When Mourning Became Color

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Japanese-American artist Makoto Fujimura was in his studio in lower Manhattan when the Twin Towers fell. Ash and debris drifted through his neighborhood as the city he loved was torn apart. For days, the acrid smell of destruction hung over everything. Fujimura is a master of Nihonga, an ancient Japanese painting technique that requires grinding precious minerals — azurite, malachite, gold leaf — into fine powder by hand, then layering them on handmade paper until they catch the light.…