Zack Gallery – Jewish Independent

Exhibit of inscriptional art

Ken Hughes infuses his paintings with messages. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Ken Hughes has always been fascinated with typography. “Since childhood, letters of the alphabet have intrigued me,” he said in an interview with the Independent.

“Public lettering is a centuries-old method of civic communication, both official and informal,” he said. “It goes back to Mesopotamia. By Greek and Roman times, public writing – inscriptions on buildings, commercial graphics, signs, epitaphs on tombs, graffiti – was common. The messages could be political or commercial, funerial or commemorative, religious or frivolous. In more contemporary times, particularly in Europe, public inscriptions have undergone a revival.”

The artist draws from this rich tradition for his paintings and his new show at the Zack Gallery, Ancient Writings in Contemporary Contexts, opens next week. A collection of inscriptional paintings, beautiful and evocative, colours and shapes of the images enhance and deepen the meanings of the lettering, and every piece tells a story.

Before retiring, Hughes was a professional graphic designer. He taught graphic design for years at Emily Carr and Kwantlen universities. He turned to art five years ago.

“Inscriptions – texts expressed formally or otherwise in different alphabets or languages – are a major source of inspiration for my paintings,” he said. “This particular exhibition’s goal is to visually express texts related to Jewish beliefs and culture. Some of the paintings have writings in the Hebrew alphabet. Others have transliterated Hebrew using the Roman alphabet.”

He explained that the messages in his paintings come from various sources: the Hebrew Bible, fiction and nonfiction by Jewish writers, as well as quotes by famous people, all related in one way or another to Jewish culture.

“I don’t speak Hebrew,” he said, “but I have friends who do. I always ask them to check the writing before I incorporate it into my paintings.”

In his work, the esthetics of the letters are intertwined with the message of the citation used. He has been collecting quotes, personal mottos, sayings and other forms of public texts for a long time. “I sing in a choir, and much of choral music is liturgical,” he said. “It has incredible messages, many of them in Latin. I also read a lot and get my messages from books, from newspapers, from common idioms.”

In 2002, Hughes took a yearlong sabbatical from teaching to prepare for what he does now.

“I traveled through Europe – Poland, France, Turkey, Belgium, Greece and Israel,” he said. “I took photos of the public inscriptions on civic buildings, in churches, at cemeteries. I wrote down quotes from illuminated manuscripts in national libraries. There are incredible inscriptions on the tombstones in Budapest, where many famous Hungarians are buried. Jewish cemeteries have beautiful inscriptions in Hebrew.”

Sometimes, a line of text or a quote stays in his memory or in his notebooks for decades before appearing in one of his paintings. Many of his pieces are sad, executed in a darkish palette, underscoring words of deep emotion: grief, fear, despair, memories of hard times and bleak thoughts. But there is hope and joy, too, and Hughes uses bright and colourful compositions to accentuate those messages.

One of his uplifting works, a multi-paneled cycle based on the story of Genesis, with Hebrew lettering dancing across the panels, is decorative as well as informative. The series will be in the exhibit at the Zack.

“Alphabets are amazing inventions, incredible almost,” Hughes said. “They allow people to communicate ideas with just a few symbols. And they are all different – the Roman alphabet, the Cyrillic letters, the Hebrew. In all cases, letters by themselves mean nothing; they’re just symbols. But a combination of letters, a phrase, could have profound meaning.”

When Hughes starts working on a piece, he approaches it as a designer, with a typographer’s attention to detail. He makes many sketches while investigating each idea. What colours should be employed and in what combinations? What is the best number of panels for this message and the most expressive configuration to highlight the meaning of the words? Even the font used can make a difference.

“Some letters look better in a rounded font; others need a blockier typeface,” he said. “The positioning of the letters and the words could be of paramount importance in my paintings. They constitute the composition. And, of course, the message itself often dictates the font type.”

There are not many artists in Canada who dedicate their art to this kind of painting.

“I wanted my paintings at the Zack,” Hughes said. “I don’t want to display at commercial galleries. I think my works are much more suited to schools, churches or community centres.”

Ancient Writings in Contemporary Contexts runs from July 25 to Aug. 25. To learn more, visit kenhughes-art.com.

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

Colour bursts forth in Conjunction

Ira Hoffecker’s current solo exhibit at the Zack Gallery, Conjunction, runs until July 21. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Conjunction, Ira Hoffecker’s current solo exhibit at the Zack Gallery, opened on June 13 and runs until July 21.

German-born Hoffecker and her family moved to Canada in 2004. “I always liked art, but when I lived in Germany, my husband and I worked in marketing for the movie industry,” she explained in an interview with the Independent.

Once, when her children were still young, they came here for a family vacation and traveled Vancouver Island. “We loved it,” she said. So much that, when they moved here permanently, they settled in Victoria. As if that wasn’t change enough, Hoffecker also decided to switch careers and follow her lifelong love of art. She enrolled in the Vancouver Island School of Art and has been studying and creating ever since.

Hoffecker’s previous show at the Zack Gallery, in 2016, was dedicated to maps. Since then, her art has undergone a couple of transformations. Conjunction is much brighter and more expressive set of works, although the abstract component remains.

On the journey to her new colourful mode, Hoffecker went through a black-and-white stage, which was the focus of her master’s in fine arts’ thesis, which she completed last year. The works she created for her master’s degree include a number of huge paintings – abstracts made with tar on canvas – plus three documentary videos. The theme – “History as Personal Memory” – was a painful one for the artist. She recalled, “One of my professors said that my works are the interconnected layers of urban setting and history. ‘Where is your personal layer?’ he asked me.”

Taking this advice, she has been trying to delve into her personal recollections, to uncover her place in history, her “personal layer” among the historical layers dominating her art. “In ‘History as Personal Memory,’ I tore pages from a history book about the Third Reich, an era in history that many Germans would prefer to forget. Yet I think it is important to face and discuss this past. Such dialogue might prevent the horrors from happening again,” she said.

In Hoffecker’s art, the artist’s memories are intertwined with the history of her nation. “Correlations between my childhood abuse, which I tried to forget, and the history of Germany, which the Germans tried to eradicate from their memories, exist in my paintings and films,” she said.

In her art and her videos, she opens up about the abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her grandfather, who was also a Nazi. She is convinced that such openness has helped her heal, whereas suppressing the memories led only to the festering of her inner wounds.

The same is true for historical memories, Hoffecker insisted. “Germany needs to remember, to confront and challenge complacency to prevent a repetition of historical atrocities,” she said.

Her master’s thesis was a deep and painful discovery, a journey in black-and-white to underscore the grimness and tragedy of the topic. Once it was completed, she was ready for a change of direction.

“I spent the summer last year in Berlin,” she said. “When I came back home to Victoria, I wanted to paint some colours again.”

Hoffecker’s current exhibit bursts with vibrant colours and optimism. The series Berlin Spaces, like most of her paintings, has several layers. “There are outlines of many famous Berlin buildings there,” she said, tracing the architectural lines embedded in the abstract patterns with her finger. “The Jewish Museum, the Philharmonie, the library, the Reichstag. It is like a reconstruction, when I think about the past. I overlay history and architecture.”

One of the paintings, a bright yellow-and-pink abstract, has writing among its patterns. “It means ‘forgetting’ in German,” Hoffecker explained. “A few years ago, I was invited to have a solo show in Hof, a city in Germany. I worked there in the archives, found many old maps and records. One of their buildings is a factory now. After the war, it was a refugee camp, and there is a plaque to commemorate the fact. But, during the war, it was a labour camp, a place from where Jewish prisoners were transported to concentration camps and death, but nothing is there to remind [people] of that past. The painting reflects the current happy state of the building, but it also reflects the tragic past, the past we shouldn’t forget.”

While not many art lovers will see the horrors of the labour camp in the airy and cheerful palette of the painting, Hoffecker doesn’t mind. Like other abstract artists, she infuses her images with hidden messages, but doesn’t insist on her personal intentions.

“I own the making,” she said. “I bring in my memories and my heart, but I have to leave the interpretation to the viewers. One man in Victoria loves my art. He bought two of my paintings. He said he sees animal in them. I don’t paint animals, but I’m glad people’s own experience resonates with my paintings.”

Hoffecker is very serious about her art, but bemoans the need for promotion. “I did marketing for movies professionally, but I never really cared [about the reaction]. If someone didn’t like the movie we were pushing, it was his business,” she said. “But to promote my own paintings is scary. When someone doesn’t like what I do, I care. It hurts. I don’t want to do it. An artist wants to be in her studio and paint. It is all I want: to paint and to exhibit. I want people to see my work. Besides, a show is the only time when I see many of my paintings together. I never can do that in my studio. I only see one or two at a time.”

To learn more about Hoffecker’s work, visit irahoffecker.com.

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

A mind-blowing exhibit

“Sunflowers” by Jocelyne Hallé.

The new show at Zack Gallery, #SeasonsAtZack features Instagram artists. A fundraiser for the gallery, the exhibit is extremely eclectic.

“The theme of the show is based on the theme of Festival Ha’Rikud, ‘Seasons of Israel,’” said Daniel Wajsman, marketing coordinator at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. “Every year, the gallery has a group show to coincide with the festival and the artists submit their paintings to the gallery. This year, we thought: why don’t we do social media instead? These days, everyone has a camera…. We all take pictures with our phones and share them with friends and family. This is one step further. Why can’t we share our photos with everyone? That’s what Instagram does – it is a site where we share our images with the world. That’s what we aimed for in this show at the Zack. We wanted to change the concept of what art is.”

The gallery started with the idea that only artists who have an Instagram account would be featured in the exhibit, but later opened the submission process to everyone, said Wajsman. All of the images from the show will be on the JCC’s Instagram page and prints will be available for purchase in different sizes and formats.

About a third of the photos in the exhibit come from a select group of people: staff members of several Jewish organizations, who went to Israel in April for a professional seminar. The organizations participating in the seminar were the JCC, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Jewish Family Services, Louis Brier Home and Hospital, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and Nava Creative Kosher Cuisine.

“We work closely together, but we don’t all know each other,” said Wajsman. “Some of us are Jewish, and some are not. The seminar had a double goal: to teach us about Israel and Jewish history and to connect us with each other.”

Regular visitors to the Zack Gallery will be familiar with many of the photographers in the exhibit. Some of the photos are by artists who have exhibited previously at the gallery – like Lauren Morris, Michael Abelman and others – and submitted photographs of their paintings for the show.

Another set of participants includes local masters of photography, such as Jocelyne Hallé, Judy Angel and Ivor Levin. Each one has more than one of their images on display.

Halle’s “Sunflowers” photo was taken recently. The bright sunny heads of the large flowers contrast sharply with the heavy stormy clouds overhead, and the juxtaposition evokes strong emotions. “It wasn’t Photoshopped at all,” said Hallé. “It’s just the way I took it.”

In contrast, Angel’s airy images glow and shimmer with transparent sunlight. They are so light, they seem translucent, able to fly off the wall like magical butterflies.

photo - “Umbrellas” by Ivor Levin — “Umbrellas” by Ivor Levin.

Beside them, Levin’s photos look like drawings, their colour schemes and compositions inspired by the rains and umbrellas of the autumn season in Vancouver.

New artists also have a strong presence in this show. For them, having their names under their art on the gallery walls is a fascinating experience. One of this crowd is Linda Lando, the Zack Gallery director. “I’m not an artist,” she said. “I’ve never displayed anything before.”

One of her photos, the colourful “Ein Gedi Night,” was taken on her trip to Israel, as a member of the seminar. “We visited Kibbutz Ein Gedi late at night,” she said. “It is a beautiful floral oasis in the desert. They have amazing flowers, and this blooming tree was near the entrance.”

Robert Johnson, also part of the seminar and a longtime JCC employee, has a couple of his photos in the show. One of them is particularly memorable: a photo of a camel with a sad expression, lying under a tree. The title of the photograph is “This is Not a Camel.”

“He talked to me,” Johnson said with a smile. “People were riding him all day, and he didn’t want to be a riding camel anymore.”

The variety of the images in the show is mind-blowing: from Israeli landscapes to mud bathers on the shore of the Dead Sea to abstract composition. #SeasonsAtZack continues until June 9.

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

Exhibit starts with friendship

Linda MacCannell’s photograph of John T’Seleie. (photo from Drew Ann Wake)

The new show at the Zack Gallery, Crossed Paths – which explores the connection between the Jewish and the Dene peoples – has its roots in the federal Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry.

“In the 1970s, I was a CBC reporter in the Northwest Territories,” show curator Drew Ann Wake told the Independent. “When the government proposed a pipeline through the area, they sent Justice Thomas Berger to investigate the impact of the proposed pipeline [in 1974]. He talked to over 30 native communities to get their input. When he was finished, he issued a report recommending the government settle all the claims on land that the pipeline would pass through before construction started…. They are still settling those claims. The pipeline hasn’t been built yet.”

As a journalist, Wake accompanied Berger and his team on that historic trip. She taped numerous interviews with the local people participating in the inquiry.

“Ten years ago, I found those old tapes,” she recalled. “Only audio tapes; it was so long ago. I thought it would be interesting to go back and talk to all of them again. And let their children and grandchildren listen to their elders’ voices.”

photo - Linda MacCannell’s photograph of Michael Jackson — Linda MacCannell’s photograph of Michael Jackson. *(photo from Drew Ann Wake)*

She invited a friend, photographer Linda MacCannell, to create portraits of some of the participants of the Mackenzie Valley negotiations. Over several years, they traveled to the villages Wake had visited with Berger. MacCannell took photos and Wake filmed her interviews. “We created a show of Linda’s portraits and the stories I collected and went on the road. By now, we’ve exhibited this show in 50 galleries across North America,” said Wake.

MacCannell’s large-scale portraits of various members of the Dene First Nations, who live along the Mackenzie River, constitute the heart of the exhibit at the Zack.

“Two years ago, we gave a presentation at the grunt gallery, an artist-run centre in Vancouver,” Wake explained. “We showed the films. After the presentation, a man approached me. He introduced himself as Michael Shumiatcher, a local artist and educator. He said he knew Justice Berger at the time of the inquiry. Michael was a high school student then, and Berger was his best friend’s father.”

Shumiatcher suggested they work together and present the exhibit to schools around the province. Wake liked the idea, and invited him to join her on her next trip north. Also joining the summer 2018 trip were artist Melenie Fleischer and her husband, cellist Eric Wilson, as well as composer Daniel Séguin.

“Daniel saw the video I made of the drummers the previous year,” Wake explained. “He wanted to write new music to incorporate the traditional drums.”

The group traveled to Fort Simpson, N.W.T., to study the drumming culture of the Dene in more depth.

“Séguin wrote a piece of music, called Dehcho, for cello and the drums,” Wake said. “That is how the local nations call the Mackenzie River – Dehcho. Wilson performed it at the local gallery presentation of our show. The gallery was packed. People sat in the hall and stood on the stairs. He had to repeat his performance for all who wanted to hear it.”

As well, Fleischer and Shumiatcher produced several paintings.

One of Fleischer’s, a herd of bison, is suffused with wild, tumultuous energy. “They were huge,” she said of the animals. “They looked up casually and continued grazing and drinking water in the shallow puddles. We were cautious and maybe even scared as we huddled close in the van to take our photographs. Thrilled at our first encounter with the ancestors of the ancient bison depicted on the cave walls of Altamira, Lascaux and others, I knew then that I was going to paint bison.”

A painting by Shumiatcher depicts Wilson blowing a shofar on the shore of the Mackenzie River. Fleischer and Wilson brought the shofar on the trip as a gift.

“Once we got our invitation from Chief Gerry Antoine to come to Fort Simpson and collaborate with Liidlii Kue First Nation on our cultural exploration of music – cello and drums – we were very excited. We were in New York at the time, and I wanted to bring Chief Antoine something special,” said Fleischer. “All I could think of was that our nation was thousands of years old, as were the indigenous people. With that in mind, we went looking for a ram’s horn from Israel, a shofar.”

They visited several Judaica stores in New York. “It was funny,” said Fleischer, “my husband Eric blowing shofars outside the stores, on the sidewalk. He is a cellist and very particular about sound.”

The next step for the group was to approach the Zack Gallery for a joint show. The Jewish artists’ paintings complement MacCannell’s photography, showing another facet of the northern experience. Just as power and serenity dominate the portraits and the photographer’s triptych of the river landscape, the paintings add a touch of awe at nature and its symbiotic relationship with humankind.

The Zack exhibit also includes traditional clothing made by several Dene artists. “Last year, we won a grant from the Canada Council [for the Arts] to commission northern artists,” Wake said. Of the pieces on display, each has a story. In some cases, the stories are real; they happened to the artists’ family members. For others, the stories are purely imaginary or are based on local folklore. Regardless, every story has a link to the tapes Wake collected in the 1970s and the people she interviewed.

Linda Wolki, known for her needlework, created a traditional yellow coat after she listened to the recording of her mother telling Wake how she hunted seals when she was young. “The woman’s story was amazing,” Wake said. “She was out hunting in the snow and cold, and four polar bears decided to chase her. She laughed.”

A pair of embroidered moccasins, made by Agnes Mitchell, is displayed in a plexiglass case next to the pair her father wore for years. The embroidery on the old moccasins – made by Mitchell’s mother – and the new ones is equally elaborate.

“One story I asked an artist to illustrate was an ancient northern legend about an abandoned woman,” Wake said. “The tribe abandoned that woman in the forest because of her sharp tongue. She only had a few coals for her fire, but she survived. She made herself two cloaks – one of raven feathers and another of rabbit fur – and many more objects.”

Artist Jeneen Frei Njootli has brought the cloaks to life. Her creations, a black cloak of raven feathers and another of white rabbit fur, hang in a corner of the Zack, one above another, as a tribute to her people’s tenacity and their drive to survive in the harshest conditions.

photo - Raven cloak made by Jeneen Frei Njootli — Raven cloak made by Jeneen Frei Njootli. *(photo from Drew Ann Wake)*

“We were very proud to learn that recently Jeneen Frei Njootli was chosen as one of the five finalists for the Sobey Art Award, an annual prize given to the most promising Canadian artist under 40,” said Wake, who then pointed to a blue coat on display. Smiling, she said, “And that coat belongs to Michael Jackson. But not the Michael Jackson of pop music. Our own Michael Jackson, a Vancouver lawyer who, in the 1970s, was part of Justice Berger’s team.”

When Wake started working on this show, one of the new interviews she conducted was with Jackson. “He worked with many First Nation people,” she said, “and I asked him how come he was so empathetic to their plight. He said it was because he was Jewish. When he grew up in London, England, he experienced antisemitism. He knew hunger as a child in post-World War Two Britain. It made him sensitive to others suffering from discrimination. Made him want to help.”

During the Berger inquiry, Jackson befriended one of the local men, John T’Seleie, who organized his community to meet with the inquiry’s lawyers.

“Their friendship has lasted for decades. They’re still friends,” Wake said. “As a child, T’Seleie was a student at a residential school. Like many others at residential schools, he suffered. As an adult, he became an advocate for his people.”

The portraits of these two friends hang side by side on the gallery walls, and the film Wake made of her interviews with them is also part of the exhibit.

“That’s how our entire show started, so many years ago,” she said, “with those two and their friendship: a Jew and a Dene.”

Crossed Paths is at the Zack until April 7.

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

Mixing abstract, nature

Sidi Schaffer’s current exhibit, In Partnership with Nature, is at the Zack Gallery until March 3. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Sidi Schaffer’s art has gone through several different incarnations. At the beginning of her career, in postwar Romania, she adhered to a realistic approach. “For several years, the central images of my work were people,” she said in an interview with the Independent.

After her family immigrated to Israel, she continued her studies and received her art education degree. “At that time, I fell in love with the Impressionists, especially Cezanne, and started painting more landscape and still life,” she said. “I tried to catch the essence, the light and beauty of my surroundings. Even my palette changed.”

The next stage in her artistic development came after she immigrated to Canada in 1975. It was as if every country triggered a twist in her artistic road. “I needed to establish new roots and master new challenges,” she recalled. “In 1980, I went back to school to study printmaking at the University of Alberta. They told me: ‘Paint abstract, throw away realism.’ I followed my teachers’ good advice … and totally immersed myself in abstraction. I simplified my work; my focus became my inner world, my feelings and my emotions. The art-making process became a sacred ritual.”

But pure abstraction didn’t hold her interest for long. Her abstract compositions acquired random elements of realism. “I tried to make my works integrated, bring together abstract and figurative,” she said. “I tried to express the concept of unity between the internal and the external, between the spiritual and the physical.”

Her current show, In Partnership with Nature, which opened at the Zack Gallery on Jan. 31, combines her inclination towards abstraction, her love of nature and her ability to bridge the realistic and the spiritual in her paintings. It also highlights her innate optimism. The show is airy, uplifting and charming, the works prompting a quiet gladness in viewers.

It’s about flowers, but in an oblique, complex way. “I love flowers,” said Schaffer. “Nature is my biggest inspiration. When it surrounds me, I feel alive, free, and in awe of all its beauty and miracles.”

For years, she has been drying flowers between pages of books. “I have piles of those books in my house,” she said. “I always wanted to preserve the flowers’ beauty, even after the original bloom. I have been doing it since I was a young girl…. In autumn, I also dry leaves with their amazing colours and abstract designs. Nothing is more beautiful. Sometimes, I pick a flower just to remind me of a place and time.”

A few years ago, Schaffer decided to try and incorporate those dried flowers and leaves into her art. “I wanted to make them the subject matter,” she said. “Every picture in this show, except one, has one or more dry flowers or leaves in them.”

photo - “Grace into Focus 1” by Sidi Schaffer is part 1 of a triptych — “Grace into Focus 1” by Sidi Schaffer is part 1 of a triptych. *(photo from Sidi Schaffer)*

All of the images in the exhibit are mixed media. She experimented with acrylic and oil paint, with old prints and new drawings, with collage. The dried leaves or flowers form the heart of the compositions.

“I wanted to give them importance,” she explained. “Some of the landscapes in this show look fantastic, because dry leaves play the part of trees. Some abstract collages were like memory boxes for me, with layers. There are dry petals there, and lettering and musical notes.”

Schaffer’s collaboration with the elements of nature tends towards whimsical. Flower petals float on the visual breeze. Mundane dandelions turn into exotic palm trees. Waves of musical notation sparkle with rainbow colours.

“I played with the images,” said the artist. “I didn’t take myself seriously when I prepared this show.”

Schaffer said every image in the exhibit started with an idea. “But I never knew how it would come out,” she said. “It’s a process, a discussion between me and the flowers. Sometimes, it is a struggle. I look at the flowers and they supply more ideas. This one flower I had, I put it on the painting and the petals came off. I left them off, incorporated into the image.… From a flash of excitement to the end result, each image reflects my emotional journey. By the time I finish a painting, it seldom resembles my original starting point. What is important for me is the visual poetry, the relationship of form, space, colour and light.”

Schaffer’s exploration into creative possibilities is nourished by her rich inner life. Before her retirement, she taught art and painted commissions, but never, for example, something made specifically to harmonize with anyone’s living room décor.

“I paint what is inside of me,” she said. “I don’t paint for anyone’s sofa. I enjoy the hours I spend in front of my canvas. It is an intense emotional outlet and, when I’m finished, I feel happy, but, at the same time, drained and vulnerable.”

In Partnership with Nature is at the Zack until March 3.

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

Events around town this month – Sisterhood Choir, community artists & Netta

photo - Temple Sholom Sisterhood Choir under the direction of Joyce Cherry with pianist Kathy Bjorseth — *(photo from Gordon Cherry)*

Temple Sholom Sisterhood Choir under the direction of Joyce Cherry with pianist Kathy Bjorseth performed an afternoon concert of Jewish music at the Weinberg Residence on Jan. 13. Featured were three works by Joan Beckow, a resident of the Louis Brier Hospital and a Temple Sholom member. Beckow was an active composer and music director in Los Angeles and, for a time, was Carol Burnett’s music director. The 23-voice Sisterhood Choir has sung for the annual Sisterhood Service for a number of years, but the recent concert at the Weinberg was a first for them outside of Temple Sholom.

photo - Some of the artists on opening night of the group show Community Longing and Belonging, Jan. 15 at the Zack Gallery — *(photo by Jocelyne Hallé)*

Some of the artists on opening night of the group show Community Longing and Belonging, Jan. 15 at the Zack Gallery. The exhibit marked Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month and ran until Jan. 27.

photo - Eurovision 2018 winner Netta Barzilai, right, with Carmel Tanaka, emcee of the night with IQ 2000 Trivia — *(photo by Corin Neuman)*

Eurovision 2018 winner Netta Barzilai, right, performed at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on Jan. 26 to help celebrate the 18th anniversary of Birthright Israel. Here, she is pictured with Carmel Tanaka, emcee of the night with IQ 2000 Trivia. The dance party was presented by the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver in partnership with Axis Vancouver, Hillel BC and the JCCGV.

Community show at Zack

“Open Doors” by Marcie Levitt-Cooper. (photo by Daniel Wajsman)

The group show Community Longing and Belonging, which opened Jan. 15 at the Zack Gallery, marks Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month (JDAIM).

“I heard about community art shows in celebration of JDAIM in other communities,” said Leamore Cohen, inclusion services coordinator at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, who was the driving force behind the local exhibit.

“I thought an unjuried exhibit would be a fabulous way to honour our community-wide commitment to remove barriers, to celebrate our community members’ creative capacities,” she said.

The main idea was to open up participation to everyone – professional artists and amateurs, people of different skill levels, abilities, perspectives, faiths and socioeconomic status.

“To make participation truly inclusive,” said Cohen, “we provided each artist with a 12-by-16 wood panel. We have also been taking direction from Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture and its artistic director, Yuri Arajs, as we wanted to ensure that this event is fully accessible.”

The JDAIM inclusion initiative and month of advocacy began throughout North America in 2009, explained Cohen. The idea for the art exhibit started to take form last spring, when Cohen approached Zack Gallery director Linda Lando.

“Linda was really receptive to the idea of the show.… Once I had the green light from her, the support and use of the gallery,” said Cohen, “I began to focus more on the theme.”

The theme of community and inclusion prompted her next steps. She reached out to many different organizations and communities and invited artists from all over the Lower Mainland to participate. The call for submissions went out in late September, and the response was remarkable. Fifty-two artists are included in the show.

“We have artists from Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, North Vancouver, and even as far out as Cloverdale,” said Cohen. “I’ve had the good fortune to meet all these new and amazingly creative people, welcome them to our community centre, and make new friends along the way. It’s been a joy. It broke my heart that I had to turn many away because of the limited space in the gallery. I have artists who want to sign up for the next year. There is so much excitement and so much more to say on this issue.”

photo - “Embrace” by Evelyn Fichmann — “Embrace” by Evelyn Fichmann. *(photo by Daniel Wajsman)*

To frame this exhibit, Cohen posed two questions, which are being used in its promotional materials: “How do we make meaning of the concept of community, the real and the imagined spaces we inhabit? What does community longing look like and what are the possibilities for belonging in an ever-changing world?”

“This show was a challenge and an invitation to look at social problems creatively and critically,” Cohen told the Independent. “It was also an opportunity for artists living with diverse needs to exhibit their work in a professional venue and to receive exposure.

“I don’t think we are going to resolve the problems of longing and belonging, or longing for belonging, any time soon. I think we’ll always have people who are better situated and people whose social networks are more tenuous. We should just keep having the conversations and build up those connections. We create new platforms and new access points, new opportunities for people to engage and tell their stories, whatever they look like and from whatever lens, whether it be through mental health, sexual identity, ability or socioeconomic status. We all have a story to tell.”

Cohen shared one example of how the show’s theme relates to her own life.

“The ‘longing’ part of the theme resonates with a lot of people,” she said. “It resonates with me as well. It emerges from my own story of disconnection from the Jewish community during my youth and young adulthood. Fortunately, so, too, does the ‘belonging’ part of this show. The JCC is a wonderful place, a place for belonging.”

photo - “Veselye u Selu” by Daniel Malenica — “Veselye u Selu” by Daniel Malenica. (photo by Daniel Wajsman)

The theme allowed for a number of different approaches, and the skill of the various participating artists varies widely, but the utter diversity becomes its main attraction. Although the size and shape of the canvases – the wooden boards provided by the organizers – are universal, the content is anything but, and so is the media. Some pieces are oils, others acrylic; still others, mixed media. There are abstracts and figurative compositions. Some have narratives. Others evoke emotions. Some have Jewish connotations. Others don’t. Some artists participated solo, while others enrolled as a family group.

Marcie Levitt-Cooper represents one such family. Her painting “Open Doors” depicts a colony of colourful birdhouses. Every door of every birdhouse is open, creating a welcoming avian village, a festive metaphor that makes you smile. No birds appear in the image, but you can almost hear them sing. The artist’s three daughters – Rebecca Wosk, Teddie Wosk and Margaux Wosk – also exhibit in the show.

Another family of artists is mother Elizabeth Snigurowicz and son Matthew Tom Wing. “They regularly come to the Jewish Community Centre inclusion services Art Hive drop-in program, a low-barrier, free art program,” said Cohen.

Daniel Malenica doesn’t have a family in the show, but her charming, pastel-toned piece is a jubilation of the artist’s Croatian roots and her LGBTQ+ community. Two girls embrace each other in the painting, both wear Slavic costumes. The title, “Veselye u Selu,” is the English phonetic spelling of a phrase in the artist’s mother tongue, meaning “Celebration at the Village.”

In Evelyn Fichmann’s painting “Embrace,” the artist, a recent immigrant from Brazil, has incorporated words in English and Hebrew. “Encourage,” “include,” “educate,” “respect,” “engage” and “support” surround the image, all fitting descriptors of what we should strive to do in our communities.

Community Longing and Belonging runs until Jan 27.

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

Whisper Across Time

Olga Campbell (seated) takes a break from signing books at the opening of her exhibit A Whisper Across Time, which also served as a launch of her book by the same name. (photo by Gordon E. McCaw)

The impacts of the Holocaust continue to reverberate. Even though most of the first-generation survivors have passed away, the next generations, the survivors’ children and grandchildren, remember.

Local artist Olga Campbell belongs to the second generation. Her parents survived the Holocaust, but her mother’s entire family was murdered by the Nazis. The need to give those family members a voice was Campbell’s driving force in writing her new book, A Whisper Across Time: My Family’s Story of the Holocaust Told Through Art and Poetry. Her solo exhibit with the same name, co-presented with the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, opened at the Zack Gallery on Nov. 15. The night also served as a book launch.

“The art in this show are mostly prints from the book,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “There are also some pieces that are offshoots on the same theme, even though they aren’t in the book.”

Campbell has always known that her mother’s family didn’t survive the war, but the emotional impact of their deaths built slowly over the years. It took decades for this book to emerge.

“In 1997,” she said, “I heard a program on the radio about the second-generation survivors. Their words about the trauma being passed between generations resonated with me.”

She embarked on an artistic journey, and she is still following a path of exploration. Her art reflects her emotional upheaval. Her paintings and statues are fragmented, with broken lines and distorted figures, evoking feelings of loss and anguish. One look at her paintings and a disquiet tension washes over the viewer. It is apparent that a huge tragedy inspired her work.

In 2005, Campbell had a show at the Zack, called Whispers Across Time. “Even then,” she said, “I knew I had to write about my family. The art show was not enough. I had to say more, but, at that time, I couldn’t. I was too raw, too emotional. But my family kept tugging at me. I needed to tell their story. I was compelled to write this book.”

Unfortunately, she knew only the bare bones of her mother’s life. So she plunged into a deep and long research period, surfed the internet, contacted Yad Vashem and other sources. After several years, the book crystallized.

“My book is a tribute to my family, the family I never knew,” she said.

“Of course, it is only one family of the millions of families killed during the Holocaust.”

Campbell spoke of the relevance of her book in today’s political climate. “Our world is a chaotic place right now, somewhat reminiscent of the period before the war,” she said. “There are over 68 million people around the world that are refugees or displaced. My book is not only about my family. It is a cautionary tale. It is about intergenerational trauma and its repercussions across time.”

image - artwork by Olga Campbell — *(artwork by Olga Campbell)*

She created new art for the book, wrote poetry to supplement the imagery, and also included an essay on her family members and their lives, destroyed by the war. The paintings in the book and on the gallery walls are powerful but melancholy, even distressing.

“My work always had this darkness, the sadness, but also a bit of hope,” she said. “I never know what will happen when I start a piece. I’m very intuitive. I would throw some paint on an empty canvas and let my emotions and the art itself guide me through the process. I use photos in my works and digital collages. My finished pieces always surprise me.”

When the book was ready, Campbell applied for another show at the Zack, to coincide with the book launch.

“I wanted to give it the same name as the previous show, Whispers Across Time,” she said, “but I checked the internet, and there are a couple other books already published with the same title. I decided to change it.” The book and the show are called A Whisper Across Time. “I feel a lot lighter now, after the book is finished and published,” she said.

A Whisper Across Time is Campbell’s second publication. In 2009, she published Graffiti Alphabet. She has been doing art for more than 30 years, but that is not how she started her professional career. She was a social worker until, in 1986, she took her first art class. That year changed her life.

“It was such fun. I loved it,” she said. “I went back to work afterwards but it didn’t feel as much fun. I decided to get an art education. I enrolled in Emily Carr when I was 44.”

Campbell finished the art program, continued working part-time as a social worker, and dedicated the rest of her time to painting, sculpture and photography.

“I’ve been a member of the Eastside Culture Crawl for 22 years, since its beginning,” she said. “I participated in the Artists in Our Midst for many years, too. At first, when people asked me, I would say I do art. Now, I say, I’m an artist. I must be. That’s what I do. I’m retired now, but I did art when I was working, too, and it was always very healing and rewarding – still is…. If, for some reason, I don’t paint for awhile, I feel as if something is missing.”

The A Whisper Across Time exhibit continues until Dec. 9. For more about her work and books, visit olgacampbell.com.

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

Heart unites artworks

Claudie Azoulai, left, and Nicole Schouela. Their work comprises the exhibit Heart to Heart, which is at the Zack Gallery until Nov. 9. (photo from the artists)

The latest show at the Zack Gallery, Heart to Heart, presents the work of two artists in two vastly different media. Claudie Azoulai makes felt tapestries, while Nicole Schouela specializes in photography. Despite the differences in material representation, however, the colour palettes and the themes are amazingly similar – places close to their heart, places that invoke love and peace. The places and the emotions they inspire consolidate the show into a seamless, cohesive whole.

“We wanted to have a shared show forever,” Azoulai told the Independent. “We’re cousins, Nicole and I. We grew up together.”

They came up with the idea of a joint show about a year ago. “The timing is perfect,” said Azoulai. “It takes me, on average, about a month to create one piece, and there are 13 pieces of mine in this show, all new.”

photo - “Heron” by Claudie Azoulai — “Heron” by Claudie Azoulai.

All of these pieces are related to a children’s book Azoulai has written. “The book will be called The Spring Feast. It’s about the flora and fauna of Hornby Island, one of my favourite places. I will photograph every tapestry here, and they will be the illustrations for the book,” she said.

Azoulai considers herself a part of the great pageantry of life, and Hornby Island provides her with the opportunity to experience it firsthand. One of the tapestries, “Herring Run,” reflects her connection with nature.

“Every spring, herring come to Hornby Island to spawn,” she explained. “Then salmon come to eat the herring. Seals come to eat the salmon. Whales come to eat seals. Eagles fly over to eat the roe. Everything is alive, this great circle of life, and I’m part of it, too. When I come to Hornby Island in spring, I try to stay outside all day.”

Many of the tapestries depict various birds of Hornby Island. “I work from my imagination,” Azoulai said, “but when I need a particular pose or gesture, I go to the beach to watch the birds or look at photographs.”

Azoulai dyes her wool herself, and no batch comes out of the vat exactly the same, even if all the ingredients of the dye match. “Colours of the fleece always surprise me,” she said. “They influence the images. When I’m stuck, I would dye a new batch, and the new colours might affect the image, lead to a change. The colours dictate the picture more often than not.”

She frequently experiments with new materials, incorporating silk or synthetic particles into the base of wool to add a shine or a different texture. “As long as the fleece entangles the other threads, the image stays together,” she said about that technique.

Mixing and matching is also Schouela’s preferred technique, using Photoshop to work with different parts from a multitude of photographs.

“I have nine pieces in this show,” she said. “They are places I revisit often, not by traveling far away, but the places where I live and work. The places I walk. The places I love. The places that have almost a ritualistic meaning for me.… Sometimes, they are physical places. Other times, they are mental places.”

Schouela started her artistic life as a dancer, but dance is an unforgiving art form that takes its toll on the body. She switched first to ceramics, and later dedicated herself to photography. In everything she creates – a dance or a vase or a photo collage – there is movement and transformation. The images flow through each other, striving towards abstraction and emotional truth.

photo - “Perceived Threat” by Nicole Schouela — “Perceived Threat” by Nicole Schouela.

“Photo manipulation is freeing,” she said. “I could take pieces from here and there and create a new image I want, while it still retains the essence of the originals. It might take me several months to finish one picture. I would stop working with it and then, later, I would return to it again and again, until I’m satisfied.”

She photographs places that are part of her and her search for connections and understanding. By now, she has thousands of photos in her digital archives. “Sometimes, I would use a photograph or a fragment of one years after it was taken, because it would fit one particular composition or a feeling I want to explore,” she said. “I don’t want my images to resemble the real places. The original photographs are not important by themselves. They are part of the process. Sometimes, I play with pieces of 30 to 50 photos for one picture. It is fun.”

Schouela’s abstract compositions on the gallery walls lean towards pastel or black and white, with occasional splashes of bright colour. Some are geometrical. Others tell a story or convey an emotion.

“Traditional photography doesn’t interest me anymore – anyone can take a picture now with their phones,” she said. “I don’t want my imagery to be like paintings either. Photography is a separate art form. If I wanted a painting, I would paint. No, I want my collages to keep their photographic elements obvious.”

The exhibit Heart to Heart opened on Oct. 11 and continues until Nov. 9. To learn more about the artists, check out their websites: claudieazoulai.com and nicoleschouela.com.

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

Divine Sparks at the Zack

Barbara Heller’s exhibit, Divine Sparks, is at the Zack Gallery until Oct. 8. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Barbara Heller’s new solo show at the Zack Gallery, Divine Sparks, could be divided into three distinct themes, each one representative of a world culture: the Sephirot, the Mudras and the Future Reliquaries. Each of the three resonates with one of three religions, Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity, respectively, but Heller, a master weaver, sees divine sparks everywhere. Her tapestries, big and small, invite gallery guests to contemplate what unites us, no matter our ethnicity or religious affiliation.

Symbolism infuses Heller’s images, starting with the centrepiece of the show, “Tzimtzum,” or “Transcendence.” The large tapestry is a stylized ladder. The midnight blue rungs at the bottom coalesce into a dead bird, but the higher your eyes travel, the lighter the colours become. Two pairs of wings punctuate the climb of colours from dark indigo to white radiance.

“The ladder has many interpretations,” Heller told the Independent. “It can be a metaphor for our life, a liminal space between birth and death…. For me, the rungs are stepping stones on the path of spiritual attainment, of transcendence.”

Heller has shown this tapestry at several exhibitions already, to great acclaim. Recently, it won the American Tapestry Alliance Award.

photo - Barbara Heller made a series of small tapestries of her feather collection, Sephirot, specifically for the Zack show — Barbara Heller made a series of small tapestries of her feather collection, Sephirot, specifically for the Zack show.

“Originally, I wanted to display this tapestry with real feathers piled along the bottom,” the artist said about “Tzimtzum.” “I have amassed many beautiful feathers, and friends kept bringing me more, but I discovered it was almost impossible to send real feathers anywhere. I displayed the tapestry in Poland a couple years ago, and they told me that real feathers have to be quarantined for weeks before being allowed into the country. And they can’t be from endangered species. I wasn’t sure about that.”

Since the plan involving the real feathers fell through, Heller made a series of small tapestries of her feather collection, Sephirot, specifically for the Zack show.

“I already had lots of yarn died blue for the ‘Tzimtzum,’” she said. She called the series Sephirot after the kabbalah’s spiritual qualities of understanding, wisdom, love and judgment, among others.

“Some of the feathers are almost photographic,” she said. “In the others, I played with colours and sparkles.”

The second series in the show, Mudras, obtained its name from the hand gestures prevalent in Hinduism, Asian dancing, yoga and meditation.

“Typically, mudras are used as a way to direct energy flow in the body,” Heller said. “According to yoga, different areas of the hand stimulate specific areas of the brain. By applying light finger pressure to these areas of the hand, you can ‘activate’ the corresponding region of the brain. In addition, hand mudras also symbolize various feelings and emotions.”

Heller’s Mudras is a series of small, uniform-sized round images of various hand gestures. The hands are woven of golden yarn and appliquéd to dark-green fabric with a vague “computer motherboard” pattern. Parts of real electronics – wires, chips, connectors – are incorporated into the design of every gesture, as if to emphasize the similarities between computer circuits and the neuron circuitry in our brains.

“I collect old electronics and take them apart, and use them in my weaving,” said Heller. “This series was fun to make.”

The other series, Future Reliquaries, is an older one. Also depicting hands embedded with parts of electronic devices, it reflects humanity’s developing love affair with technology.

Several tapestries of the series are rather large. In each one, a human hand in golden yarn stands out from the background of an ancient traditional pattern. “Different tapestries sport different patterns: from Persia, Indonesia, Turkey, Navajo,” Heller said.

Like in the Mudras series, the interlaced computer piece are symbolic of our interconnection with machines.

Heller wrote: “This series deals with three apparently separate but, in my mind, connected histories: weaving, computing and religion. Weaving is a binary system of up/down, just as computing is a binary system of on/off…. Religion is not only a store of faith; it is a store of history and social values…. Today, we are creating a new religion. We are worshipping the technology.”

Heller’s tapestries contemplate the future status of today’s electronic remnants in the context of ancient fabrics. “As holy relics were housed in reliquaries, often made of gold and gems, I’m trying to populate my tapestries with the future relics – the computer chips and wires.”

Beside the large hands, there is also a selection of tiny ones, where each miniscule woven hand is linked to topics such as keys or clocks, science or beauty, birth or death.

Heller’s exhibit is part of larger happenings in Vancouver this month – a symposium of the Textile Society of America. The symposium takes place Sept. 19-23, and many galleries around the city besides the Zack are displaying textile or weaving exhibitions to coincide with it.

As a well-known local artist, Heller has been one of the event organizers from the beginning. “We have a wealth of local textile artists, and about 400 people are coming to the symposium from all over the world,” she said.

The planning for the symposium began three years ago. “We made sure that the hotel reservations were available on the dates that didn’t include Yom Kippur,” she said. “Unfortunately, a year ago, the hotel informed us that they had to change our reservation dates.”

So, now, the first day of the symposium falls on Yom Kippur, as other reservations were not available, and the society has posted an apology on its website.

The Zack Gallery offers a bus tour of three textile exhibitions in the city on Sept. 20. To learn more about the tour and to register, visit jccgv.com/art-and-culture/gallery. For more about Heller, visit barbaraheller.ca.

Divine Sparks opened on Sept. 6 and continues until Oct. 8.

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