This issue of Audition features an interview with Japanese-American painter Makoto Fujimura. A reproduction of one of Fujimura's distinctive paintings is displayed to the right.
The following biographical material is from the artist's website:
"Makoto Fujimura was born in 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts. Educated bi-culturally
between the US and Japan, Fujimura graduated from Bucknell University
in 1983, and received an M.F.A. from Tokyo National University of Fine
Arts and Music with a Japanese Governmental Scholarship in 1989. His thesis
painting was purchased by the university and he was invited to study in
the Japanese Painting Doctorate program, a first for an outsider to this
prestigious traditional program.
"It was during the six and a half years of studying in Japan that Fujimura
began to assimilate the combinations of abstract expressionism explored in
the US with the traditional Japanese art of Nihonga. Upon his return to the
US, he began to exhibit his paintings in New York City, while continuing to
show in Tokyo, and was honored in 1992 as the youngest artist ever to have
had a piece acquired by Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo."
In this Audition interview, Fujimura talks about the intertwining of his life, his painting, and his faith. Fujimura is also a guest on volume 90 of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal, an interview in which he talks about the importance of reading as a way of cultivating engagement with the world.
Also featured on this podcast is Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Gioia discusses the NEA Report To Read or Not To Read, which was released last year and which is the subject of in-depth discussion on the latest issue of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal.