Queen of the Jews Book Cover

Posted by on Jun 21, 2012 in Awards, Certificates, and Commissioned Works, News, Public Art | 0 comments

Queen of the Jews Book Cover

The opportunity to research and develop a book cover and maps for a work of historic fiction by author Judy Petsonk was one at which I leaped!  An evocative work that paints in words images of ancient Judea prior the first Century also deserved cover art that would draw people into another time and place.  This is the story of Queen Salome Alexandra (Shalom Tsion), woven from fragments The History of the Jews by Josephus and bringing life of a woman who ruled a nation and oversaw tremendous development of infrastructure in her time. The mosaic design is based on recently uncovered floors in the area of Lod.  What goes around … ends up on a book! I had the delight of collaborating with graphic designer Tammi Reid who found the perfect typeface and photo image of a blooming almond branch which I was able to incorporate onto the back cover of the book A great...

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A Biselle KlezKamp – Madison

Posted by on Jun 20, 2012 in News, Upcoming Events | 0 comments

A Biselle KlezKamp – Madison

12 hours in Yiddishland!  Make tracks to Madison, Wisconsin, July 22, 2012 for the celebratory birthday party of the Mayrent Institute at the University of Wisconsin.  A full day of programming will include classes taught by Michael Wex, Henry Sapoznik, Miriam Isaacs, Sherry Mayrent, a spectacular faculty of musicians, and others.  I will be teaching on traditional Jewish papercut art, presenting a lecture/recital, and performing with the KlezKamp faculty kapelye in the closing concert and dance party.  Sarah Gordon will be running the KlezKids program throughout the day – and the entire program is FREE!   Click here  for more details. I will also be bringing a biselle Yiddish to Madison’s Congregation Shaarei Shamayim on Friday evening, July 20, at 7:30 with a taste of rare Yiddish songs and their powerful messages of healing the world, so add this to your calendar if Yiddish in the heartland is your...

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Limmud Baltimore

Posted by on Jun 6, 2012 in News, Upcoming Events | 0 comments

Limmud Baltimore

Sunday, June 10, 2012 a the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Baltimore, I’ll be leading a session on the legacy of the Triangle Fire at Baltimore’s first Limmud program.  As part of the full day of learning, I’ll be sharing our activist history through Yiddish song, anecdotes, biographies, and archival photos. I expect the learning will take place in all directions, since participants at events like this always bring fresh perspctives and their own family histories of labor activism to the program!  Here’s a link to the event:  ...

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Israeli Wildflowers Ketubah

Posted by on May 31, 2012 in Ketubah Art, News | 0 comments

Israeli Wildflowers Ketubah

A couple with deep connections to the land of Israel chose to have me embellish their ketubah with a garden of protected Israeli wildflowers.  As simple as this sounds – ‘just’ flowers – the challenge is to balance color, size, shape, and height to make the design ‘read’ as an aesthetic whole. I love painting wildflowers.  They are so much more cooperative than birds because they never fly away, and they generally look just like the examples in the field guides! I find that once I’ve spent hours drawing from life and then incorporating the images into a painting, that encountering the same flowers in the future feels like bumping into old friends. The 22K gold leaf which is applied to the first word of the ketubah (b’echad) and the text from Torah that forms the ribbon across the flowers is laid on a ground of Secotine, a fish-based glue that has been used for centuries in Jewish...

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Yiddish in Pittsburgh

Posted by on May 8, 2012 in News, Upcoming Events | 2 comments

Yiddish in Pittsburgh

On June 3, 2012, Lauren Brody and I will  settle in at the JCC in Pittsburgh for a pair of concerts designed to complement the Jewish Museum’s exhibit on the artists who illustrated the works of Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer.   At 10 am we will bring a menagerie of animals (in song only!), props, costumes, and sing-along lyrics to a family concert that will recreate aspects of Singer’s world and bring some of his stories to life.  Then at 3 pm, we’ll be on the stage for a full concert with accordion and piano as well as our blended voices to highlight some of Singer’s works for an adult audience.  While some of his illustrators had Eastern European Jewish roots, many of the later illustrators, chosen by the publishers, did not share Singer’s worldview, and the artwork takes the stories into another realm.   How delicious to be learning new songs to share with new audiences and weaving visual art and music together in the process! Great thanks to PennPAT  and the PA Humanities Council for supporting this programming with grants.    ...

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Vivid Papercut Ketubah

Posted by on May 2, 2012 in Ketubah Art, News, Papercuts | 0 comments

Vivid Papercut Ketubah

The exuberance of this couple is reflected in their concise wish-list for their ketubah:  “Bright!  A circular text with papercuts and a tree and two doves and… whatever you think!  Bright and colorful!”  We talked to flesh out some more specifics, but basically I was guided by a feeling of their energy and relationship.  So here’s the finished product, which brought them to tears and had them each ask me how I had climbed into their minds to craft exactly what they’d hoped for!

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