Conney Conference on Jewish Arts: DIASPORAS
April 9-12, 2013
University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://conneyproject.wisc.edu/

Call for Proposals:

The Conney Conference on Jewish Arts, sponsored by the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is now accepting proposals for papers, presentations, and performances for their 2013 conference, “Diasporas”.

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Temporary Shelter

19 Sep
2012

Temporary Shelter is a collection of narrative panels that tell the stories of homeless New Yorkers in an installation that mimics the shape of a sukkah. Artist Heather Stoltz relates the homelessness found in New York City to that of the Jews in their journey in the desert following the exodus from Egypt and concepts found in Judaic texts.

Stolz created this piece after reading a passage from Sefer Hasidim (a Jewish legal text from the 12th Century) relating that “If a community lacks a place of worship and a shelter for the poor, it is first obligated to build a shelter for the poor.”  She adds that in Vayikra Rabbah 34:1 (a book of homiletic commentaries on the book of Leviticus), where we learn from Rabbi Yonah, “The verse does not say ‘Happy is the one who gives to a poor person’ rather, it says: ‘Happy is the one who considers a poor person’ (Psalms 41:2).  Therefore, you must consider how best to benefit such a person.”

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With honey on the mind as Rosh Hashanah quickly approaches, check out this innovative Hive Honey Set from Biodidactic Designs.

The jars from this New York based designer come in both clear and frosted glass, and are shaped like a single honeycomb resting at a diagonal. The hive honey set is “informed by the complexities of bees and the natural geometry which they employ” as the artist states on the product description. The jar has 5mm thick side walls and .25″ thick base walls. The container has a max capacity of 500 gm or around 16oz of honey. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2012-2013 J-ARTSYNY Fellowship is an opportunity for students from around New York to come together and learn about Jewish art.

The fellowship includes exclusive interviews, meetings, and unique tours with producers, curators, and other culture creators to provide for a diverse perspective on the world of Jewish art. Over the course of the year there will be approximately eight events spanning from Museum exhibitions, concerts, theater programs, lectures, film screenings, readings, and more.

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March 3-5, 2013

For three days next March, the Six Points Fellowshipwill be bringing together a group of sixty multi-disciplinary emerging Jewish artists from around the world to learn from industry professionals, working artists, and from each other.

Held at the Garrison Institute in New York’s beautiful Hudson River Valley, Asylum will feature master classes and seminars lead by professionals from major groups like the New York Foundation for the Arts, empowering artists with the concrete 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. By bringing together a global community of emerging Jewish artists, new art and relationships hopefully will be fostered that cross national boundaries and artistic mediums.

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Art Exhibit CONTEXT

At Columbia / Barnard’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, New York, NY.

October 11 – November 29, 2012

The Jewish Art Salon and Oholiav are collaborating on a series of inter-disciplinary events in October & November 2012. These will be hosted by the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life at Columbia /Barnard University, 606 W 115 Street, New York, NY 10025.

Come celebrate with text, around text, through text, about text, and without text.
There will be two visual art exhibits, one called TEXT, the other CONTEXT. TEXT will consist of Ellen Alt‘s 15 her text-based art works, mainly black and white. CONTEXT will be a group exhibit of 2-D visual art.

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By Saul Sudin

What can one do to reinvigorate the often tired and predictable horror genre? For a category of movies infinitely reliant upon upping the ante and scaring your audience in new and unexpected ways, the best of our filmmakers often strive to creatively answer this question. Many times, the answer is found in reality. After all, what is scarier than the true life horrors and their filmic counterparts in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (murderer Ed Gein), The Hills Have Eyes (Scottish cannibal legends the Sawney Bean family), or The Amityville Horror (a haunted house on Long Island, NY)? For horror innovator Sam Raimi and his producing partner Rob Tapert, they found their inspiration for the newly releasing The Possession in a real life Dybbuk box that had left a trail of ill-fated and unbelievable scares before ending up on eBay in 2004, where it made national news. Unfortunately, by the time this questionably haunted object steeped in Jewish folklore made its way to the big screen directed by Ole Bornedal with a script by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, any real horror was stripped away by an adaptation bogged down in clichés and disjointed themes.

The film opens with the mysterious torture of an elderly woman who is under of the control of whatever spirit emanates from the old, wooden Dybbuk box.  She is thrashed about the room by an unknown force, seemingly punished for attempting to harm or destroy the box which sits upside down on her mantle, making it difficult for even those audience members who can read Hebrew letters to discern the writing on its side. In any film, there are rules established about what a supernatural power is capable of but here the ability to maim or kill nearby people at will is used inconsistently throughout the film- wherever convenient for the box protecting itself from those that would seek to harm it- and yet, we wait and wait and it never uses this ability on our protagonist, good guy basketball coach Clyde Brenek (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), whose daughter Em (Natasha Calis) becomes infatuated with the box after purchasing it at the old woman’s garage sale. Em and her older sister Hannah (Madison Davenport), both at awkward pubescent ages, are dealing with the recent divorce of their dad from their mother Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick),who is dedicated to undercutting Clyde at every stage, whether it is quickly excising his things from their old house or flaunting her new boyfriend Brett (Grant Show).

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On view Sept 1 – Nov 1

Opening Reception with artist and curator
September 13, 2012
6-8pm
free and open to the public

London-based artist, Jacqueline Nicholls explores traditional Jewish ideas in untraditional ways. In her first solo show in New York, The Laurie M Tisch Gallery, with the curatorial guidance of Tobi Kahn presents three of Nicholls projects– The Kittel Collection, an exploration of clothing in Jewish Tradition; Ghosts & Shadows: The Women Who Haunt the Talmud; and Gather the Broken, a series of drawings corresponding to the Omer, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot

RSVP on Facebook

Can’t make it to the opening event? Follow Jacqueline’s work at www.jacquelinenicholls.com and her current project draw yomi: drawomg the talmud, a page a day.

by Emma Silvers, JWeekly.com

They’re not exactly reinventing the Talmud, but a group of creative thinkers will be in San Francisco next week to bring the ancient Jewish text to life.

With the help of a dozen university students from around the country, a handful of professional artists, and a hefty dose of creative energy, talmudic tales will take on a modern look at the Contemporary Jewish Museum from Monday, Aug. 12, through  Friday, Aug. 17. The museum will partner with the nonprofit production company G-dcast for a collaborative animation project to produce six short films based on Jewish texts.

Studio G-dcast, a six-day residency program for emerging animators and writers, will be one part filmmaking experiment, one part Torah study, and, ideally, said G-dcast founder Sarah Lefton, a good time for everyone involved. She said the program is a natural next step for the production company, a 4-year-old San Francisco organization designed to promote Jewish literacy through short films (67 of which are available for free on the nonprofit’s website).

Read the full article here.

“Studio G-dcast: An Animated Story Residency” will screen short films for the public from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 16 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St., S.F. Free with museum admission. http://www.thecjm.org.

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