Lifestyles
| Comments (0) | |
| Print | | | |
|
What Is Jewish Art?
Incorporating it into your home
By Barbara Pash
When Laura and Aaron Frank had their first child, Aaron’s mother commissioned an artist to make a papercut in the baby’s honor. She did so for the three children who followed. Now, the papercuts hang in the Frank’s Dumbarton home, along with other art they have collected over the years.
“I’d say 90 percent of the art we have is Jewish art,” Laura says of the framed “Woman of Valor” calligraphy her husband had commissioned for her, pottery candlesticks bearing her children’s names in Hebrew, and collections of mezzuzot and hand-shaped hamsas (good luck symbols), among other items.
What constitutes Jewish art is debatable. Different people have different opinions. “It’s subjective and personal,” says Claudine Davis, former director of the arts for the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore, who ran the JCC Art Gallery at the JCC Park Heights for 21 years, and is still in charge of the JCC Film Festival and Cinefest program.
Still, Jewish art seems to fall into three categories.
First, for some people it’s enough if the artist is Jewish, even if the work he or she creates doesn’t have a Jewish connection. That’s the standard most Jewish museums around the country follow, Davis says. Israeli artists, for example, fall into this category. The art scene is booming in Israel but the work that’s being produced doesn’t necessarily reference Judaism. In fact, says Davis, “A lot of Israeli artists don’t do anything Jewish.”
Second, some people believe Jewish art has to connect to Jewish culture, which itself covers a vast territory. The art “doesn’t have to be religious but it should relate to Jewish values, Jewish stories and folklore,” Davis explains.
The third category of Jewish art is very specific. To some, it means Judaica and ritual objects. Davis has an opinion about that. Menorot and dreidel can be art, as long as they’re an expression of the artist, personal and one-of-a-kind, and not mass produced.
She also believes that Jewish art, whatever the definition, should not be judged differently from other art. “There isn’t a separate criteria for Jewish art,” says Davis. “Quality is quality.”
Local artist Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen has a national reputation. He creates what is clearly “Jewish” art.
One example is his mural of the Baltimore Jewish community’s history, which is prominently displayed at the JCC Park Heights. He also has taken on the responsibility of making art an integral part of his congregation, Temple Emanuel.
But as an artist himself, Schlossberg-Cohen sees Jewish art in a broader context. “If I’m inspired by, and my life follows, certain Jewish principles,” then the result is Jewish art.
He says that some people buy Jewish art because it allows them to express their Jewishness in their home. But he has also had the opposite experience.
“One of the actual paintings I did of a Jewish subject — a female cantor — was bought by a Chinese Catholic woman for her gallery in Denver,” he recalls. “So I can’t say for sure who buys Jewish art.”
Hilly Greenstein doesn’t have that problem. As the owner of Zyzyx!, a store in the Festival of Woodholme in Pikesville, Greenstein aims to please his customers’ varying tastes.
The store’s Judaic department stocks thousands of items, from ritual objects like hand-made Passover seder plates to hand-crafted jewelry like Stars of David and Chais.
Many of the customers for Jewish art are Jewish, he says. But he also has non-Jewish customers who buy items like a mezzuzah, for instance, because they think it’s lucky for their home.
The Franks, both 40, belong to Congregation Netivot Shalom. Laura teaches at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School while getting her doctorate in Jewish history from University of Maryland, College Park. Aaron is the school’s lower school principal. Their children range in age from nursery to middle school.
Laura says she hardly considers herself an art collector, yet her home seems to be filled with it. There is the ketubot (marriage contract) that is framed and hung over the fireplace. A decorative mizrach sign hangs on the eastern wall of the home, a Jewish custom. The hamsas, in wood, metal and glass, hang above the kitchen sink.
These items weren’t necessarily expensive. Of course, some Jewish art is costly, but there are plenty of artists whose work is more than affordable, she says.
On Shabbat, the Frank family lights all six candlesticks. They sit on a table beneath the framed “Woman of Valor” calligraphy.
“It gives me enjoyment. It’s spiritually uplifting,” Laura says of the ritual. “Jewish art exemplifies who we are.”
Baltimore’s Young Jewish Artists
Alexandra Fadeyeva: Silk Painting
Alexandra Fadeyeva is a native of Russia who immigrated to the United States a decade ago. Married and the mother of two, Fadeyeva lives in Reisterstown, Md., where she celebrates Shabbat and the Jewish holidays at home.
Fadeyeva has worked in oils and water-colors, but about five years ago, she became interested in silk painting. She met other silk artists and joined an organization called Silk Painting International.
Fadeyeva, who considers herself a Jewish artist, has participated in exhibits at the JCC art gallery and at a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C., and has had her work shown at a gallery in Greenbelt, Md.
Fadeyeva calls silk painting “exciting.” She explains, “You put colors on the silk and you see it flowing. It’s really hard to control the flow. Then you put the silk in a special path and that’s how you get the brightest colors.”
Although Fadeyeva does not have formal art training — in Russia, she was a librarian — art is a long-time passion. When she came to America, she decided to act on her interest.
Now, Fadeyeva uses her silk painting skills to make, for example, yarmulkas for men. She still sometimes does watercolors, particularly nature scenes. “I like the changes of light, particularly on small things like leaves or tomatoes,” she says.
Michael Weiss: Abstract Oils
Michael Weiss is a native Baltimorean who is married, a father and lives in Federal Hill. Weiss is a graduate of The Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA), where he is now a faculty member.
In his studio, Weiss does drawings and paintings in watercolors and acrylic, but his focus is oil painting. The common term for his paintings is abstract.
There is a large community of artists in Baltimore, primarily because of MICA and the many other colleges in the area. “You have a lot of people coming to town,” he says. “It’s relatively inexpensive to live, to rent studio space versus New York.”
He has shown his work in commercial galleries locally and in Washington, D.C. He also has worked with consultants who buy art for clients and has sold “out of his studio” through personal contacts.
Weiss was raised in and attended religious school at Beth El Congregation. Although he doesn’t necessarily consider himself a “Jewish artist,” he says his upbringing and faith influence his work.
“In negotiating the realms of abstract art, it comes out of my understanding of the divine,” he says.
Being an artist is an individual pursuit, Mr. Weiss continued, but “being raised in a minority religion definitely has an impact as a painter.”
Laura Black: Photography
Laura Black lives in Owings Mills with her husband, Daniel, and daughter, Addison. A photographer, she owns Laura Black Photography, for which she does portraiture, weddings and events. For her personal work, she specializes in photography transfer, in which she transfers a picture to wood, glass or fabric.
In particular, she concentrates on landscapes. “I visited Israel several times, traveling throughout the country,” she says, in order to create a series of Israeli landscapes.
There are 40 photographs in the series, both black-and-white and color. They range in size from 5 x 7-inch. to 20 x 24-inch.
Although Black says she doesn’t define herself as a Jewish artist, Judaism informs her work. “A large portion of my outlook on the world comes from Jewish values,” she says. She was raised in Temple Oheb Shalom.
So far, Black has sold about one-third of the Israeli landscape series. She finds that particularly gratifying as the photographs were “very personal to me.”
Her next step is to photo transfer the images from the series, although she hasn’t decided onto what specifically. “Certain images lend themselves to different medium,” she says.
