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Explore The Sacred
14 Jan2014
By: Menachem Wecker Originally published January 6th, 2014 for the Jewish Press
Moses at the Jordan, oil on canvas by Richard McBee. Courtesy Canton Museum of Art.
Interfaith harmony, wherein religious lions sprawl peacefully alongside vulnerable lamblike colleagues, might be an appealing notion, but it doesn’t necessarily, or often, produce good fodder for an exhibit. It’s not difficult to curate an exhibit that celebrates different faiths and their collective tolerance, but doing so without descending into kitsch and activism wherein the art is merely a prop, rather than the substance, can be elusive. “Sacred Voices†features works from more than 30 artists – from as far away as Australia, Austria, and the United Kingdom – and those artists hail from three faith traditions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. (Readers of this column will no doubt be familiar with several of the artists in the final category, including: Siona Benjamin, Tobi Kahn, Richard McBee, Elke Reva-Sudin, Deborah Rolnik-Raichman, and Yona Verwer.) Read the full article here.
Sacred Voices
Dec. 5, 2013 – March 2, 2014
Canton Museum of Art, 1001 Market Avenue North, Canton, Ohio
http://www.cantonart.org/sacredvoices
- In: Exhibition Reviews
- Tags: Midwest US, Museums, Painting, Sculpture
‘Star Tours’ in the LA Diaspora
7 Jan2014
Network Map(Detail, in progress) 4×3′, pen on paper
Side Street Projects: Star Tours: January 11, 2014 11am – 2pm
On January 11 from 11 am to 2 pm Side Street Project visitors are invited to view the exhibition, learn micrography- an art form developed by 8th century Hebrew scribes that sculpts small text to form an image, and contribute to an artwork through sharing their stories.
Coming to a neighborhood near you in January 2014: Star Tours, an exhibition located within 16 foot truck by artist Corrie Siegel. This nomadic initiative intends to draw connections between local communities, Los Angeles history, and cross-cultural narratives of diaspora. Over the month of January Star Tours will function as a vehicle for collaboration and exploration at sites throughout Los Angeles.
Tourist van, moving truck, and migratory gallery, Star Tours will map the Los Angeles landscape with visits to sites throughout LA County. Visitors are invited to view the changing exhibition within the vehicle, contribute stories to form a collaborative map, and participate in distinct programs at each site. Programs include workshops, dining experiences, tours, presentations by artists and academics, oral history recording sessions, and informal games of beach volleyball.
Star Tours is a part of Cadastral Masorah, a multidisciplinary constellation of works created over the past 3 years. The drawings, papercuts, photographs, videos and performances presented are influenced by the history of map making from antiquity to the present. Siegel references cartography, graffiti, Los Angeles iconography, and traditional art forms that traveled along with the Jewish Diaspora to explore identity and place within the multicultural city of Los Angeles. Star Maps visitors are asked to work as collaborators to create and interpret abstracted maps in order to visualize paths within history and space.
By Aaron Rosen for Hadassah Magazine
The ‘Torah Kittel’ from Jacqueline Nicholls’s kittel collection. Photo courtesy of Jacqueline Nicholls.
On a sodden late autumn evening, I tromp through the byzantine streets of Spitalfields in the East End of London. A couple of wrong turns and drenched trouser legs later I find myself at the humble entrance to Sandys Row Synagogue, the oldest Ashkenazic synagogue in London. Sandys Row lies on a cultural fault line. It is at the heart of what used to be the city’s Jewish quarter and is now a mecca for artists. It is the perfect meeting place for the London Jewish Artists’ Salon.
The salon was started by artist Jacqueline Nicholls and arts producer Juliet Simmons in 2012 and has grown to well over 100 members, including artists of all stripes—sculptors, graphic novelists and performance artists—as well as students and scholars. While London has two major venues for displaying Jewish art, the Ben Uri Gallery and the London Jewish Museum, Nicholls and Simmons recognized a lack of opportunities for artists to interact. Their recipe is simple: Put a bunch of clever, creative Jews in one place, leaven with wine, cake and self-deprecating humor—all English specialties—and see what happens.
For artists like the young sculptor Benedict Romain, presenting his work at salons and seeing other artists share works in progress have pushed his art in new directions. “Though I come from a Jewish household, my surroundings, friendship groups and education have always been very secular,†he says, “and making Jewish art is something that did not occur to me previously, where now I have made a conscious decision to explore it.†This turn has begun to bear fruit for Romain, who is currently preparing for a show next summer at the London Jewish Museum called “The Invention of Ritual,†in which he will respond to some of the institution’s more eccentric examples of ceremonial art, from an Art Deco etrog container to a Kiddush cup with a moustache protector.
Read the rest of this entry »
- In: News
- Tags: Europe, Jewish Artist Groups, LA, Midwest US, NYC
By Talia Lavin
Cynthia Beth Rubin’s “Layered Histories†is an interactive digital representation of the history of the Marseilles Bible. (Cynthia Beth Rubin)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Jazz music drifts from speakers down to the cherry wood tables of the West Cafe in Brooklyn as the Israeli artist Nurit Bar-Shai prepares to show examples of her latest work. With deft, freckled hands, she opens a manila envelope and slides three petri dishes across the table.
In the dishes are billions of Paenibaciullus vortex bacteria arranged in delicate whorls of blue. The series, which Bar-Shai calls “Objectivity [tentative],†displays “chemical tweets†of bacterial communication that expose viewers to the science behind her work while prompting them to reflect on the nature of human interaction.
“When people see bacteria working together to create these designs, they might wonder, how do I depend on others in my life?†Bar-Shai told JTA. “What do the social networks I am part of look like?â€
Bar-Shai is one of a number of artists incorporating cutting-edge science into their works, anything from digital images of microorganisms to so-called visual synthesizers that combine visual and audio elements into one “synesthetic†signal.
Read more: http://www.jta.org/2013/12/12/arts-entertainment/jewish-artists-push-the-technological-frontier
Snapshots: Art Basel Miami
16 Dec2013
Photos by Saul Sudin. Comments by Elke Reva Sudin.
We traveled to Miami for Art Basel, one of the biggest festivals for the contemporary art market in North America.
Here are some things we saw that made us question how people look at religion in contemporary art:
- In: News
You are invited to participate in a short residency with Art Kibbutz, a collaborative project hosted by Venice Biennale artist Pawel Althamer, entitled the “Draftsmen’s Congress” at the New Museum on March 23rd, 2014.
This residency involves making of one large collaborative drawing that will take up the entire fourth floor space of the museum. We are calling artists, art students, art professors, graphic designers, architects, cartoonists, engineers and other individuals who draw as part of their profession to participate in this project.
- In: News
Inheritance of a Story presents the poetic prose of Clarice Lispector, mystical Brazilian writer of Jewish-Ukrainian descent, juxtaposed with works of three New York artists Anya Roz, Tanya Levina and Yuliya Levit. This show explores the tales of strangers in strange lands and recurrent narratives of Jewish diaspora. Narratives often repeated in every generation.
Opening Reception
Saturday, November 23rd at 8pm
Live set performed by an Israeli-American violinist, singer and composer Efrat Shapira. Read of Clarice by Steve Dalachinsky.
Brazilian Endowment for the Arts
240 East 52nd Street
New York, NY.
Anya Roz, “Iliyahu”, digital photograph
Asylum Arts: International Jewish Artist Retreat – Seeking Applicants
The second annual Asylum Arts: International Jewish Artist Retreat, a Schusterman Connection Point, will bring together 65 multi-disciplinary emerging Jewish artists from around the world, at the idyllic Garrison Institute, from March 23-26, 2014. Master classes and seminars will be led by professionals from leading arts organizations, empowering emerging artists with the professional skills necessary for a more successful long-term career in the arts. Participants will explore Jewish themes and ideas, and have the opportunity to share and discuss their own work. We hope that by bringing together a global community of emerging Jewish artists, new art and relationships will be fostered that cross national boundaries and artistic mediums. To apply, click here!
- In: Call for Entries
- Tags: Jewish Artist Groups, NYC
GWU Launches MA Programs in Jewish Cultural Arts
19 Nov2013
If anyone is doubting the growing interest in Jewish art in the Jewish communal world they should check out the two new MA programs in Jewish Cultural Arts that have just been announced at George Washington University in Washington D.C..
The recently launched two-year Master of Arts in Jewish Cultural Arts and the new Master of Arts in Experiential Education and Jewish Cultural Arts provides professional opportunities for working in Jewish arts administration, arts management, tourism, and educational institutions.
The new program, the only one of its kind in the country, offers students an interdisciplinary curriculum that combines and enriches coursework from GSEHD’s Museum Education Program and the Columbian College’s master’s degree in Jewish Cultural Arts.
- In: Call for Entries
- Tags: Jewish Art Education, Washington D.C.
Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’ Trailer Lands
14 Nov2013
Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’ has long promised a big budget, blockbuster take on the biblical narrative. And the director has spoken of incorporating Midrash and Rabbinic commentaries into a truer representation of the material. He told The Playlist, immediately after production wrapped, “In the Bible the story is only a couple of pages, and the perception we have of it in the West is more as a children’s toy — an old man with a long beard and animals two by two on the boat. And there’s so much more to the story than that… there’s a lot of clues there about what the story means.”
That was the tip of the iceberg, as reports surfaced of six-armed angels and accurate ark dimensions. But does it hold up, or is this yet another Jewish content film that is light on Judaism and heavy on what American culture thinks Judaism is?
Judge for yourself in the trailer above.
“Noah” will be released on March 28, 2014 in the USA.
- In: News
- Tags: Art as Midrash, Film, Videos