After graduating from Parsons School of Design in New York City, the artist Rima Fujita was introduced to the most prestigious art dealers in the New York art world. This seeming good fortune came with a dark cloud. She was deceived, dealers stole her work, and she experienced sexual harassment. Even though she was making good money, she was miserable. She began to wonder, “Is this all my life will be?”
In the late 1990s, Fujita had a dream that would answer that question. A voice said to her, “You must help Tibet!”
Fujita didn’t even know where Tibet was, so she began researching. Immediately, she was moved by the plight of Tibetans under Chinese rule. She also felt helpless. “What can I do?” she wondered. “I’m just an artist. Not a movie star. Not a billionaire.” Still, she listened to the dream.
“I’m not psychic, but I’ve always had a relationship to my dreams,” she tells me in an interview. “It was a commanding voice that you would not ignore.”
This dream changed the entire course of Fujita’s life—her art, her spirituality, her mission in the world.
When I meet up with Rima Fujita on Santana Row in San Jose, she leads me to a small redwood grove near her apartment where the tall trees offer a quiet shelter from
