Excerped from an essay by Peggy Earle.

As with most boys in observant Jewish households, Howard was sent to Hebrew and Sunday school at the temple, where he was bar mitzvahed and confirmed. But, he says, his religious training never really clicked. For one thing, his instructors “left out all the good stuff” which, for him, meant the mysticism, the miracles, the ideas and images that can spark a youngster’s imagination.

Years later, Howard Lerner says, he’s been making up for all that. Rather than observing holidays or going to services, Lerner has been creating a series of radiantly eccentric assemblages whose themes originate from the Old Testament and the Kabbalah, tempered by the occasional dash of Rube Goldberg and dollop of whimsy.

What made Lerner’s path unusual is that he became, what a friend jokingly calls, a “born-again Jew” via Siddha Yoga. Lerner is a long-time devotee of that spiritual discipline, founded by the Indian Guru Swami Muktananda. After attending a meditation retreat in the Catskills some years ago, Lerner experienced a vision comprised of both Judaic symbols and references to Yoga. The vision sparked within him a dialogue between the two spiritual paths and inspired him to combine them in his artwork.

Look at the roiling 3-dimensional crazy quilt of “Ezekiel’s Vision.” Supported on four slender legs it looks, at first glance, like an enormous flayed beast that has swallowed a sacrificial altar. For Lerner, the Old Testament description of the exiled prophet Ezekiel’s revelation was a “sculptor’s dream”: a divine chariot with four-faced winged creatures propelled by wheels, each having the visage of an ox, lion, eagle and man. These “hybrid beings” recalled for Lerner imagery observed in ancient Eastern art and religion, uniting that culture and mythology with those of Judaism. In creating this piece, the artist selected and repurposed such unlikely found objects as old record album covers, hamster toys, a flour sifter, lampshades of cloth and glass, starfish, a sea urchin and fireplace bellows. Throughout “Ezekiel’s Vision,” as in the other Biblically-inspired works in this exhibit, Lerner includes words written in Hebrew calligraphy.

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