Zack Gallery – Page 2

Exhibit inspired by roots and wings

Roots and Wings at Zack Gallery features a wide range of artwork, including the painting “Princess Love” by Grace Tang. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Roots and Wings, the seventh annual exhibition of JCC inclusion services, opened at Zack Gallery on Jan. 30. The show marks February as Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month. Most participating artists are either members of Art Hive, JCC inclusion services’ art branch, or members of similar programs in other localities. Such programs offer people with developmental disabilities art classes and workshops, and help emerging artists with instructions and materials.

The show’s theme is Roots and Wings. On the one hand, roots represent a deep connection to our origins: biological, ethnic and geographic. On the other hand, wings denote our striving to fly towards new beginnings and new understandings.

photo - “Shoes” by Jasmine Winkler Stobbe — “Shoes” by Jasmine Winkler Stobbe. *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

Many artists responded to the challenging theme. The exhibition includes paintings, ceramics and 3D installations. The images vary from detailed beaded jewelry by Mikaela Zitron to the flowery landscape “Walking through the Meadow Land” by Theresa Kinahan. Small raku ceramics of birds and hamsa (hands) by different Art Hive potters stand beside the colourful and whimsical acrylic “Paisley Cat” by Calvin Ho.

Trees and roots also served as the inspiration for a few pieces. Among them, the most unusual is “Shoes” by Jasmine Winkler Stobbe. Roots painted in a quiet blue palette enhance the standard black fabric shoes’ tops, inviting everybody to try them on.

But most artists went with the subject of birds, so fitting to the theme of wings. Small, everyday birds decorate Jerry Zhou’s charming totes. Strange, fantastic birds look haughtily at the viewer from Hadeeb Hamidi’s painting “Mystical Birds.” A regal peacock with its gorgeous tail struts across a simple landscape in Grace Tang’s “Princess Love.” And, while owls in several paintings are instantly recognizable, the driftwood bird sculpture “Fusion of Nature” by Melody Edgars feels like an embodiment of a proud sea bird with a powerful beak and a curious nature.

photo - “Fusion of Nature” by Melody Lorna Edgars — “Fusion of Nature” by Melody Lorna Edgars. *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

Many artists depicted chickens: small and large, yellow and multicoloured, familiar and exotic. Matthew Tom-Wing’s humorous “Nobody Here but Chicken” seems to represent this flock of chicken fairly well.

Some artists have participated in these annual shows before. For others, this is their first time at the Zack. One of the newcomers is Shiri Barak Gonen, the new inclusion services coordinator.

“My career went in a kind of crooked line,” said Gonen in an email interview. “I started working in the Israeli tech industry when I was 23, freshly discharged from military service. I worked with computers in both technical and managerial roles while I completed my bachelor’s degree in psychology, followed by a music therapy program, on evenings and weekends. Afterwards, I worked for a few years as a music therapist with kids of all ages and with a range of challenges. Some years later, I found my way back to the tech industry, until we decided to relocate to Vancouver. We arrived in Canada in 2024.”

Newly hired, Gonen has given lots of thought to her new position. “The inclusion coordinator role is composed of two aspects,” she explained. “First, the managerial tasks such as staff and budget management and strategic planning. The other aspect is the direct and intensive interactions with the inclusion population, which requires sensitivity and a constant awareness of the needs of others. Both aspects are reflected in my personality and in my previous jobs.”

She added: “My current position is very different from my past jobs. In my last role, I was writing software code … and managing teams. Before, when I worked as a music therapist, I had a chance to work with my students and their families, but being a therapist puts you at a different angle than a program instructor. My focus will always be therapeutic, but I find much more pleasure in sharing hot chocolate and a chat with a group rather than analyzing their behaviour as a therapist. The essence of my new job is to establish meaningful relationships and mutual trust. We are building such a connection now.”

Another newbie at the Zack Gallery is an experienced Vancouver artist – Pierre Leichner.

“I have always been artistic,” Leichner said in a telephone interview. “Photography, ceramics, other creative outlets. But, when I graduated from high school, my family and I decided that, for better employment opportunities, I should go into science. I didn’t mind. I liked science too.”

He became a psychiatrist and worked in the profession for more than 30 years.

“In 2002, I decided I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “The medical system turned too entrepreneurial, too corporate and dehumanizing.” So, he revisited his first love – art. He enrolled at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and received his bachelor’s in fine arts in 2007. In 2011, he completed his master’s in fine arts at Concordia University in Montreal.

“Mostly I do visual arts,” he said. “Sculpture, photography, videos and paintings. I also do some performing arts, and I dabble in theatre,” he said. “I have my own YouTube channel, which deals with environmental issues.”

photo - Some of Pierre Leichner’s GrassRoots Project masks — Some of Pierre Leichner’s GrassRoots Project masks. *(photo from Pierre Leichner)*

A multidisciplinary artist with widespread interests, Leichner considers community involvement of utmost importance. In 2017, he founded the Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival, which provides opportunities to marginalized visual and performing artists. He still serves as its artistic director. He is also a member of the Connection Salon collective and sits on the board of the Community Arts Council of Vancouver.

“I like to explore the possibilities on the cusp of art and science,” he said. “There are similarities between the two, and both examine the foundations of human existence.”

The GrassRoots Project he presented for the current Zack show fuses science and arts and illustrates Leichner’s interdisciplinary approach.

“I saw the call for this show, and it fit my GrassRoots Project perfectly,” he said. “The project started in 2011, when Britannia Community Centre received a grant to celebrate people with the deepest grassroots contributions: teachers, artists, musicians.”

Over the years, Leichner has made about a dozen sculptural masks of those people, plus some of his friends and colleagues, employing a traditional Mediterranean technique. “I use wheatgrass,” he explained. “I make a mold of their face masks and plant wheatgrass within. The roots take the shape of the face, while the grass grows out like hair. It takes about three weeks to grow each portrait. The grass becomes part of the sculpture, the means of my artistic expression.”

Each mask is a symbol, echoing the synergy of humans and nature. “In this way,” the artist said, “nature imitated us in celebrating our community at this time of great ecological concern. We all need roots. We have them within our bodies. We also have them with our family and our community.”

Roots and Wings is on until March 2.

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

Campbell’s art at Zack

Artist Olga Campbell and her grandson Arlo, for whom Campbell wrote her memoir, Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson. (photo from Olga Campbell)

Recently, Olga Campbell published her third book, a memoir, Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson. Campbell’s new solo show with the same name opened at the Zack Gallery on Jan. 9. It features a selection of paintings and sculptures from the book, as well as a short film.

“The film starts the exhibition,” Campbell told the Independent. “It contains my photographs of Vancouver and its people. It is called Everybody Has a Story. The show and the book portray one of those stories – my story. But millions of other people have their stories, too, and, in the film, in my photos, I tried to tell some of those stories.”

Campbell said, “The book and the show are my answers to the questions my grandson asks. He is interested in our family’s past. We are very close, he and I. We just went to Nepal together. I thought I would write this book for him, as my legacy.”

The book does not concentrate exclusively on pain and tragedy, on the deaths of her family members in the Holocaust. It also celebrates the power of art and writing as a transformational and healing tool. Besides letters to her grandson, the book includes Campbell’s poetry and art, essays written by the artist, and her family’s traditional recipes. (See jewishindependent.ca/a-multidimensional-memoir.)

The Zack Gallery show is a subset of the book, a selection of paintings and sculptures the memoir highlights. The paintings are mostly collages based on the artist’s photographs. Each photo is Photoshopped into infinity, so none of the faces in the paintings have any resemblance to their origins. Campbell likes to experiment with images, looking at them from different perspectives, applying different approaches. Like her inner child who never grew up, she plays with them, making up different stories for different levels of perception.

One of the paintings, “Corridor of Memories,” has a couple of faces looking at the viewer with thoughtful, slightly anxious expressions. Behind those faces, a long corridor stretches into an unknown distance. The memories that come from that distance seem diverse and unsettling, a mix of positive and negative, but different for everyone.

image - “Corridor of Memories” by Olga Campbell — “Corridor of Memories” by Olga Campbell. (photo by Olga Livshin)

“There is bad there but there is also some good stuff there,” she said. “I played with the faces in that painting. I thought it would be interesting to make them three-dimensional. That’s how I came up with the sculptures in the show. They are the result of the images unfolding from 2D to 3D.”

Another painting that underwent a similar metamorphosis is “Shall We Dance? – self meeting Self.” Campbell explained: “I took this image from the confines of a frame and brought it to life by making it three-dimensional. The title, ‘self meeting Self,’ refers to the small self, the individual, the ego, meeting the Universal Self, and the ensuing dance of Self-discovery, joy and wonder of life.”

The 3D dancers – a thickened silhouette of the flat painted image beside it – rotate. They are accompanied by the song “Shall We Dance,” played by a tiny music box, when someone winds it up.

image - “The Sky is Falling” by Olga Campbell — “The Sky is Falling” by Olga Campbell. *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

Sometimes Campbell’s reconstruction of images results not in an additional dimension but in a deepening complexity of the original idea. In “The Sky is Falling,” she took a person’s outline from the painting beside it and embellished it with everything that she felt was relevant to our hectic lives. Unlike most of the other paintings in the gallery, there is no face in this one. The grey danger hangs over all of us, regardless of our facial features or skin colour.

“There are lots of similarities in our world today and the one that preceded WWII,” said Campbell. “That’s why I put a crow in that painting. A crow is a traditional symbol of death, but also of transformation, of change and the future.”

Like the book it is based on, the show is not linear. It reflects the artist’s response to various events in her life, both happy and sad, from her coming of age, to the current war in Ukraine. Both the memoir and the show emphasize Campbell’s personal journey through the beauty and the trauma of life, so inextricably entangled together.

At the gallery on Jan. 23, 7 p.m., Campbell will discuss her book and her art in an event co-presented by the Zack Gallery and the JCC Jewish Book Festival. Campbell’s exhibit will be on display until Jan. 27. To learn more, check out the artist’s website, olgacampbell.com.

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

Paintings inspired by women

Therese Joseph’s solo show at the Zack Gallery opened Oct. 12, but the official opening reception, which she will attend, takes place Oct. 30. (photo from Therese Joseph)

The new solo show at the Zack Gallery – Women, Words and Wisdom: Therese Joseph – celebrates the power of women in our lives.

Artist Therese Joseph’s mixed media paintings combine imagery and words in her depictions of women she admires. Not any specific woman, but all of them, a symbolic woman, and what she means to the artist. On the walls of the gallery, Joseph’s women are sad or sleeping, doubting or searching, traveling or dancing, but they all represent the artist’s interpretation of “woman,” in all her multifaceted complexity.

Joseph grew up in Switzerland, and her road to Vancouver and an artistic career was a round-about one. When she was in her early 20s, she traveled to England to study English. There, she met a young engineer from Borneo. They fell in love and stayed in touch. A few years later, after he found work in Vancouver, he invited Joseph to join him. She had never been to Canada before.

“At first, I came for three months,” Joseph told the Independent. “I loved it here. Everyone was so open and friendly. I felt free here, felt that I could do anything I wanted. Life here was much less structured, not as many rules as back home in Switzerland. It felt like there could be more than one way to do stuff, and that freedom attracted me.”

Like many others, she was captivated by the nature of British Columbia.

“The mountains, the sea, the forest. It was like Switzerland, but more – more open, more generous,” she said.

Of course, it took time for every document to be signed and she could finally settle into her married life in Canada.

“Home in Switzerland, I had an education as a kindergarten teacher, but my diploma wasn’t accepted here in Canada,” Joseph said. So, she opened an after-school art club for local children.

photo - “Wear Your Words” by Therese Joseph — “Wear Your Words” by Therese Joseph. *(photo from Therese Joseph)*

“I’ve always loved doing art, loved being creative,” she said. “I was involved in several community art projects with my young students in North Vancouver. We painted balconies, murals, created some street banners.”

But, eventually, she wanted to dedicate herself to art full-time, and she felt she needed more education in this regard.

“At about the same time – year 2000 – a couple of my family members in Switzerland died, and it was hard for me. I couldn’t be there with my family as much as I wanted,” she shared.

Creating art felt like a necessity for her then, a balm to her grieving heart. She sold her art studio business and enrolled in art-related continuing education classes at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Langara College.

“I took many classes and workshops in the next few years,” said Joseph. “Whenever I liked an artist, I found a way to learn from them. Among my mentors were Jeanne Krabbendam, Don Farrell, Lori Goldberg, Nurieh Mozaffari, Steven Aimone and more. I’d call it a self-directed art education.”

She emerged from that time an accomplished artist and art teacher. She exhibited widely in Canada and abroad. She taught both children and adults.

“I love teaching art,” she said. “At first, I preferred teaching children, but, as my own children grew older, I gravitated towards teaching adults and seniors. Everything has its time.”

Through all the changes in her life, Joseph kept making art. She paints figures and faces, flowers and feathers in her Dandelion Art Studio in North Vancouver.

“Women are my predominant subject,” she said. “They inspire me. They embody how strength and resilience can coexist with vulnerability, and how setbacks are merely steppingstones on the path to achieving one’s goals.”

Her technique is often mixed media. “I collect old magazines, newspapers, cards. People bring them to me, too. I rip them to pieces – never cut with scissors – and glue those text fragments to my canvases to see what could emerge. I love the process of creation, love the empty canvas that becomes an image with a meaning and a message. I never know what the current painting is about until it is done. The painting itself guides me.”

At the beginning of this year, Joseph learned about the Zack Gallery’s call for artists and submitted her proposal for a solo show.

“I had enough paintings with text and letters to fill a gallery,” she said. “I wanted to emphasize the texts, so I started searching for quotes from famous women to attach to each painting. I read thousands of quotes on the internet before I made my selection for each painting. It was very interesting and amusing.”

Her palette is colourful and her compositions sophisticated.

“None of them depict a specific woman,” she said. “They all come from my imagination. I wanted to paint something about perfume, and my painting ‘Fragrant Rain’ was the result.” The woman in the painting saunters under her umbrella, while the rain hides the details, though one can make out a perfume bottle in her bag. Coco Chanel’s tongue-in-cheek quote accentuates the painting.

“Wear Your Words” boasts three female figures, in red, pink and orange, their clothing decorated with disjointed texts. We don’t know what the women are doing. Are they dancing? Are they passing each other on the street? The letters filling their clothing jump at the viewers. “Words are the clothes your thoughts wear,” says the quote by Amanda Patterson that accompanies this painting.

photo - “Shadows in Motion” by Therese Joseph, whose exhibit Women, Words and Wisdom is at the Zack Gallery until Nov. 18 — “Shadows in Motion” by Therese Joseph, whose exhibit Women, Words and Wisdom is at the Zack Gallery until Nov. 18. (photo from Therese Joseph)

Most of the works on display are full of colour, so the one in black and white draws the eye. “Shadows in Motion” is actually a diptych. Joseph explained its roots.

“I’ve always loved traveling, and we traveled a lot. When, after 37 years of happy marriage, my husband passed away, I wanted to prove to myself that I could travel alone, too. I went to Mexico. I walked on the beach and watched my shadow. After awhile, I started posing, jumping and photographing my shadow in every awkward position. My hands were here and there, up and to the sides. I bent. I stretched. The sun was strong and my shadow seemed to dance. I wanted to capture every nuance. The painting was born out of those photos.”

Another travel destination – Amsterdam – inspired a couple of paintings. “Strength Becomes Her” and “Moving On” both have the word “BISON” in them.

“I was in Amsterdam and visited an art show about bison,” Joseph explained. “It was in a warehouse – a huge building with many different artists. They had a catalogue as large as a newspaper, and I asked for two catalogues. When I came home, I tore those catalogues into shreds and used the ripped words in the paintings.”

Both paintings employ bold, punchy colours. Both are rather large.

“The bison is huge and powerful, and I wanted my paintings to reflect that,” said Joseph.

Women, Words and Wisdom opened Oct. 12 and will run until Nov. 18. The official opening reception, with the artist in attendance, will be held on Oct. 30, at 6 p.m. To learn more about the artist, visit thereseljoseph.com.

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

Artist’s portals to elsewhere

Artist Amy J. Dyck sits amid her work “Bed Desk,” one of the pieces in her solo exhibit, Portals to Elsewhere, which opened at the Zack Gallery last month. (photo by Byron Dauncey)

The art of Amy J. Dyck is surreal and enigmatic. Her solo show Portals to Elsewhere opened on Aug. 25 at the Zack Gallery. Like any portal, it allows a viewer a glimpse into the artist’s sophisticated and contradictory inner world.

“I loved drawing when I was young,” Dyck said in an interview with the Independent. “I liked little details: earrings, shoelaces. It was easy, like a game. Then I had a son and, like every young mother, I was always tired. Creating art at that point stopped just being fun. I needed to concentrate, to find time for my art, to figure out whether I wanted to spend that time. That was when I became a real artist.”

That wasn’t the only time life challenged her. “I wanted to be a designer,” she said. “I started at design school but, after one year, I became too sick and had to drop out.”

But she never abandoned learning – she taught herself, read textbooks and took occasional classes. And she never stopped creating – paintings and drawings, mixed-media collages and soft sculptures, ceramics and wood installations dominated her life, as she juggled being an artist with her non-artistic jobs, family and chronic illness.

Multilayered and metaphorical, Dyck’s collages and sculptures could be seen as a self-portrait of an artist battling a chronic disability.

“I’m often sick and can’t move much,” she said. “Sometimes, I spend several months in bed. That’s why I make soft sculptures. It’s easier when I’m in bed and can’t go to my studio. I have to be flexible with my materials and techniques to accommodate my illness.”

Despite the hardships associated with her ill health, Dyck’s works don’t display any bitterness or resentment. Instead, the artist is on a journey of self-discovery.

“I have to learn how to live in a body that’s broken,” she explained. “That’s what my art is about. My soft pieces are something I want to wrap around myself, to counteract my anxiety.”

All the sculptures on display at the gallery present complex knots of fabric, pipes stuffed with soft fillings. Combined with ceramic elements, leather, wood, feathers and other materials, these ouroboros reflect the artist’s struggles and her determination to live as fully as she can. Her philosophical piece “Blame Mosquito” is a fur ball with half a dozen ceramic hands coming out of it, pointing in all directions. “When I was young,” she recalled, “there was a traumatic event in my life. I blamed everyone – like those fingers pointing everywhere – until I realized that I myself carried some of the blame. That’s why one of the hands points back at me.”

“Yellow Polka-dot Tail” also has sharp, dark spikes coming out of the soft, colourful tangle and pointing everywhere. “Those spikes are like my anger. They help me feel powerful,” she said.

Another piece, “Wing Head,” introduces a strange single wing decorating the sculpture’s head. “The wing is not functional,” she said. “Just like parts of my body. It is a possibility of flight, an idea, not a reality.”

Dyck explores a body that doesn’t work well by creating allegorical figures with faulty anatomy, with the wrong number of fingers on a hand or mangled joints or tiny wings in the wrong places. “I’m processing my disability through symbolism,” she said.

She uses second-hand materials for her sculptures. “I buy old clothing at thrift stores or internet marketplaces. The leather came from our old couch. My kids helped me dismantle it and cut out the pieces I could use,” she said.

photo - “Wing Head” by Amy J. Dyck can be seen at the Zack Gallery until Oct. 1 — “Wing Head” by Amy J. Dyck can be seen at the Zack Gallery until Oct. 1. *(photo by Byron Dauncey)*

The theme of a body disrupted, of limbs disconnected, continues in her painting-like mixed-media collages. Many of them have images of open doors, windows or arches. “They are my portals to elsewhere,” she said. “When I’m in bed, when I can’t move, I look out of my window and imagine myself out there. I like being outdoors.”

The images are uncomfortable and deformed, but there is optimism, a strange equilibrium of what might be considered ugly and beautiful. Body parts surrounded by butterflies. Too many hands counterbalanced by birds and ghosts, black and white charcoal drawings incorporating splashes of real gold. All of them speak of a deep need to understand our own bodies, how they work and why they sometimes don’t. The style of the artist is unique and instantly recognizable, and that is what Dyck teaches aspiring artists – she offers classes at community centres and retirement homes. “I try to teach my students how to find their own voices,” she said.

One of the most interesting examples of Dyck’s art is an installation called “Bed Desk.” Dyck explained its etymology.

“I promised the gallery a sculptural installation, but then I became very sick and couldn’t leave my bed,” she said. “My husband is a builder. He made those wooden stands that surround the circular space and act as frames for my drawings. He also made me a bed desk where I could draw while in bed, but I could only create pieces of the same shape and size as the desk surface. I channeled my longing to move, to feel strong into those drawings. The figures I drew are broken, like me, but they move, they grow, they adapt and evolve. The installation was funded by a Canada Council for the Arts grant. When you step into its circle to view the drawings, you enter your own portal to elsewhere.”

Dyck’s show will be at the Zack Gallery until Oct. 1. To learn more about the artist and her work, visit her website, amyjdyck.com.

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

Art as a form of storytelling

Sarah Dobbs is the new manager of the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. (photo from Zack Gallery)\

The Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery has a new manager, Sarah Dobbs, who showed an early affinity for her chosen field.

“My first time as a gallery host happened when I was about 8 years old,” she told the Independent. “My father was a journalist and a travel writer, and we lived in many countries when I was young: Spain, France, Morocco. Everywhere, my parents took me to art galleries, and I loved it.

“In the 1960s, while we were in Mexico, we often went to the local market. My father bought colourful folk sculptures. It was long before they became popular, we started collecting them. After we returned to Toronto, my family decided to have an exhibition of our collection. I was there, too. I enjoyed talking to people who came to see the show. I told them stories about this sculpture and that one. I liked sharing another culture with the people in my city. This entire experience had a huge impact on me. Even though I was young, I realized that art was storytelling. Art reflects our understanding of people and cultures.”

After receiving her degree in art history from the University of British Columbia and a master’s of education from the University of Toronto, Dobbs worked in the art world for more than 30 years.

“I ran commercial galleries and public galleries,” she said. “In the mid-’90s, I opened my own gallery, where I displayed mostly abstract art. I love abstract. Anyone can read their own story in an abstract painting.”

One of Dobbs’s most interesting projects happened when she was the director of the Burnaby Art Gallery.

“Part of my job there was to increase our interactions with the community,” she

explained. “I started an outreach program for people who would never go to an art gallery on their own, specifically youths right out of jail. They were young. Most of them had yet to graduate from high school. We gave them disposable cameras and suggested they take photos of what was important in their lives (but not drugs). Then they would do collages of their photos and we displayed those collages in local bus shelters. Those collages reflected the teens’ lives, perhaps helped them to come to terms with it. The collages were also an opportunity for all of them to share their lives and their concerns with the wider public. I’m proud to say that all of our participants graduated from high school.”

Projects like this, integrating art and public awareness, have accompanied Dobbs throughout her career. From 2002 to 2008, she worked in Ireland, at the National Gallery of Ireland and at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

“We worked with hospital patients, but it wasn’t art therapy,” she said of that experience. “It was just doing art, participating. It reminded sick people of their healthy selves.”

Everywhere she has worked, Dobbs has helped people tell their stories through art, helped them deal with their suffering.

“In 2004, I was invited by a nurses’ charity to go to Sri Lanka for five weeks, to help the tsunami victims,” she recalled. “So many died there, children, old people. So much pain. I tried to do what I could to help, to ease that pain – I brought 98 kilos of art supplies with me.”

Later, in Kenya, she lived in a women’s peace-building village for a time.

“There were women from different tribes there, the tribes that were at war, that committed atrocities towards each other. But those women tried to build peace,” said Dobbs. “We would sit together and share stories. When women from different tribes saw similarities in their stories, felt their stories resonate with everyone, it helped in the peace-building process.”

Dobbs has curated about 200 art exhibitions. In her opinion, deep knowledge of the art world is only part of being a successful curator.

“Of course, you have to be passionate about art,” she said. “But you also have to be very organized. You need to be patient with the artists – they are very sensitive. Encouraging artists, especially young artists, boosting their confidence is paramount. It helps them tell their stories. And you also need to be aware of who is going to see the art – to keep balance between artistic expression and public understanding. Sometimes, the latter could be a challenge. Another ongoing challenge is convincing people that art has value.”

Those challenges can be exhausting, and even a successful art curator occasionally needs a break. Dobbs took such a break during the pandemic. The timing made sense, as most public spaces closed in 2020.

“For three years, I ran an integrated clinic, including traditional medicine, a naturopath, a massage therapist, etc. A break is good,” she said, “but I always come back to art. Sharing art with everyone is my joy.”

That’s why when the JCC announced that the Zack Gallery needed a new manager, she applied for the position.

“I have known about the Zack Gallery forever,” Dobbs said. “It is a wonderful place, a blend between a public gallery and a commercial art space. The gallery runs community exhibits. There is a theatre next door, which brings people in before the shows and during the intermissions. Children come in often. That is how art education starts for most of us, when a child wanders into an art gallery.”

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

Pride in his Jewish identity

Brian Gleckman in front of his work, “The Judgment of Solomon (Psak Din: Judgment).” Psak din is a ruling given by a beit din, a Jewish court. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Brian Gleckman’s first show at the Zack Gallery, Abstracted Identity, opened on June 18.

The artist has loved art since childhood. “I grew up in Los Angeles,” he said in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “It is a vibrant city for visual arts. There are an endless number of art galleries and museums, and I was always there. And, of course, I always drew and painted.”

After getting his degree in visual art and history from California State University, Gleckman traveled extensively around Europe, before settling in Vancouver more than 30 years ago. But traveling has remained his passion and, during his travels, he invariably focuses on art and art history, museums and galleries.

“When I first visited Europe, I fell in love with Rococo and Baroque,” he said. Baroque and Rococo are both highly ornamental styles, which infused the art and architecture of post-Renaissance Europe.

Later, he drifted towards more contemporary styles, both as an art connoisseur and in his own work. “I suppose I can call my art abstract expressionism,” he said.

“Colour for me is a vehicle that allows me to play with shapes and space,” Gleckman explained. “Spatial relationships and composition of the images are of the utmost importance to me. I’m also concerned with depth and texture. I aim to create visual tension in my paintings. I think art shouldn’t be too easy or too comfortable. I want my viewers to engage, to ask questions. ‘What did he mean by that?’ ‘How does it make me feel?’ My viewers might not arrive at the same inner realization I conceived, but their explorations are more important than my answers. When people interact with my art, they become part of the creation process.”

With his current show, Gleckman seeks to “portray things that lie beyond the tangible – that is, beyond the figurative, beyond the readily recognized narrative. The paintings in this exhibit are expressions of the inspiration I derive from biblical stories, religious thought, as well as rudimentary ideas within kabbalah. Selected from the portfolios of my professional artwork, these paintings are reflections of how I personalize the intangibles of Judaism.… These paintings are abstractions of my Jewish identity, an identity that is the product not so much of formal religious practice but the summative effect of intellectual and emotional sensibilities of my Jewishness.”

Of course, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, which is home to the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, felt like the perfect venue for such a show, but there was an additional reason why Gleckman wanted to exhibit at the Zack.

“After Oct. 7, I wanted to do something that had meaning,” he said. “I wanted to share my pride in my Jewish identity. At the same time, I wanted to be part of the effort to help Israel, to make my own contribution. But I am an artist. I create art. I thought maybe my art could inspire someone to do something for Israel, to help in some way.”

He approached the gallery with the idea of a show and offered to donate any proceeds from the sales of his paintings.

“I’m going to donate whatever I get to two organizations: ASI-Canada (Association for the Soldiers of Israel), which supports active-duty IDF soldiers, and Magen David Adom, which is Israel’s emergency response service. To promote the sales, I’m also offering 30% discount off my website prices for all my paintings.”

The exhibit comprises 27 paintings from several of Gleckman’s established series. “For this exhibition, I have included paintings that are accompanied by titles … for fuller comprehension,” he said.

“The titles invite viewers to search for and reflect on the nuances of their own understanding of the selected stories, themes and ideas,” the artist explained. “I’m not trying to dictate my own interpretations to viewers. Instead, with the titles, I try to nudge viewers in the right direction. The titles are sort of guidelines for understanding the images, their conceptual representation.”

image - “Yerushalayim (Jerusalem)” by Brian Gleckman. The Hebrew words in the painting are from Psalm 137: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget ... if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my joy.” — “Yerushalayim (Jerusalem)” by Brian Gleckman. The Hebrew words in the painting are from Psalm 137: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget … if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my joy.”

Most of the titles are in Hebrew, spelled phonetically in the English alphabet. Some are in English, but they represent Jewish customs and stories. For example, the large painting “Tikkun Olam” is a field of life-affirming blue, while “Shiva” is bleak and dark, a painting of grief and despair, but both will generate different feelings for everyone.

A few other paintings are linked to grief and death, but many sport bright colors, like “Aytz Chaim” – blue and gold and triumphant – which proclaims the artist’s vision of the Tree of Life. The painting, tall and narrow, is framed by golden words.

Another tall and narrow painting, “Tefillah” (a prayer), contains this one word in Hebrew, as well as 10 bright gold stars dancing on the blue background below, representing a minyan, the quorum of 10 men (in Orthodox Judaism) or people needed for Jewish communal prayers.

Another painting with words and colours woven together is “Yerushalayim.” Its golden-brown palette is reminiscent of the ancient city of Jerusalem, its modernity and its millennia of history, including conflict.

Then there are calligraphed Hebrew letters, each magnified manifold on its own black and white canvas. “Their shapes are still recognizable,” said Gleckman, “but I wanted to explore the possibilities, the situation where something we know becomes something else, something to investigate and find a new meaning.” Each of these letter-paintings is like a road, curling capriciously according to the letter’s design, leading the viewers towards the unknown.

Abstracted Identity runs until July 18. To learn more, visit the artist’s website, briangleckman.com.

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

Art helps bring us together

The current show at the Zack Gallery, Community Longing and Belonging, brings together a range of artists and styles. Pictured here is Alejandra Morales’s “A Landscape of Consumable Dreams.” (photo by Olga Livshin)

The current show at the Zack Gallery, Community Longing and Belonging, which opened Feb. 21, is the sixth annual exhibition in celebration of Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month.

The exhibit was organized by the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Inclusion Services and curated by Shelly Bordensky, the program’s coordinator. Most participating artists are either members of the JCC program or similar ones in other localities, like Aspire Richmond. These initiatives support people with developmental disabilities through various creative endeavours.

The Zack show’s creative displays consist of paintings and pottery. While the size, media, colour palettes and framing of the works are all different, the underlying theme is the same: we all want to belong, we are all together on this planet.

Two paintings reflect that theme not only in their content and method of execution, but in their titles as well: “All Together 1” and “All Together 2.” Both works are cheerful and colourful, rendered with the abandon of the primitivism style. Cats and birds frolic on the canvas without regard for one another or for rules of perspective. Both list the artist as Art Hive, the visual art division of JCC Inclusion Services.

Bordensky told the Independent that both paintings were group pieces, created by several people. “Each artist added an element – a cat or a bird – and our wonderful art instructor, Kim Almond, made sure they all matched in style and colours.”

According to Almond, 13 artists, all members of Art Hive, participated in each painting.

“Mark Li and Andrew Jackson started off the two collaborative paintings for the group, and it was a great project to work on as a class,” she said. “Colours were a huge part of the process, as the artists were always striving to create that special pop of colour.”

Another example of group art is the pottery creations – playful little animals, solemn hamsas (hands) and juicy pomegranates – crowding several stands around the gallery.

“These ceramic pieces are all Raku ceramics by the pottery artists who are members of our Art Hive,” said Bordensky. “Together, we can create so much.”

Individual artists’ paintings are also on the theme of community.

Alex Lecce’s untitled piece is a slice of a neighbourhood street with a pie shop. The colours are realistic, and the image captures a quiet, everyday moment. We all go there, the artist seems to say. Those pies make our lives happier and more flavourful. They unite us in our humanity.

On the other hand, Alejandra Morales’s painting, “A Landscape of Consumable Dreams,” is jarring in both the colour palette and the structure. This painting screams of discord. There are two disparate parts in the image. The top part is a tangled bunch of flowers, all in beautiful, greyish lilac hues, intertwined and elaborate. The bottom part is a vague human figure bowing to the pretty flowers. The colours of the figure are harsh, grating; they don’t fit with the flowers. But the figure obviously wants to fit, just as we all want to fit in with our surroundings. The complexity of the juxtaposition of humans versus nature is unmistakable.

Other paintings are not as complicated. Mami Zimmerman’s “Best Friends” features two ponies. Its simplicity is charming and lovely. We all want such friends.

image - Mami Zimmerman’s “Best Friends” — Mami Zimmerman’s “Best Friends” *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

Calvin Ho’s painting “Nuts” is another example of primitivism in the show. The bright depiction of a squirrel and a woodpecker is reminiscent of picture books from our childhood. Bold lines and primary colours underscore that feeling. The two creatures are playing tug with a nut. Or maybe they are sharing it. Or fighting over it. The innocence of the picture invariably induces a smile.

image - Calvin Ho’s “Nuts” — Calvin Ho’s “Nuts” *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

In contrast, Merle Linde’s powerful landscape – “BC Wildfire 2023” – doesn’t invite smiles. The painting, its red and black scheme grim and scary, reminds us of the horror of the wildfires that affect our forests every year. The tragedy implied in the painting unites us, just as the sweeter emotions in other images do.

In a telephone interview with the Independent, Linde said: “I’ve always enjoyed art, from the day I could hold a pencil. I liked going to art shows, too.” Mostly self-taught as an artist, she said she only started painting seriously after she retired.

Judaica is one of the directions she explores in her art. To date, the Independent has used two of her paintings for its cover: for the 2023 Passover issue and for the 2022 Rosh Hashanah issue. Occasionally, she teaches classes for seniors in various artistic techniques.

Merle Linde’s “BC Wildfire 2023” *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

“Acrylic pour is a fascinating technique,” she said. “You pour the paint and let it spread as it will without a brush, and then wait till it dries. That was what I did for the background of the ‘Wildfire’ painting. I made it a few years ago. When I saw the news about the wildfires last summer, I picked up a brush and painted the black burned-out tree skeletons on top. I have two such paintings, but there was only space for one in the Zack show.”

Most of the paintings in the show express themselves at first view. However, Gail Rudin’s “Out for the Hunt” raises questions. It portrays four seemingly perky owls on a merry, greenish background. One could assume a light-hearted company of friends on an outing, until one notices a line of tiny mice scurrying away in terror in the very bottom of the picture. Suddenly, the entire image changes its meaning, illustrating the unavoidable conflicts within nature, where the hunters and the hunted coexist. Despite the constant danger of the wild, nature somehow always finds its balance. Maybe, as humans, we could take lessons from that.

Community Longing and Belonging is on display at the Zack Gallery until April 2.

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

Sculpturing with wood

“Constellation” by Rosamunde Bordo. (photo by Sol Hashemi)

Every true artist at the start of their career undergoes a period of intense search: for their voices, for their themes, for their artistic expressions. Rosamunde Bordo is at that exciting stage now. She is searching. Her show at the Zack Gallery, Morning Star, reflects her creative explorations.

A professional artist today, Bordo has always loved art.

“As a child, I went to a school with a strong art program. I painted. I played saxophone. My parents always encouraged my interest in art,” she said in an interview with the Independent.

photo - Rosamunde Bordo’s solo exhibit, Morning Star, is at the Zack Gallery until Feb. 7 — Rosamunde Bordo’s solo exhibit, Morning Star, is at the Zack Gallery until Feb. 7. *(photo from Rosamunde Bordo)*

After a bachelor’s in liberal arts and print media at Concordia University in Montreal (2014) and master of fine arts degree in visual art at the University of British Columbia (2020), Bordo teaches printmaking at UBC. But her artistic interests range much wider than printmaking. Her newly emerging passions include the creation of installations and woodworking.

“I started woodworking last spring,” she said. “In this show, I use different woods: maple, cherry, walnut. I’m fascinated by the process of turning wood into sculptures. In a way, woodworking is similar to printmaking. Both use technology but, unlike two-dimensional printmaking, woodworking offers three dimensions. In woodworking, I try to find the story of the material, try to immerse in material-based research to investigate the self as a created subject.”

Bordo began woodworking when she started her ongoing installation project, The Denise File.

“It is almost a work of detective fiction, written through physical space,” she explained. Using found postcards written to someone named Denise, Bordo “wanted to reconstruct who the elusive Denise is, to figure out what the letters meant, to show her essence through objects, sculptures and drawings.”

She built some wooden furniture for The Denise File – a screen and a chair – and wanted to do more, to explore all she could do with wood. Her current show, comprised mostly of several sculptures, has its roots in a Jewish magic class she took at her synagogue in 2021.

“I wanted to understand Jewish history, its mysticism and its superstitions,” she said.

Each figure on the gallery wall could have originated from the ancient writings of many nations.

“It could be ancient Hebrew or Aramaic or even Greek,” Bordo mused. “All the cultures in that region were interconnected. I see the entire show as a healing amulet, but I didn’t want to assign my own meanings to the individual figures. I wanted them to be mysteries for my viewers to investigate. I wanted the viewers to be detectives and I didn’t want to influence them with my personal vision, didn’t want to limit their imagination.”

That’s why she titled every “Constellation” figure with a number. “They could be stick figures – they are very simple – but I see them as constellations, stars connected to each other,” she said. “That’s why the show is called Morning Star. The world is a difficult place right now, and the morning star is a symbol of renewal.”

Bordo’s constellations are deceptive, looking a bit like wooden hieroglyphs, or perhaps molecular structures, each with its own character.

“The one with a leg sticking out of the wall – it wanted to be playful, maybe escape from the wall,” she said. “I was looking for harmony when I worked on them, but I didn’t want to force them into locked shapes. I wanted to give them their own personalities. Besides, I try to respect the wood I work with. It is alive. There are many ways one could interpret a wooden sculpture.”

In addition to the constellations on the gallery walls, there is also a video called Potion, which comprises four minutes of rotating green abstract patterns. Postcards with a single image from the video form another part of the installation. The text on the back of the postcards reveals the artist’s motto for this show: “Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars.”

There is also a small table with a slab of pink salt on it.

“Placing salt in your pockets and in the corners of rooms was a well-known Jewish superstition to ward off malevolent spirits,” Bordo said. The table with the salt stands in the corner of the gallery, hopefully repulsing malice. We all need that in our troubled times, she explained.

The show opened Jan. 5 and will be on display until Feb. 7. To learn more, go to the artist’s website, withoutimages.com.

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

Share delight of letters

“Shabbat Saskatchewan,” by Esther Tennenhouse. Part of Otiyot (Letters), a joint exhibit with her son Joel Klassen, which is now at the Zack Gallery.

Colourful and playful, dark and ominous, Esther Tennenhouse’s artwork is engaging and thought-provoking, as she offers her take on Torah and midrash, immigration and language, orthodoxy and modernity. Otiyot (Letters), an exhibit she shares with her son Joel Klassen, opened at the Zack Gallery last week.

Tennenhouse’s sense of humour, curiosity, imagination and sincerity come through in the work on display, and in her responses to questions about the exhibit.

“Ot means ‘letter’ (of the alphabet) – it also means ‘sign’ and ‘signal,’” she told the Independent. “It was my first choice of name for the show: Ot – Starring the Letter Shin. Sounds like ‘ought,’ as in ‘thought.’ Ot was visually terse (and sounds adorable). That was why it was Ot in [the] JCC program book – I had to provide that bit before these pieces were made! Yikes! But it got changed to the longer plural in Hebrew and lost its zap. More truthful, though, as I have so many (too many) words of explanation on the wall beside each piece.”

All the works were made specifically for the exhibit, said Tennenhouse, “only for this place, for anyone who happens to walk into the JCC,” where the Zack Gallery is located.

“I was driven by my own relationship to the alef-bet: me, a quite secular, second-generation, Winnipeg-born Jew living in Vancouver, of prairie-born parents, who learned my aleph-bet as a child, quite long ago. I think many like me, with my sort of education, walk by these gallery doors, so I thought they might wander in and relate.”

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Tennenhouse went to Talmud Torah there from age 4 to 11, then to public school. She earned a bachelor’s in English and, while working at the Winnipeg Free Press, majored in sculpture at the University of Manitoba School of Art.

She moved to Aklavik, in the Inuvik region of the Northwest Territories, and then to Yellowknife, where she learned about ceramics at the Yellowknife Guild of Arts and Crafts. She later worked with translucent clays.

Moving with her family – husband Ron, son Joel and daughter Timmi – to Vancouver in 1995, Tennenhouse found a home at Or Shalom, participating in the Talmud and Torah study offered there, reengaging in Jewish education after a break of some 45 years.

Klassen also attends Or Shalom. His art background includes having drawn at home and working with painter Sylvia Oates – who he describes as a mentor – in her Parker Street studio. Klassen has had a one-man show in artist Noel Hodnett’s Parker Street studio, and he was in the Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture’s 2019 group show Nothing Without Us at the Cultch. For the past four years, he has attended the JCC’s Art Hive, which is facilitated by Kim Almond.

Klassen’s Hebrew letters and drawings are in five of the pieces at the Zack Gallery, said Tennenhouse.

“Making letters as individuals, each with their own character, was the most fun to do,” she said. “Jan Wilson, a friend and quilter, offered to help if I drew out the correctly sized letters backwards for transfer and picked the fabrics.”

The letters comprise eight of the works on display, and offer much to think – and smile – about. Klassen’s aleph is filled in with leopard print fabric, surrounded in black with a flowered border. The word “wild” comes to mind as one looks at it, not just the wildness of animals and nature, but of human beings. The piece is called “Aleph in the Garden.”

photo - “Aleph in the Garden” by Esther Tennenhouse, Joel Klassen and Jan Wilson — “Aleph in the Garden” by Esther Tennenhouse, Joel Klassen and Jan Wilson.

“I did not shy away from diversity,” said Tennenhouse. “It’s sort of an underlying element. I felt the show had to offer something to any individual, whatever their history with the alef-bet, and it deals with very well-trodden themes. I felt a need for an element of surprise, which is one reason why Joel’s aleph became a leopard in the garden (of Eden?).”

A last-minute addition to the depictions is one of the 12 new letters for gender-neutral word endings that were created by Israelis graphic designer Michal Shomer a few years ago.

“They appeared in welcome signs outside schools and on IDF buildings, etc., but the kabbalist idea of the power of the alphabet lives on – the new letters were vigorously rejected by religious factions,” said Tennenhouse. “‘Changing the letters removes any kedusha (sanctity) the words have or any ability the words have of channeling God’s energy into the world,’ said sofer Rabbi Abraham Itzkowitz. ‘This project essentially makes Hebrew like any other language.’ Some of the signs were taken down. Religious schools were forbidden to use them.”

That said, Tennenhouse told the Independent, “What first tickled me into this aleph-bet project was the poetry and passion of the ideas of the early mystics. They conceived of letters of the alef-bet existing even before the creation of the world – all 22 were vessels of the divine, all things were created by their combinations. Meditative/ecstatic kabbalah taught that individual letters were something to meditate upon, which led to ecstasy, one of the steps to sense of union with G-d. American calligrapher Ben Shahn, who titled one of his books Love and Joy About Letters, quotes the 13th-century Rabbi Abulafia, who said the delight in combining letters is like being carried away by notes of music.”

Tennenhouse and Klassen’s “Shir” (song, poetry, chant, in Hebrew) is truly delightful, like a page out of a children’s book. A multimedia piece, it depicts several animals and the sounds they make, both in Hebrew and in transliteration, though the giraffe just “hum[s] at night.”

Two other works are striking, both on their own and in contrast to each other: Sinai 1 and Sinai 2.

photo - Detail of "Sinai 2" by Esther Tennenhouse and Joel Klassen — Detail of “Sinai 2” by Esther Tennenhouse and Joel Klassen.

The latter features three bright yellow flowers, surrounded by green. “It is a triangle canvas which is about the mountain bursting into bloom when Moses came down with the Ten Commandments – this was a midrash from the 1500s. The triangle has flowers by Joel. I asked him to put flowers on it, envisioning little flowers here and there – he just went swoosh woosh on it.”

Sinai 2 is a vertical rectangle with whites, greys and blacks depicting a furious ball of activity on top of the mountain that includes the Hebrew letters.

photo - "Sinai 1" by Esther Tennenhouse — “Sinai 1” by Esther Tennenhouse.

“The Torah tells of fear, awe, the shaking mountain, seeing sounds, lightning, Moses’ anger, the breaking tablets,” said Tennenhouse. “Looking back, I overburdened the canvas [with] anger, though laying on the 231 Gates – a diagram from the Sefer Yetzirah which shows each letter combining with each other letter of the alef-bet – because I see the story of the giving of the Torah as a sort of creation story for our intense embrace of literacy. The diagram relates to Rabbi Abulafia’s talk of combination of letters but distracts visually from the anger/violence, [the] mountain, fear.”

There is so much more in this exhibit.

“Cursive Handwriting: Kovno Testament” is a stark, unfinished work, featuring the words, written in his own hand, of Lithuanian writer Eliezer Heiman, who died in the Kovno ghetto during the Holocaust. It was to have three more samples of cursive, said Tennenhouse. “I left room for them before I put on the image of Heiman’s tablets. Those spaces stayed empty. Everything else edited themselves out because of what happened in Israel on Oct. 7.”

There is the multimedia triptych “Shabbat Saskatchewan,” which Tennenhouse said “is me trying to use real photos and documents to create some presence of my mother’s grandparents and parents.”

“It ended up being centred on great-grandmother Esther Dudelzak Singer, Baba Faige (Fanny) Singer and my mother with her sisters,” she said. “Yiddish was their mamaloshen (mother tongue) and the Sonnenfeld community was religiously observant.”

“The Owl and the Pussy Cat” adds colour and vibrancy to Edward Lear’s black and white drawing of his nonsense poem, the Yiddish translation of which – by the late Marie B. Jaffe – fills the two side panels of this triptych. Tennenhouse couldn’t find much information out about Jaffe, she said, “But, thanks to Eddie Pauls at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, [I] learned she immigrated to New York in 1909 from Lithuania.”

Tennenhouse began to see the owl and the cat in their boat as sailors braving the rough seas, traveling around the world to find “Di Goldene Medine,” “the Golden Land,” America.

“You might say ‘Saskatchewan,’ too, is about leaving home, traveling across seas and finding a new place but keeping your language and culture,” said Tennenhouse.

Otiyot (Letters) is on display at Zack Gallery until Nov. 12.

Tell your own “crankie” stories

Where Do Stories Come From? (fun vanen nemen zikh di mayses) on Nov. 9 highlights a poem from each of three Yiddish women writers: Ida Maze, Esther Shumiatcher-Hirschbein and Yudika. (Illustration by Cesario Lavery)

This year’s Chutzpah! Festival includes several opportunities for people to participate in the arts being performed. A prime example is Where Do Stories Come From? (fun vanen nemen zikh di mayses), wherein attendees of the Nov. 9 event at the Rothstein Theatre will be able to learn new music inspired by Yiddish poetry and, in the Zack Gallery, on Nov. 7 and/or Nov. 12, participate in a “crankie” workshop.

Where Do Stories Come From?, which is presented by the Chutzpah! Festival and KlezKanada – co-curated by the organizations’ respective artistic directors, Jessica Mann Gutteridge and Avia Moore – includes “new musical and visual settings for three Yiddish poems by celebrated Canadian women writers, selected and translated by Faith Jones, with accompanying visual artwork in the form of ‘crankies’ – a centuries-old art form in which an illustrated scroll, evocative of the Torah, is wound across spools set in a viewing window.”

The artistic directors decided early on to work with the poetry of Canadian women writers who wrote in Yiddish, said Gutteridge, “and there was no more perfect collaborator to work with on selecting the poetry than Vancouver’s own Faith Jones. For the musical work, we drew on the incredibly rich community of KlezKanada’s artists and were lucky that Sarah Larsson was interested in the project – she’s not only a gifted composer with a thorough knowledge of Yiddish music, but is herself a stunning vocalist and music director.

“We also spent a lot of time looking at incredible artworks by Jewish visual artists and ultimately selected Benny Ferdman, Ava Berkson and Cesario Lavery, all of whom bring an interest in Yiddish, diverse styles, and interest in visual storytelling to the project. As part of the project involves community participation, we also ensured that all the artists are skilled at and enjoy working with community of all abilities and ages.”

The idea for the event came after Gutteridge met Moore at a KlezKanada Summer Retreat in 2022.

“When the JCC Association announced they would be funding new community-based projects incorporating live music and storytelling with an emphasis on partnerships,” said Gutteridge, “we realized we had a wonderful opportunity to work together to share our assets – KlezKanada’s immersive creative residency environment and access to brilliant artists with knowledge of Yiddish culture, and the Chutzpah! Festival’s presentation opportunities.

“KlezKanada’s 2023 Summer Retreat theme was Yiddish film and, because it’s a very unplugged environment, had plans to explore the ‘pre-film’ illustrated story technique of crankies,” she continued. “We thought this art form would pair beautifully with the musical work being created, and would offer a very engaging opportunity to the community to participate in creating a multidimensional presentation together.”

Where Do Stories Come From? is supported by the JCC Association’s Making Music Happen program and Chutzpah! Festival’s music programming is supported by AmplifyBC’s Live Music Presentation Fund.

The event’s title comes from one of the three poems highlighted, one by Ida Maze. “It’s a poem that grabbed the entire group immediately and we knew we wanted to work with it,” said Gutteridge. “In the poem, Maze creates a strong visual image of a little house that appears to be abandoned, but as you approach you see that a fire is lit and, in the house, sit a grandfather and a grandmother sharing culture and stories with the children, and the stories are then carried away on the wind. For us, this poem really captured the idea of the project – that intergenerational cultural transmission is the key to how we survive and thrive and, in many ways, is a model for how we hope to see this project unfold. But I think the very notion that we pose this as a question invites everyone who experiences the work to ask themselves where they think stories come from.”

The other poems are by Esther Shumiatcher-Hirschbein and Yudika.

“Faith made a longer list of poems selected for their striking visual imagery and potential musicality and presented them to our full group of artists,” explained Gutteridge. “Right away, we all responded to the Ida Maze work and had to then narrow our choices to two more. We asked the artists to highlight which poems they found particularly inspiring and, as artistic directors, Avia and I also kept an eye on whether the selections were creating an interesting and balanced program in terms of style and theme. It was an enjoyable and smooth process and I think we all enjoyed kicking off the project together in this way.”

As for the workshops, Gutteridge said, “Ava and Cesario will be with us through the week to guide workshop participants through the process of making their own crankies, inspired by prompts from the poetry we will provide. While the crankies being made for the music event will be large scale, a wonderful characteristic of this art form is that it can be made any size using very humble materials like a shoebox or even a matchbox. With our partner the Zack Gallery, the work created in the workshops will be on display in a community exhibition, and our video director Flick Harrison will be on hand to help participants capture their crankies in action. Participants can opt to share their crankies and stories in an online video gallery. We hope we will see intergenerational groups making crankies together!”

During the week, Chutzpah! will also be hosting the return of the Flame, with their evening of storytelling on Nov. 6.

“The Flame’s artistic director, Deb Williams, will teach her remarkable day-long storytelling workshop on Sunday, Nov. 12, ending just before our final crankie workshop and the concert presentation,” said Gutteridge. “We hope that these projects together will inspire community participants to explore their own stories and find new and inspiring ways to tell and share them.”

For tickets to Where Do Stories Come From? and other Chutzpah! events, visit chutzpahfestival.com.