalized within our culture. You know, what we do in the name tags and the labels that we put ourselves, et cetera, and that we in some ways, live in a stage one culture. And so it's almost like what I hear you saying is that. That the role of the artist culturally, is to help the unconscious, to help the. The heart and soul of the average individual to move into this maturation or to help sort of pull something out. And so two. Two questions come out of that for me. One is, is that accurate to what you're saying? And two, what do you feel like the role of the artist is during this sort of time, this age of chaos and crisis that we seem to be living through? What role does the artist play?

Yeah, great question again. I. So. So the tribal boundaries are shrinking and entrenched, erecting higher and higher walls. And so.

Conversely, the margins are expanding.

And artists tend to be border stalkers, so they are drawn to, you know, trans, tribal Realms. So, you know, I tell church leadership about, you know, their Sunday schools and culture that we built within churches. You know, we built these high walls so a teenage sheep don't jump over them, but they do anyways.

And the church tends to create enormously creative children because we have, you know, provisions for boundaries. And so that's a good thing. And. But the problem is Jesus is outside of the wall. He is the shepherd that seeks the one, you know, that gets lost because that, you know, the sheep is meandering, border stalker, artist type that gets lost in the woods and Jesus leaves the 99 behind and. And promises to rescue that one. And I am that one. So I understand that. I heard the shepherd's voice in the wilderness. And so when I hear these artists meandering in the margins, and I first tell them, you know, you can't meander alone. It's really dangerous. You know, there are wolves out there, you know, waiting to devour you. And so, you know, let's have these travel together. And I understand their inclination to try to find cultural nourishment way outside of tribal norms, because what happens when you erect higher and higher walls to protect your sheep is that you end up killing the nourishment, the grass that you're stepping on underneath you because your territory is shrinking. Every time you fight culture wars, it shrinks. So you end up in a situation where it's untenable for any children of the church or any kind of tribal realities to function as they are created to be. And so they will jump out, they're going to run out, and they're not going to have any kind of guidance. So you often, you know, if I have an opportunity to speak to church leadership, I say, well, you know, the number one thing you have to do is look at your own lives and your own children and see if this is happening. And if it's happening, then I can help you. But, you know, until you realize that it's happening, you know, you might say that, well, here's a, you know, weird artist talking about culture, you know.

But if it's happening to you and your family, I speak before the pandemic shut down. And oftentimes there's a line. And I can always tell a person that come out to me and say, I am not an artist, but I can almost complete a sentence. I can say, you have a daughter who is a dancer, who's in Greenwich Village.

You have a son, you know, who is in San Francisco, and I can hear their cries. You know, we brought up them in the church, in these proper boundaries, and they have not only left that, but they're walking far away from it. And.

I think it's partly because we don't really have a way, when they are growing up, to address this. You know, we try to keep them in the. In the tribal zones, but one, you know, they're not going to stay there. And so, you know, how do you train border stalking teenage sheep? You know.

I think it must be possible because that is what Jesus did with his disciples. He took them outside of Jerusalem intentionally to teach them about the realities of the world, which he knew they will have to face. The Gentiles, you know, the enemies of your faith. And if we are followers of Christ in any way, we need to consider the cultural ramification of what Jesus was doing, you know, and how do we bring abundance, the assumption of abundance, of creation and new creation into that reality of, you know, teaching and.

Creating, you know, spiritual and human formation in the context of that new hope that we have in new creation. So those are things that I often think about as an artist and I write about.

So, I mean, it sounds like in your. Like, what. I think what I hear you expressing is that in your frame, the artist is almost like an extension of divinity.

Well, artists, you know, I mean, we are just as connected as a plumber, you know, but. But I think artists have been given a unique vantage point and perhaps a unique marking of reality, of suffering and pain. And, you know, because we're not driven by transactional market. Right. So we have been given a gift to see whatever we are making, art, poetry or whatever theater, we are actually tapping into the Spirit's work in some level. Even if we are atheists, you know, running as far away from we can from the church, we're still pursuing and being pursued by the Spirit.

It almost sounds like. I think you had a. I can't remember what it was exactly, but it was a connection between, I think, God and beauty. I know we're sort of getting into a very theological conversation. And, you know, I think there's a. There's a few things that I would love to maybe like, riff on for the listener here, but I think you said something along the lines of God is not a source of beauty. God is beauty. Therefore, all art, whether conscious or not, rises to that reality. Can you. Can you unpack that a little bit? Because, again, yeah, I think, like, we sort of also live in this very. I mean, something like 27% of Americans now identify as spiritual but not religious. Right. Heavy pulls of spirituality can see it in sort of like conscious communities and personal development and all this kind of stuff. And so maybe speak a little bit more to this, this idea of beauty in our world because I think there's also, there's a thread there that is connected to healing, to modality of working with our trauma that I would love for you to maybe weave together.

Yeah, absolutely. God is not the source of beauty. God is beauty. And I heard this from a philosopher at a conference in Minneapolis or somewhere around there and I, it, it stuck with me that, you know, we, we tend to have these attributes of God, you know, and God is good and God is beautiful and so forth, but we don't realize that God in, in the most intrinsic reality in it, in God's essence is beauty. So beauty is not, you know, a commodity to be.

To be used.

Beauty should be the essence of the church and beauty should be essence of all humanity because we are made in the image of the Creator. Now I understand that perhaps many of you listeners may not share in the religious connotations of that. And as you know, many of my friends sit outside of the fence and some sometimes completely outside of the gates, you know, but I, I still insist that to speak to them about this, what I call theology of making or theology of new creation, because we are built for hope and because artists of any type doesn't matter what their persuasion is spiritually or religiously, creating works in hope, in faith that such a work can exist to communicate something into the world at some point in the future, if not today. And that drive to create.

Whether it be something very transgressive, that fights against the normative conventions even there, I think there is a spiritual dimension of prophecy and speaking against power or speaking for truth in some deeper way. So we can't seem to get out of that loop, you know, and every time we create, I say God shows up. And.

We can certainly twist that inclination to create weapons of mass destruction. We can create conspiracy theories, we can create imagined fear based authoritarian regimes. But at the end of the day, human beings have enormous capacity to tap into that beauty that God, God is in, in God's essence. So I want to.

Have a deeper conversation about this because this is a conversation that I find that are difficult to have in the church.

Ironically.

But I find it somewhat more direct and more honest and more vulnerable if I were to speak an artist in a bar in Greenwich Village.

Anyways, that's what I find.

Yeah, there's a, it's interesting because what you're there's a. There's a quote that comes to mind by a psychologist named James Hillman. And he's very well known for working with psychology and alchemy and those. That sort of intersection. He says of all psychology sins, the most is more, the most mortal is a neglect of beauty. And it's sort of like this reminder that when we negate the beautiful, we almost miss a part of existence itself. You know, we almost try and disconnect a little bit from essence. And I think what I hear you saying is that beauty is an integral part of not just spirituality, not just religion, but. But of our. Of our sort of like true nature in a way, I think is what I. What I'm hearing. And, you know, I think in the. In your book, you talk about the essential question is not whether we are religious, but whether we are making something. And I found that so curious because, you know, clearly religion and spirituality are very important tenants for you. But I think this idea of, like, you know, it's not a question of whether or not we are religious, it's a question of whether or not we are making something. Can you expand on that a little bit?

So important.

Yeah. So I came at this thinking about Galatians 5, which is the episode that Paul wrote to the Galatian Church, and he insists on identifying the fruit of the spirit as love. And added to that, of course, expanded to that is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, gentleness and self control. All these qualities, he says, which there's no law against it. These are universal qualities that we seek as human beings. And I just ask the simple question, you know, if you were to ask anybody out there, what qualities of the fruit do you see in the church?

Which is actually a devastating question. And. And you can expand that. The culture as well. You know, let's say we're Americans, and we. I am. I am one. But, you know, let's say we are in a nation. You know, we sing America the Beautiful, but what kind of fruit have we engenders and birthed into the world? And it's a haunting question. If you ask that honestly, what about my community? What about my family?

What do others see in us? What do our enemies see in us? And my thought as I was writing Culture Care book, was that, my goodness, you know, if I ask that question honestly about the church, and to my friends who are not part of the church, they will. They would describe the church as exactly the opposite of the fruit of the spirit. Instead of love, we have hatred. Instead of peace, we have anxiety. Instead of, you know, you just go on patience. They have impatience and anger. So if that's the fruit that they're seeing, I'm not saying if they are accurate or whatever, but the observation is that they're seeing that. And if we ask the children of the church the same question, I think it'll come out pretty similar. And that's an indictment that the church as a whole has not been able to produce. All these individual programs that we had in, you know, churches and parachurches and movements in 20th century have not produced.

Accepting a few rare exceptions.

Fruit of the Spirit communities. And that is probably the most devastating indictment that I can ever think about, because I'm part of the church, and I want that fruit to exist in my life, my family's life, my community's lives, but it's not there. So how do I, as a artist, help to understand that and help to understand theologically, help to understand it as a way of life, generative way of life? And that's my new book.

Art and Faith Theology of Making Book, because it's a kind of a journey of over 25 years of really asking that question. I wasn't very directed at to ask it in those terms until recently, but basically the whole book.

Hinges on two words in the Bible, Jesus wept, and I think tears of Christ. The extravagant tears of Christ shows how far off we are from God, how far off we are from the beauty of the church. And yet there is great hope. And so that kind of brings us into what I do as an artist is literally paint, pretending to paint with tears of Christ so that I can address my ground zero conditions and bring mending and heating to that.

Yeah, I mean, it almost. Yeah, I think. I mean, there's a few things in there that. That resonate with me. And I think one of them is this almost like this idea of coming to terms with what's missing sometimes. You know, like what people proceed to be missing from a religion or the church or, you know, a specific faith or circumstances that might be happening in their life and coming to terms a little bit with, like, the shadow of what's there, you know, I think in Christianity and within the church historically, there's. There's also parts that they haven't necessarily mended with. And so I think a lot of people have animosity towards the church. You know, you're talking about these people that have gone through that maybe grew up in the church and have since left, you know, and I think, you know, that's just a model for Anything in life, right, that people have, you know, been a part of a community or a tribe, as we were talking about before war, and then left that community or tribe, some grievance or discrepancy with that community. And so I, you know, I think what I am sort of teasing out here, and maybe this is me reading into it, I don't know. But is that art is in some ways the bridge that reconciles that shadow, that it can be the bridge that reconciles the discrepancy of, like, what we feel has been missing, or to, you know, for the artist to express what the healing might look like from a unconscious or, you know, subconscious manner or. Or to sort of point to the things that are missing. Because I know some artists use that modality. And I remember in an interview with Jackson Pollock, he talked about walking around in the canvas and letting the paint sort of drop off and splatter. And. And that he described that when he was in the action of. Of painting, that it wasn't him. Right. He's like, I not the one doing it, and it's sort of happening through me. And so I think in that. In that way, you know, there's a beauty there. There's a connection to the unconscious. There's a connection to this sort of mystery of existence, however you want to describe that. But what are your thoughts on what I said previously? Where does that land for you?

Yeah. Jackson blog said I am nature and walked on water.

Walked on pa.

Yeah.

No.

Artists have this intrinsic drive to integrate, and they. They see a world that is fractured and they're often broken, severely broken themselves. Right. So. So the shadow of culture resides.

They live in it. And that's. That. That can. That can be a huge issue. You know, if you're a therapist trying to work with. You have to try to guide the person to say that is. That is not your definition. You know, the shadow is there, and you have been describing it well. But that is not where you need to reside. It will always be there. But you need to find ways of articulating your true identity that is able to, you know, in a way, find the light rather than, you know, the. And. And the shadow is because there's light, right? So you want to look to the light rather than living in your shadow and letting the memories use you. And that. That. That's. That's hard work. That's. Takes years of, you know, trying to wrestle with that yourself. But I think fundamentally, art can be that. Right? And. And in order for us to look into the light and to not be so obsessed with a shadow. We need people around us, right, that, that agree that that is a good thing. And so we need community that says, okay, you know, it may feel like you are dying or it may feel like you are cutting yourself off from your expression, but it will take more courage and vulnerability and it will, it will help you to, you know, navigate into the new. If you can do that and if you, and by doing that, by losing yourself, you'll find yourself, you know, that kind of a community should be, you know, should be the, the communion, the fellowship, you know, and, and I, I dare say has kind of be, you know, because we've been fighting culture wars and has decimated this understanding of the generosity of God, the abundance of God. You know, the, we are constantly thinking about scarcity, severe scarcity that, that is in front of us. And you know, when Jesus stood on, on the western side of Sea of Galilee in, in those hills and, and spoke into people's hearts.

Far more scarcity ridden than we can ever be on in America, right? Except in some, some unfortunate cases.

He was telling them to look at the lilies of the field. Consider the birds of the air. You know, like what is he talking about? Well, he was invoking God's creation. He was talking about, you know, I stood there on those hills and I'm a avid bird watcher and I realized, oh my goodness, Jordan Basin is one of the greatest migratory path for birds in the world. You know, like this is where birds from Europe fly to Mozambique every year and go back. We're talking about millions of birds. So when Jesus was talking about, you know, said look at the birds of the air, he wasn't talking about, you know, a couple English sparrows, you know, he was, he was literally talking about God's abundance, that these storks still fly over us even though Syrian soldiers may shoot at them for target practice. You know, they, they thousands of birds fly every year, every season. And that to a heart stricken with fear and doubt and oppression and legitimate, legitimate fears must have invoked something in them that they remember the rest of their lives. This preacher, Nazareth from Nazareth kept on saying.

Reminding us that there is abundance in creation that we can draw from even though we are faced with scarcity today and that there is new creation being ushered in because of the, you know, actions that will, that that will take place through this one person, you know, we will all be liberated from our bondage to decay and, and, and see the new creation through us. That that message is, is, has always been There, you know, and so that, and that's, that's the critical part of, you know, when, when I say God is beauty, we see beauty in that and if we can be part of that, we will be beautiful ourselves. Very cool.

I like that. I like that definition. I mean, I think, I think what's interesting about what you were saying in, in the beginning there was that it almost sounds like art is the expression for the unconscious unexpressed parts of us and existence. And I think that that to me is, was. It was like one of the really interesting parts about a lot of your work is that there's, you know, I'm, I'm a big Jungian person and so really believe that there, there was divinity in artistic expression and that when we allow ourselves to. I've said this time and time before, but like healing is not linear, it's, it's a non linear modality. But we have tried to compress it into something that is strictly rational and linear. And I think one of the things that I hear you saying is that when we use artistic mediums and that the role of the artist is to sort of play as this bridge between this very hyper rational means of being into this more divine place, into this connection with, with the unconscious, with mythology, with, you know, fairy tales, with divinity, with, you know, all, all of these different parts. And the one thing I did want to, to talk to you about and, and then I think we're going to have to wrap up here quite quickly actually is this. You, you talk about Kintsugi and the generation and I think many people have heard of this concept, but I'm, I'm hoping that maybe you can just touch on this because I really loved what you had to say on that. So if you can just sort of unpack.

Yeah, absolutely. I, I have a Kintsugi kit here that we developed with a Kintsugi master in Tokyo. Kintsugi is kind of a secret tradition using Japan lacquer. Japan lacquer is based in poison sumac, so one third of the population is allergic to it. And kintsugi, if you're using Japan lacquer, it takes about a year to dry. So it really is slow art. And master Nakamura, Kintsugi master in Tokyo, developed a new way of doing authentic Kintsugi, but using cashew based, what he calls new Rushi. He was forced to because he really wanted to go up north after the earthquake and.

Help the victims of 3, 11 tsunami and earthquake to find some form of healing. And he felt called to this. And so he developed this technique of using cashew nuts, new rushi, New Japan lacquer, and literally put them in a medicine bag and brought it up north and told the children, many of them orphaned, that.

I want you to bring in whatever is left in your home, your grandfather's favorite teacup or your toy that didn't get washed away. And we're gonna work on mending them. And I'm not going to do it for you. You're going to have to do this yourself.

And so he started this kintsugi workshop throughout Japan, and he would end up in other places after a hurricane or after another earthquake or. So I invited him to us and had him do a few workshops here. And it just was so transformative. In an hour, you know, three hours span, you saw people move from not even wanting to participate. Many, you know, many pastors came in and say, well, I brought my wife, you know, she's the, she's the artist, you know, so I'm just going to watch, you know, and I'll give them a crack t bowl and you know, giving them a putty and just. It's like play doh. So just play with it, you know, and. And then, please, soon they're sanding, they're mending, and there's so. It so profoundly affects them. And I think what happens when we use our hands to mend and something happens to their brain neurons, you know, start to reshape itself after like two hours of this. You're in a zone that you didn't expect to be in and you, first of all, you're in a community and all of a sudden somebody will say, you know, I brought this cup because, you know, I just broke up with my boyfriend and I was upset, so I cracked this, you know.

And, you know, I brought this cup that my mother owned and she just passed away. Or, you know, and. And all of a sudden there's this sharing of communion suffering among total strangers. And I, I've rarely witnessed this in the church. I've been a leader, you know, helping to advise in church planting for many years. And I, I've never seen this kind of effect. And, and so we're training our leaders right now. And you can follow us on Academy Kintsugi, on Twitter or Instagram. And we're trying to consolidate our kids so it can be dispersed to, you know, right. Communities with, you know, facilitators that's been trained. And I think your audience would be perfect for this. So, you know, I'll definitely follow up with you about this, but it really goes in deep into the psyches of, you know, a trauma counselor who was upstairs from us in Pasadena participating in our first workshop. And she said, you know, six months of the first sessions that I have with my, my.

My therapy.

You know, patients, it's spent convincing them that you cannot erase your, you know, you cannot fix your trauma. Right. And, and, and, and this, this is so hard for any culture of a particular American culture to understand. And she said, you know, in a span of three hours by Kintsugi workshop, you can probably get there, you know, like, because you're not trying to super glue the pieces back together to make it perfect, right? You're using Japan lacquer to actually accentuate the fractures and then putting gold on to the fissures into the fragments and cracks. And the resulting bowl, traditionally, the Kintsugi bowl is far more valuable than the original, even though the original may be very valuable. So this is new creation, new creation in the most tangible way. And so you can go through these, you know, steps really, in three hours. A child can do it. And so it's something that I, you know, I feel like, well, it's one thing for an artist to paint and to write, and those are things that I'm focused on. But one way that I like to contribute in a small way is to try to create, facilitate a way for community leaders to bring heating into their communities. Especially in America today, we're going to need.

So many groups that is like creating a third space of safe space for healing that you don't even have to talk about. You know, like, you can just go in and sit side and work on your work on mending something that you brought in, and that will be enough, you know, that will change how you look at the world, how you look at yourself and how you look at your traumas. I need that, and I think everybody needs that. So, you know, I'm doing what I can to train, train the leaders to facilitate this.

Wonderful.

Yeah.

I mean, it's such a visual and visceral manifestation of what healing trauma looks like. Right. I mean, when we have trauma, it, it feels like something within us is, is fundamentally broken. And I think because of the Western cultural ideals, the tendency is to meet that broken part with, well, I should just get rid of it. You know, I just want to trade it out or, you know, whatever the narrative is. And, you know, I appreciate the creative aspects of mending something back together in a way that is more valuable not financially, but more valuable from a beautiful, artistic, creative perspective. And it has more financial value, but that's not the point. And I think, you know, I think we, we require that in some ways in our modern culture. And I think, you know, that's a good, maybe a good place to, for us to pause because I think in many ways that kind of represents the, the role that art plays in mending healing, you know, is that it's visual, it's tangible, it sometimes is mysterious, divine. I mean, it's sort of all of those qualities that, that connects us back to that, that part and, and can help amend us. So any final words that you want to leave people with?

And.

I, I'm just grateful for this conversation with you. I think going into, deep into these terrains of psychology, death psychology, is very heating in itself. And as we can address these elements and to be able to be able to make beauty in some way, whether you're an artist or whether you're a teacher or.

A chef or a gardener, you know, I think that is the way forward in 2021. So I, I really deeply appreciate this, your community and, and this conversation.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. And, and for the people that want to go learn more about you and check out the book and check out some of your artwork, where, where can they find you?

I'm easy to find. You can just type my name up there. And my new book is out of Yale Press called Art plus Faith, Theology or Making awesome.

And we'll have the links for all that in the show. Notes and yeah, thank you for everyone that's listening, thank you for joining this conversation. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off. Join me next week for another inspiring conversation, another inspiring individual. It.