I am often asked about the process of working on the embellishments and chapter heading initial letters. The embellishments were done last, after a lengthy process of preparing the text and the initial letters onto a high quality watercolor paper.
Spiritual Preparation
I came into the studio each day and read a chapter I was working on, starting from Matthew. It was a privilege to be able to spend so much time, praying and meditating on each chapter, and then thinking of generative ways to create imagery. Having the overall theme of "Jesus wept" in mind, and yet paying close attention to the content of the chapters, I first selected a particular focus of each chapter. One could do a thousand of images for each chapter, so it was important to select a particular emphasis or area of interest.
For example, in Luke 6 I was interested in the passage of the disciples going through the grain fields. A debate between Jesus and the Pharisees breaks out over the disciples' small acts of transgression: picking the heads of the grains, rubbing them on their hands and eating them. The Pharisees considered this mischievous and child-like act on the Sabbath unlawfuI. I painted a big "O" brown earth color on top of Japanese vermillion, and dotted the circle with gold, like grains. I wanted the playfulness to be imbued in the image, but also with an ominous, dark horizon. What seems like a minor argument is only a beginning of a greater tension between the religious authorities and Jesus' "fulfillment of the law" by grace.
Letter Repetition
I found that there were many "T"'s and "A"s starting the chapters. Matthew 1, for instance, has a "T" with all the names of the genealogy written in gold. If there are repeating letters, as in Matthew 17 and 18, I tried to make the letters as diverse as possible. In some cases where the content dictated (e.g. Luke 17 and 18), I intentionally designed the two "A"'s to echo each other in similar colors, both to speak of the impending suffering of Jesus but one with a darker shadow.
In some of the chapters, I have designed alternative letters. So overall, I ended up doing over a hundred letters.
Abstraction
Some of the letters are very abstract, and I asked Josh Dennis, the chief designer for the project, how he felt about some of the letters being hard to read. He told me that he actually liked the abstract ones better, and given the context of the chapters it would be fairly easy for the reader to figure it out. Throughout the project, the Crossway team to really allow me total artistic freedom, and I am grateful. Playfulness, and joyful freedom, became a central theme in the embellishment. These margin images needed to give emotional range to the central theme of lament.
My favorite letter is John 11, a fairly abstract "N" depicting Jesus' tears. When the whole letter sets were displayed at Dillon Gallery in New York City, I realized, for the first time, that John 11 was a "still point" for the whole letters series.
"Some of the letters were created using 'An Abecedarium: Illuminated Alphabets from the Court of Emperor Rudolf II,' a book I found at the Morgan Library Museum right near my studio."
Next Thursday: The final post in this ten-part series on The Four Holy Gospels (for sale at our online store).
Makoto Fujimura is an artist, writer, and founder of International Arts Movement. He has had over 100 exhibits worldwide, and from 2003-2009 was Presidentially appointed to the National Council on the Arts. An ordained elder (on sabbatical) at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Mako and his wife, Judy, raised their three children in lower Manhattan.
