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JR: December Hour, a work from 1997-89, seems to have been a breakthrough work both aesthetically and also in terms of the role of faith in your work. How did that work develop?

MF: December Hour was a unique work in that I worked on it for over a year and it was really a journey of my own heart trying to come to terms with the death of a friend and the weight of suffering. Working on it was literally a prayer each day. When I started the painting, we had talked about him coming here to New York from Japan to see the exhibition, but by the time the exhibition finally did happen he had already passed away. I had the strange experience of looking at my own work and looking at it objectively, outside of myself. I was thinking about what had happened, still somewhat in shock, and having my own work speak back to me as if to comfort my own struggle. I began to understand in finality there is this responsibility towards death. In some ways art is a way to capture that responsibility. We confront death and we struggle. We move beyond this struggle to hope. December is a month of death, but the new year is coming. I wanted to express the belief that our suffering has purpose and that there is hope.

JR: From December 1999 to February 2000, you had an exhibition at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. How did you approach the prospect of having a visual art exhibition in that liturgical space?

MF: It was really a tremendous privilege to create works for that space, at that particular time of celebration. What was liberating to me was that as I was installing the pieces and thinking about the exhibit as a whole, I began to realize that it is a great idea to show art in a liturgical setting. One observation that I immediately made was this liberation because I didn’t have to be at the center. The liturgical space already had a focal center, that is the Eucharist table. What that does for an artist is that you have this place of innocence. You can stand not at the center but at the periphery. I enjoyed it so much because I could celebrate who I was and the small role that I have but I color in the borders. I didn’t have to justify my own art in that setting because it was enough to simply be who you were. It made me reflect on the exhibitions I have had in galleries in Soho or in museums. These began to seem unnatural and artificial. In these shows the artist is put in the spotlight. It may be fun but it is not what art is all about. I enjoy having openings and having people come see the work but there is still something lacking in the approach to art that these spaces represent.

JR: A group of works for the St. John the Divine project were Mercy Seat paintings. How did you arrive at those works, and did the creative process give you insights into the concept or belief of the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant?

MF: I was interested in the Ark of the Covenant because those Exodus passages, which are very significant about the nature of creativity, are so visually descriptive. While Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments, he was also receiving the instructions to build this art object, a mobile communication box and worship center. The Ark is described in such detail that we could recreate it today and it includes a blueprint of how we are supposed to approach God. There was the law, which was objective, but there also was this experiential arena which called for an intuitive response. I was inspired by this multisensory art space to create these works. These Mercy Seats were 1½ by 2½ cubits, a cubit being the measurement from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow. I was amazed to discover, after I had these boxes created, the visual movement within the pictorial field of these dimensions. As a painter, I am always trying to create dynamic movement within a field of given dimensions and a square is the most difficult because it is static. The dimensions of the Mercy Seat created a field in which there was already a powerful movement. I think it makes a statement about God’s spirit even within a two dimensional space. The size is such that it doesn’t dominate the viewer but it doesn’t disappear either. It reveals so much about the nature of communication and prayer, with sacrifice, beauty and craftsmanship. It is a great paradigm for the artist.

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