Art
“It is fairy dust and wanderlust that guide our hands to create what our hearts desire”
“Luck is what happens when preparations meets opportunity”. This quote, attributed to Roman philosopher Seneca is as true today as it ever was. A chance encounter with one of Israel’s preeminent sculptors Zvi Lachman brings me to a bronze foundry, half an hour driving distance from home. A world of dust, creativity, broken molds, smoke and fire. Amy with a camera in Wonderland ….
“A lane of Yellow led the eye
Unto a Purple Wood
Whose soft inhabitants to be
Surpasses solitude
If Bird the silence contradict
Or flower presume to show
In that low summer of the West
Impossible to know”
Framed old photo taken at my father’s 70’s birthday
A portrait of my father in linen and wool.
Soft, muted colors inspired by a vest of his I still wear in the winter.
Browns and purples he loved to wear, green for the forests he liked to walk in. Bits of cognac … you can guess why.
Yellow and white for the warmth and memories he left behind.
Hills for calm and stability, bits of pink for his sense of humor, birds for things that are no more.
Empty warps, torn edges for the empty space and grief that never goes away.
A fringe of 182 warps. 73 pairs each one standing for a year of his life. 18 pairs, not knotted, frayed, one for every year that passed since his death.
No foreground or background, What was once tangible - becomes memories. Intangible words, jokes, his smile - are the only things left.
Tapestry hanging in the living room.
My father’s vest
73 knotted pairs of warp + 18
Green for the forests, browns and purple for the colors he loved, white and yellow for the warmth and memories he left behind
What remains
“To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.”
It never used to be difficult to finish an image for a photographic project. Quite the contrary, if I liked what I saw - there was a sense of pride, sometimes a sense of wonder - did I really do this? If I did not like what I saw, the work ended up in the darkroom bin, or abandoned in the folder maze on my working drive. So, how to explain this feeling of loss at the end of a woven piece? Is it because the sheer amount of work filled such a big part of my time for months? Or because I can look at the finished piece and see how I changed during this time, can tell the point when I realized what I am doing: unconsciously translating the rhythms of birds song into bright colored hand-spun wool.
“Morning Song” is up on the living room wall, and me ….I miss the time working on it. Miss the process, feel the need to create. Listening to an interview with Connie Lippert led to a tiny weave that was instantly baptized “A really ugly thing” :). Then, without thinking too much, I pick up the small battered frame loom, the one with the crooked nails and a ball of hand-spun grey yarn which I had no idea what to do with (too itchy to make a wearable piece out of it) and started to improvise ‘a letter to myself’. How about adding a scrap of text? Out of the ‘papers to be used in the future’ box, a page captures my attention. On it, a line seems to be winking - “Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do …..”. Maybe so …..
“Morning Song” rests on the wall in our living room
A letter to myself, May 12, 2020
“In peace, the Middle East, the ancient cradle of civilization, will become invigorated and transformed. Throughout its lands there will be freedom of movement of people, of ideas, of goods.”
A cup of Beduin tea at the tea ceremony. “Le Haiim” - to life!!!
"What is it we see when we look to the East? In western eyes, the East always represented the other, as mystery or as threat, and more often than not - both. But what we refer to as East, be it near, middle or far, doesn’t naturally exist.
It is in fact many things. It is the direction of the earth’s rotation and where the sun rises. It is the direction the wind takes in many cities in the world. It is a absolute direction on the compass. It is an unmarked borderline of cultural meeting points. It is alternative philosophies, ideologies, cultural habits. It is sometimes simply what is east of what we stand, and sometimes what we feel is ‘east’ of our point of view.
From a city which is in itself a junction between who oppositions, Jerusalem Design Week 2019 tackles the sensitive question of the East. it does so not by rotating the view eastward from a western vantage point, nor by looking at its past of cultural exchange and political conflict. In fact, it will not look TO the East, but AT the East - as a term, a direction, an absolute point of reference , and the set of relative relationships it generates. as future not folklore.” - excerpt from the Jerusalem Design Week 2019 publication
A day VERY well spent!!
Palestinian embroidery embedded in a designer lamp
Young Palestinian designer standing by her work
Calligraphy based on old manuscripts originating from Iraq, Yemen, Iran and Morocco
…when Siri is leading us in meditation …. :)
Kazuma - traditional Japanese Dying technique
“The common thread” - portraits of the Arab workers of Hansen House drawn with thread by a CNC machine!
CNC machine in action
Origami meets Ikebana meets the Jerusalem summer light