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Tag: visual midrash

What makes art Jewish?

What makes art Jewish?

Sorel Etrog’s sculpture in Odette Sculpture Park, in Windsor, Ont. Etrog was one of four artists featured in Prof. Jennifer Eiserman’s March 7 lecture, Is There Such a Thing as Canadian Jewish Art? (photo by Matt Glaman)

Is there such a thing as “Jewish art” in Canada? Dr. Jennifer Eiserman explored this question in a March 7 Zoom lecture organized by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple.

Eiserman, an artist and an art professor at the University of Calgary, shared some of the preliminary findings of her investigation. She pointed out that, with respect to the concept of “Jewish art,” she was not referring to Judaica or Jewish themes in art. “I’m curious about whether artists with some kind of Jewish background make art that is qualitatively different from other artists. If so, I am interested in how these Jewish artists speak and think Jewishly,” she explained.

She began by providing a background to Canadian art history and, specifically, how it has been taught. There has been a profound shift, to put it mildly, in focus, she said. Prior to 1990, the study of Canadian art was a colonial one, concentrating mostly on male artists of European descent. Now, the works of women, Indigenous people and others are part of the curriculum.

Eiserman then discussed four artists and how they speak both Jewishly and as Canadians. She started with sculptor Sorel Etrog (1933-2014) and his contribution to Canadian Modernism. Etrog was a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor who spent time in Israel before immigrating to Canada. His biography is one of movement from place to place.

“The way I see Etrog speaking Jewishly is through the tension between tradition and innovation and the notion of interweaving roads, the idea of the new, which occurs in Etrog’s work,” Eiserman said.

His work, she added, also speaks Jewishly, in that it maintains certain core principles of the genre of public sculpture while addressing the contemporary context in which the sculpture is being placed. Just as we place Jewish law from generation to generation into contemporary contexts, Etrog’s art innovates while carrying on traditional elements.

The figurative art of Betty Goodwin (1923-2008) was demonstrated as being the work of “an outsider, someone not part of the Old Boys’ Club and one who had to find her own way.” Her work, according to Eiserman, contributed internationally to how drawing was defined and what it was to become.

“Her floating figures might express the experience of being in a world that does not welcome one’s experience. The experience of being neither here nor there. Her work speaks to the experience of losing and finding,” Eiserman noted.

Sylvia Safdie’s video installations of flowing water, sand, light and sound advance the traditional concerns of Canadian art with landscape and nature, most commonly associated with the Group of Seven. Safdie was born in Lebanon in 1942 and her family moved to Montreal in 1953.

Safdie’s video can be perceived as exploring a variety of themes that allow her to bring her own voice into the world. “Her work is part of a post-colonial narrative in which some people have experienced harm as the nation of Canada came into being, and speaks Jewishly of the central issues of living in the Diaspora – how to adapt and yet maintain our identity,” said Eiserman.

The distinctively Jewish fantastical creatures of sculptor David Altmejd (born 1974), who represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2007, were the final set of slides shown by Eiserman. She described Altmejd as the “quintessential 21st-century Canadian artist. He is bicultural, multilingual, internationally known and now lives in another country (United States) yet is still deeply rooted in Canada.

“Life is complicated, Altmejd reminds us, we can’t have the good without the bad. Yet, always in his work, life shines through. While he rarely discusses his Jewish roots … one can see that his works speak Jewishly in many aspects,” Eiserman said.

Growing up in Montreal, Eiserman experienced the national influence that the Saidye Bronfman Centre had in disseminating Canadian Jewish art. She received her bachelor’s in art history and master’s in education through the arts at McGill University in Montreal, and a bachelor’s in fine arts (visual art) at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. Her doctorate, one of the first to use studio art as its method of inquiry, is from the University of Calgary, where she is now an associate professor. Her current research is in North American contemporary Jewish art and community-based Jewish art.

In her artistic endeavours, Eiserman uses mixed media, crochet, watercolour, installation and public art projects to explore issues related to Jewish theology, philosophy and identity. She refers to her work as “visual Midrash, an artistic response to sacred Jewish texts.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Format ImagePosted on March 19, 2021March 18, 2021Author Sam MargolisCategories Visual ArtsTags art, Betty Goodwin, Canada, David Altmejd, Jennifer Eiserman, Kolot Mayim, painting, sculpture, Sorel Etrog, Sylvia Safdie, University of Calgary, visual midrash
Artistic Pesach midrashim

Artistic Pesach midrashim

“Question Mark” by Sydney Freedman and Rachel Pekeles  is among the works created by King David High School Grade 12 students. (photo by Nancy Current)

In conjunction with their current show at Zack Gallery, Visual Midrash, artists Robin Atlas and Nancy Current conducted a two-day workshop with the Grade 12 students of King David High School. Rabbi Stephen Berger, head of the school’s Judaic studies, and some of his more outgoing students talked to the Independent about the project.

“Every year, we do a project for Passover with our Grade 12 students,” said Berger. “The Haggadah is one of those Jewish texts that’s had the most number of interpretations throughout our history, as every generation and every family bring their own understanding. So, I ask the students every year to write their own versions, a short essay on one of the aspects of the Haggadah. This year, we decided to combine the writing with the visual component. The students pitched their ideas, which topic they wanted to explore. I tried to limit the same topics but I didn’t force anyone. They were free to choose. Now, after all the art is done, we’ll put the project online. We’re also going to publish a hardcopy as a pamphlet. One of our former students, Daniel Wiseman, is helping me with the particulars. We will distribute the copies at the JCC, at the synagogues and Jewish delis.”

The rabbi joined his students in creating his own interpretation of the Haggadah, using a sheet of matzah as the base for his artistic journey. “Matzah represents both our slavery and our freedom,” he said. His piece opens the pamphlet.

Like the rabbi, most of his students hadn’t done much visual art in years and were not going to pursue art as a career, but they enjoyed working on Visual Midrash for this assignment.

“They put so much thought into their pieces,” said Current. “Some of them first tried to come up with concrete images, but it’s hard without artistic training. Then Robin and I suggested they should think about some abstract interpretations. What ideas come to mind? What concepts are associated with those ideas? The results were amazing.”

One of the students, Izzy Khalifa, chose the most fun-filled tradition of Passover – the search for bread. “When I was a kid, it was a game in our home. I loved it,” she said. “Now that I’m older, I think it’s not simply a search for bread but it has a deeper meaning, like a search for yourself.”

“Judaism grows on you,” the rabbi remarked, and Khalifa agreed. She also liked working with the abstract concept. “People can take more from an abstract picture, interpret it in different ways,” she said.

photo - “Blue Heart” by Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris
“Blue Heart” by Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris (photo by Nancy Current)

Classmates Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris decided on more concrete imagery. Their blue heart on a blood-red background symbolizes the first plague of Egypt – the plague of blood. “The blue heart is like the heart of the Nile,” said Rosenkrantz. “The abrupt color change, from blue to red, from water to blood, disrupted the Egyptian way of life.” Their heart is almost anatomically precise. “I just did a unit on cardiovascular system,” Rosenkrantz explained, “and it was fresh in my mind.”

Ma’ayan Fadida and Shmuel Hart’s illustration was more metaphorical. They selected a controversial theme for their work – the wicked son. In their artistic interpretation, the wicked son walks a black path, which winds its way across the pink and orange brightness of other family members.

“We wanted to do one of the sons,” Fadida said. “This one makes the decision to separate himself from the others; that’s why his path is black. And the abstract allowed us to show how he was thinking.”

One of the most powerful pieces is a mixed media collage: a large black question mark with the background of newspaper snippets. Created by Sydney Freedman and Rachel Pekeles, it also touches on the story of the four sons but focuses on the son who doesn’t know how to ask.

“We wanted to take a complicated topic and present it as a symbol. The black mark blocks our ability to ask,” explained Freedman.

“The information is all there. You just have to be willing to look for it,” Pekeles elaborated. “It is a challenge. Sometimes, we choose not to ask when we should.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

 

 

Format ImagePosted on April 22, 2016April 20, 2016Author Olga LivshinCategories Visual ArtsTags Atlas, Current, KDHS, King David High School, visual midrash
Interpreting Torah with art

Interpreting Torah with art

Artists Nancy Current, left, and Robin Atlas at Zack Gallery. (photo by Linda Lando)

Visual Midrash: Plagues and Visions, which opened at Zack Gallery on April 7, features the work of Seattleites Robin Atlas and Nancy Current, the only West Coast artists creating in the genre of visual midrash. The show is the culmination of a four-year collaboration that started in 2012.

“We met through the Jewish Art Salon in New York,” said Current. “Even though we both live in Seattle, we didn’t know each other at that point.”

Atlas elaborated: “The president of the Jewish Art Salon sent us both an introductory email. She said we probably knew each other already, but we didn’t – and we lived only 10 minutes apart.”

“Robin was about to open a new show in L.A. and she brought her works to my studio,” said Current. “I was amazed. There was so much beauty and thought behind it all. That’s what visual midrash is all about. It requires two elements: the clarity of story and the visual beauty of the artist’s interpretation. I looked at Robin’s art and I said to myself, I’m going to work with her forever.”

They started working together, but their chosen genre – interpreting Torah through visual art – is not widely known. “We didn’t have a ready audience in the West,” Current explained, “not like in New York. We needed to build it, so we started teaching adult classes two years ago. The classes include the texts from the Torah, introduced by a Torah instructor, and a visual component, taught by an art instructor.”

“We would do slide shows, video presentations, and the students would have a chance to create their own art,” Atlas said. “Linda Lando, the Zack Gallery director, facilitated the first class we did in Vancouver earlier this year.”

For the current show, the artists explored the theme of the 10 plagues. “We were drawn to the story,” said Current.

Although each artist works with different media – Atlas with textiles and Current with glass and paper – their creative vision is similar. Their symbolic abstracts mesh extremely well, as if the images belong together, buzzing with the same esthetic sense and the same muted elegance, complementing each other to tell the same tale.

While the Vancouver Jewish community was introduced to Atlas when she exhibited at the Zack in mid-2014, Current is a new name for most local art appreciators.

“I always drew and painted as a child but I can’t say that I had the conscious idea to be an artist,” Current recalled. “I grew up in Seattle, in an old house with stained-glass windows. That undoubtedly affected my later fascination with glass. I learned to blow glass when I was about 24, but gave that up in favor of painting on stained-glass.”

She explained, “Glass is different from other mediums because light passes through it (transmitted light) instead of bouncing off [of it], like with paper or canvas (reflected light). Transmitted light, especially through colored glass, connects to a person’s emotional centre more directly than reflected light. It also has a spiritual aspect. Think of all those stained-glass windows in churches and synagogues. That is important to my Jewish work.”

Although she has worked in other visual genres, Jewish themes absorb her artistic passion now.

“Jewish art has gradually replaced my other work, life drawing and landscape, because it is much more meaningful,” she said. “Visual midrash is the most meaningful Jewish art of all. It requires a lot of study and thought, and those are things I highly value about living a Jewish life.”

Current pointed to two particular influences on her development as an artist.

“The first was studying at Pilchuck Glass School,” she said. “The school attracted many artists early in the history of the American studio glass movement. I studied there with the amazing British glass painter Patrick Reyntiens. He is 90 years old now and still a good friend.

“The second was finding the Jewish Art Salon (JAS) in New York. Becoming a fellow in the JAS has led me to friendships with several Jewish artists who have been doing visual midrash for years. They have helped a lot.”

Current doesn’t concentrate on making a living with her art. Her main concern is to share it with as many people as possible. “Of course, eventually I want to sell my work,” she said, “but not until I’ve had a chance to show it in several exhibitions. The purpose of doing my work is to cause people to think about their Jewish heritage.”

Current and Atlas’ show runs until May 8.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Format ImagePosted on April 15, 2016April 13, 2016Author Olga LivshinCategories Visual ArtsTags Nancy Current, Robin Atlas, visual midrash, Zack Gallery
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