Yom Kippur

In the synagogue, there is a long silent meditation called the Amidah.  There is text, so it's more a prayer than a meditation, and sometimes it's chanted, everyone together, out loud.  But there is also a silent Amidah, and we are instructed to read what's given or to meditate or to contemplate what's in our own hearts.  We stand until we're done, and one by one, we sit.

On Yom Kippur, 2014, the synagogue was full, sanctuary and balcony.  The Amidah began, everyone on our feet and after a while people started to close their books and sit down.  One man in the front row was immersed in his prayer, maybe reading both the Hebrew and the English, maybe adding the alternative readings, while all around him, everyone else finished and sat down.  The rabbi and the cantor sat down.  It is the custom to wait for everyone to finish so we waited, and the respect and patience shown the man who continued praying said more about the community than anything else.  

The room was silent.  No one coughed or whispered.  The standing man continued thoroughly absorbed in his reading.  After a while, the man sitting next to him looked at the rabbi, who I couldn't see from where I sat in the balcony, and whispered something to the praying man, who didn't hear it, and who continued reading on his feet.  Thirty more seconds passed, and the rabbi and cantor got to their feet to resume the service.  The sitting man gently tugged on the sleeve of the standing man, who then looked around and sat down.

In the interlude of this man's solitary praying I experienced a deep stillness and peacefulness that more than anything was the essence of being in a spiritual moment.

Art in the Archives, traveling show, just left City College, NY, off to Teaneck, NJ

i've got a whole drawer, 300 tiny works, collages, paintings, journal entries, jokes.

My drawer                           photo Elizabeth Knott

The show is soon to be in Teaneck, NY.  Check back for details.

There Once Was a Gazebo

Conceived as “A Gazebo”, this work was hopeful about the possibility of peace in the West Bank.  But during its development, the entire Middle East met calamity after catastrophe, and the piece changed accordingly.  I could no longer festoon its surfaces with colorful Palestinian and Israeli cultural icons.   It's still a quiet piece, because I am still a minimalist, that is, making my point with the least amount of structural material, but I'm hoping it causes people to reflect, to be moved, and to ask - what does she mean by that?, as I have been moved to ask myself.

I hoped that by calling it "There Once Was a Gazebo",  people would know I meant there was a peaceful place and now there isn't, and I hoped that the two newspaper photos in the piece would convey that I am now talking about Gaza without telling people what to think.  But not everyone is as obsessed with that part of the world as I am, so if people don't get the narrative, I think the aesthetic solution stands on its own, a very important aspect of all my work – room-like, lines, shadows.

There Once Was a Gazebo

Me in the Shadow


Collaborative Concepts

The FARM PROJECT 2014

August 30-October 31

@ Saunders Farm
853 Old Albany Post Road

Garrison NY 10524

Sculpture Installations by over 50 artists

Opening Reception

Saturday, August 30, 2014, 2-6:00pm

(Rain date Sunday August 31)

Mid-Run Reception

Saturday,September 27, 2014, 2-6:00pm

(Raindate Sunday September 28)
Opera, Theater, Dance

Collaborative Concepts, a not-for-profit arts organization, has curated more than 40 exhibitions in galleries and outdoor settings in the Hudson Valley.

Collaborative Concepts, in its ninth season at Saunders Farm, invited local and national artists to place sculptures throughout 140 acres of a working historic farm in Garrison, NY.  Located across the Hudson River from West Point, the rolling hills and wooded glens of Saunders Farm culminate in panoramic views of the Hudson Highlands. Black Angus cattle can be seen grazing peacefully in stone-walled pastures.

Open daily to the public free of charge dawn to dusk

Collaborative website    845.528.1797

Collaborative on Facebook

גאָטעניו, בין איך נאָר אַ משולח עפֿשער אַ לערערין פֿון צײַט צו צײַט, און אַ טרײסלער.  לאָז מיך זיך באַטרעפֿן

I'm not translating most of this, in keeping with my use of Yiddish in my art as my hidden journals, and "making lace", using the Hebrew alphabet as a visual component.  

But the last sentence, loz mikh zikh batrefn, which I have stretched to mean, Let me fulfill myself, has engendered a very interesting conversation about the meaning of the word batrefn.

My Yiddish is far from perfect, but my thoughts are: The word "to meet" is trefn.  The word batrefn means "to amount to", as in: this pile of gold amounts to a lot of money.  The word zikh is reflexive. One day a friend in a Yiddish class organized a trip to a Yiddish movie, to meet there at 3, and he wrote, lomir zikh batrefn 3 a zeyger.  I thought it should read, lomir zikh trefn 3 a zeyger, let's meet at 3 o'clock, but I ran to the dictionary, and said, Yes! Let's amount to ourselves at 3 o'clock!  I've since used the term over and over, that I might zikh batrefn.  It has become a mantra.
 

I'd like also to include a wonderful work by my dear friend Johanna Gilman, who reports that her mother use batrefn to mean "meet".

Lost in Infinity

I have a show up in my local library, Morningside Branch, 113th and Broadway in Manhattan.  It's called Lost in Infinity, and some of the works have that title too.

It's a small intimate place, and I think it's my favorite show ever.  The 11 drawings are on the staircase wall, but the staircase is an interior one, well lit, open to view for its whole length to both the ground floor and the main reading room.  Anyone going up or down the stairs cannot avoid seeing my work

                                   Lost in Infinity 2, mixed mediums, 23" x 28"

Someone who I don't know has written poetry to my work in the book I left there for messages.  Then today I received a wonderful letter from someone who came for books and found art, and was moved enough by what he saw to write to me.  It made me very happy.  He also pointed out that the contact email on my website and the one on the handout at the library were not the same.

Indeed.  I had made an error on my website.  So I wrote to that address to see if it's real, and my message did not come back Undeliverable, while my research indicates that nobody else has that address either.  Which means that possibly mail intended for me is being lost in infinity!  What sort of perfect is that!