Refractions of light

I'm starting to review books and this is my first for Navpress.

Often the internal life of an artist is not easily accessible and yet Makoto Fujimura in Refractions: a journey of faith, art, and culture allows us to meet him in a very intimate way. I have followed his blog for a while and this book is a gem. He is an artist working in the space between the East and the West and working with mineral pigments, which catch the light and bend it in many ways, just like the essays in this book.

Makoto Fujimura is one of those one in a million people. As a visual artist, as Japanese American, as someone living in the shadow of Ground Zero, as man of faith and committed to community and culture, it is possible find at last someone, something authentic. One small flash of that authenticity is “Art cannot be divorced from faith, for to do so is to literally close our eyes to that beauty of the dying sun setting all around us”.

Refractions is not something you read through and feel you’ve done the book. It is not a work of fiction nor is it a textbook about faith, religion or art. It is about the internal spiritual journey, seeing, thinking, reflecting and refracting.