Beauty from the Ashes of Ground Zero

In the weeks after September 11, 2001, the air in Lower Manhattan still carried the acrid smell of smoke and pulverized concrete. Japanese-American artist Makoto Fujimura, who lived and worked just blocks from Ground Zero, walked those ash-covered streets and returned to his studio. Rather than abandon the city, he picked up his brushes and began to create. Fujimura practiced Nihonga, an ancient Japanese painting technique using crushed minerals, gold, and silver layered slowly onto handmade paper.…