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By Ellen Shapiro for PrintMag
“If I touch the letters, I think and I hope that people will be touched by them.â€
So said Israeli graphic and type designer Oded Ezer yesterday in a 1.5 hour Skype interview with me about The New American Haggadah, published this month by Little, Brown and Company.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of haggadot  — books containing the Exodus story and the service for the Passover meal, the seder — have been published over the last two millennia, each in its own way expressing the culture of every country where Jews have lived, the point of view of every stream of Judaism, and every political, artistic and social bent (in recent decades: feminist, for children, GLBT, for those with only half an hour to spare, etc.).
Read the full article here.
- In: News
- Tags: Israel, Ritual Objects, Typography
Matzo and Modern Art
2 Apr2012
From a Jonathan Adler Seder plate to a mezuzah that evokes the parting of the Red Sea, high-design Passover tchotchkes for your home
By Stephanie Butnick for Tablet
Laura Cowan’s magnetic matzo plate. (Laura Cowan)
It’s not very often you see a mezuzah that stops you in your tracks. But Tamara Connolly has done just that with the striking Paschal mezuzah, part of her Kli “neo-ancient Judaicaâ€Â collection. Bright white with a blood-red line down the middle, it is the perfect mezuzah for Passover, at once recalling the blood smeared upon the doorposts of Jewish homes before the last of the 10 plagues, as well as the later parting of the Red Sea during the Exodus from Egypt.
“I’m interested in the idea that these practices came to be because of things our ancestors came across,†Connolly explained. “The act of marking the doorway to protect the home is a very poetic gesture, and we see where that impulse came from in the story of Passover.†Kli, translated literally from the Hebrew, means vessel, and Connolly’s mezuzahs are just that—sparsely adorned modern vessels through which Jewish narrative themes are explored.
Read the rest of the article here.
- In: Inspiration
- Tags: Ritual Objects
Call for Entries: Haggadot.com
27 Mar2012
Haggadot.com invites Jewish artists of any medium to share their work in the world’s largest online, collaborative Haggadah.
To submit, visit Haggadot.com and create an account. Upload any Passover-related artwork, writings or even audio / video files. Contributors may also include a bio, photo, and links to their personal websites.
Archie Granot’s Contemporary Papercut Haggadah
26 Mar2012
In the tradition of innovative contemporary Jewish papercut arts, comes “The Papercut Haggadah” by Archie Granot.
Commissioned by Sandra and Max Thurm, Archie Granot’s Papercut Haggadah was handcrafted using the Jewish folk art tradition of papercutting. The result is a series of 55 pages that employ intricate geometric and abstract shapes and calligraphic text to create an exquisite version of the Haggadah.
Granot evokes the intense emotions attached with the Passover Seder by utilizing geometric and abstract shapes instead of the usual symbols. Every word of Hebrew text in his Haggadah is handcut, with each page standing as both an independent work of art and a single piece of a beautiful, thematically unified whole. Each page of his multi-layered paper pieces (some nearly an inch thick) tackles a certain aspect or song associated with the Seder, such as “Ma Nishtanah” (מה × ×©×ª× ×”, The Four Questions), or “Pesach, Matzah, Maror” (פֶּסַח, The Passover Offering; מצה, the Unleavened Bread; and מרור, the Bitter Herb), which incorporates shapes that evoke the traditional matzah.
(Above)Â Archie Granot. Page 39 from The Papercut Haggadah, 1998 – 2007. Cut paper. 15.25 x 21 x 1.5 in. Collection of Sandra and Max Thurm.
- In: News
- Tags: Midwest US, Museums, Papercut
The New Sacred: Ritual Textiles by Rachel Kanter
25 Mar2012
March 29 – July 23, 2012
Opening Reception &Â Artist’s Talk
Thursday, March 29, 6 – 8pm
Exhibit organized by Wendi Furman, Director, PMJA
More about the exhibit on our website
Rachel Kanter, “Jewish, Woman and Farmer #2 – Lisa Weiss, Whitefield Farm”, ” Immersion: Rebirth”
Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art is one of the venues for Fiber Philadelphia 2012, an international biennial and regional festival for innovative fiber/textile art.
- In: Events
- Tags: Museums, Philadelphia, textile
“Mabul” Film Floods with Allegory
23 Mar2012
Mabul (“The Floodâ€) is a coming of age film about a young boy named Yoni, on the precipice of his bar mitzvah while his family is falling apart around him. His Bar Mitzvah Torah portion, that of “Noahâ€, sets the stage for events that draw parallels between the biblical text and the boy’s modern home life.
Yoni constantly feels vulnerable due to his lack of physical maturity, constant bullying from bigger boys, and the lack of support and care from his family. So he sets up a for-hire business to do other kids homework to make enough money to buy protein drink mixes and bulk up in secret. This begins to take precedence over his Bar Mitzvah training, where he grows ever more distracted and distant.
- In: Exhibition Reviews
- Tags: Film
Ethiopian Jews Immortalized
22 Mar2012
Why the Jewish Museum Goes Gaga for Kehinde Wiley
What does it mean to paint contemporary Jewish people using traditional Jewish ornamentation but not be Jewish? African-American artist Kehinde Wiley paints underrepresented youths with a style that mimics the portraiture of European nobles. He picks his subjects right off the street, paring their Hip hop bling with a wealth of intricate patterns. His latest exhibition, titled World Stage: Israel, is now on view at The Jewish Museum in New York.
Kehinde Wiley, Benediter Brkou, 2011. Oil and gold and silver enamel on canvas, 95.75 x 71.75 in (243.2 x 182.2 cm)
After establishing his persona in the art world, Wiley sought to expand his reach to countries that have been influenced by American Black culture. His new series focuses on Black and Brown youths from countries with developing markets (India, China, Sri Lanka, Lagos & Dakar, Brazil, and now Israel).
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- In: Exhibition Reviews
- Tags: Israel, NYC, Painting
Money & Marbles, Dov Abramson’s ‘Open Up’
21 Mar2012
Open Up (‘Patoach Tiftach’) 194 glass boxes, 10x10x10cm each, 7147 marbles
“כי ×™×”×™×” בך ×ביון… פתוח תפתח ×ת ידך לו והעבט ×ª×¢×‘×™×˜× ×• די מחסורו ×שר יחסר לוâ€
“When any of your brothers is poor… open up your hand generously, and extend to him any credit he needs to take care of his wants.â€Â  (Deuteronomy 15:7-8)
“Open Up (‘Patoach Tiftach’)â€Â is an infographic installation designed to depict the comparative wealth of the world’s countries. Each of the 194 countries of the world is represented by one transparent glass box, containing an amount of marbles that represents its Gross National Product.
- In: Featured Artists|News
Shaping History
21 Mar2012
Painter Ward Shelley plays with the history of Judaism in ‘The People of the Book,’ a series of giant, whimsical flowcharts that tell a story
By Robin Cembalest for Tablet
“Now Shelley has taken on a subject that could be just as polemical, depending on the context. The People of the Bookwas inspired, the artist says, by Karen Armstrong’s A History of God, obsessively researched online, and vetted by a rabbi. Starting in Ur and Canaan, the painting traverses through Samaritans, Gnostics, Kazars, crypto-Jews, Karaites, the Bobov, and Jabotinsky, arriving in the present with the ba’al t’shuva renewal, Israel’s Meretz party, and the Kabbalah Center. Hanging on the wall of Pierogi Gallery’s stand at the Armory Fair in New York through this weekend, surrounded by a profusion of trompe-l’oeil people and stuffed animals by other artists, the orange-hued picture has yet to spark too much debate, though it did find a buyer. But the two other versions of the work, in Shelley’s current show through March 18 at the gallery’s Williamsburg headquarters, are still available. Depending on the setting, this could be quite the conversation piece.”
Read the full article here
- In: News
Hillel to Display Slavery-Holocaust Art
From The Jewish Exponent
A traveling art exhibit that examines [moving beyond] slavery and the Holocaust opens this week at Temple University’s Rosen Hillel. The project, “Transcending History: Moving Beyond the Legacy of Slavery and the Holocaust,” was organized by the Idea Coalition, a group founded in 2009 to unite the black and Jewish communities through dialogues, social networking and other events.
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Broadway — The Divide by Elke Reva Sudin |
After a broad-based art call late that year that drew 150 submissions from as far as Argentina and Montreal, a jury selected 40 paintings, watercolors, prints, sculptures and other mixed media for the exhibit. Since opening February 2010 at Vivant Art Collection in Old City, it has appeared at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in Baltimore, the I.P. Stanback Museum at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg and, most recently, at the Center City law offices of Blank Rome LLP.
- In: Events
- Tags: Intergroup Art, Philadelphia