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Makoto Fujimura wrote this paper for Dr. William Edgar's Westminster Theological Seminary class called "Faith and the Arts". The image, "The Ten Commandments", was created on in Photoshop.

Below are my meditations on the significance of the Ten Commandments in my life and in my art. I intend to eventually install the works in a future exhibition. Each colored rectangular panel is in the exact dimension of the Mercy Seat of The Ark of the Covenant as described in Exodus.

"Have them make a chest of acacia wood--two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high."(Exodus 25:10)

In today's measurements, it is about 3 3/4 feet long and 2 1/4 feet wide and high. I used this dimension not to replicate the Ark of the Covenant, but as a departure point for a visual dialogue. I have repeatedly made works of these dimensions in the past.

In my installation for my mini-retrospective show at Sato Museum in Tokyo this January, there are three ark-paintings placed on the floor on the back right. This output should help the viewer to get a feel for the scale of the works. When I first made the wooden panels, I realized that the proportions produced a very dynamic visual movement on its own: the dimensions of the piece alone proved to be inspirational. Its size also communicates a physical presence: it does not dominate nor recede, it is neither "big" nor "small," it is both imposing and intimate. In mere dimensions and proportions, the mercy seats anticipates the person of Christ: Christ was both imposing (God) and intimate (Man) at the same time. In fact the material used to create the ark itself was symbolic; Kevin J. Conner writes "The ark was made of acacia wood overlaid with gold within and without. Wood speaks of His incorruptible humanity, and gold His Divinity. Two materials, yet one ark; two natures yet one person, the God-Man."(2) The materials symbolically point to Christ. I use gold (divinity) on paper (humanity) to allude to Christ in all of my works.I used this particular visual reference to the ark of the covenant because the tablets of the law were placed within it. I am using the structure of the Mercy Seat as the basic building block.

Although there are ten panels, I do not intend to attach any panels to a particular commandment (some work better than others in this sense), but I made all of the installation works relate to each other in symmetry and in color. The four small square panels are from my previous series of works called "Passion Panels." They are my visual meditations on the cross of Christ. I am intentional in using four of them to connote the four gospels, the four winds, the four corners of the earth.

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