New York City Skywatchers’ Ketubah

Posted by on Dec 15, 2017 in Ketubah Art, News, Visual Art | 0 comments

New York City Skywatchers’ Ketubah

Deep sky, its swirling and wispy clouds reveal tiny pricks of starlight and a massive rising moon. You may imagine correctly that both bride and groom are deeply connected to New York and love to look beyond the lights of the city to the skies.  The moon is mounted on a reverse-beveled board so it floats in the blue/purple heavens.  What’s impossible to see in this photo is the deeply stippled background of lunar craters under the grey lettering! So take a look at the moon-in-progress: Another thing that’s hard to see in the photo is the detail on the skyscrapers, each showing the tiniest bits of light in windows. About 6 different pen nibs were used to write the English text since each line of lettering is very slightly larger than the one preceding it. (Star Wars...

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Blue Ridge Mountains Marriage Contract

Posted by on Dec 15, 2017 in Ketubah Art, News, Visual Art | 0 comments

Blue Ridge Mountains Marriage Contract

The precious couple who asked me to craft their marriage document told me that the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina is their ‘happy place.’  When I asked for pictures, I did not expect MILLIONS OF TREES! Oh my.  So I dipped into the wonderland of autumn color by creating a background painting of the sunrise sky and then the faintest of the old, worn mountains at the horizon, moving slowly, slowly forward into more sharply focused images.  The trick to watercolor is to build up with great patience, keeping transparency as long as possible. A special aspect of this piece (and please suspend disbelief here, because there are two opposing seasons in one painting) is that the groom has a beloved daughter from a previous marriage. Their desire to represent their new family of three at the time of their wedding led us to come up with an iconic cluster of blooming rhododendrons in the foreground.  They told me that when they received the piece and showed it to their daughter, she pointed to the small flower in the center and said, “That’s me, right?”  Perfect!...

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Pets, Pittsburgh and Petrified Wood!

Posted by on Dec 15, 2017 in Ketubah Art, News, Visual Art | 0 comments

Pets, Pittsburgh and Petrified Wood!

When a seemingly disparate list of images comes my way, I dive into the challenge of  building an aesthetic whole. This couple brought me a list that included beloved pets (a cat and two fish), an iconic bridge, a cross-section of the Grand Canyon, petrified wood, and cherry blossoms.  The color palette is bold, and together we came up with a riff on Mondrian’s recognizable horizontal and vertical blocks to define an appropriate space for everything: texts, signatures, and images.  No matter where we begin our exploration, the final product is a reflection of the couple. I see my function largely as one who channels a couple’s vision, and there’s great joy in that...

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Delicate Seasons Papercut Ketubah

Posted by on Jun 12, 2017 in Ketubah Art, News, Papercuts, Visual Art | 0 comments

Delicate Seasons Papercut Ketubah

The simplicity of this ketubah belies the complexity of the couples’ intentions and the work involved in bringing their vision to life. We began with a request for leafy images of the turning of the season and a very simple papercut design.  After many sketches sent back and forth, we hit upon a design that nests the text in a pattern of abstracted twigs.  The seasons are referenced in tiny buds, opening blossoms, new leaves, and finally aging and falling leaves – only a few for each season.  It’s worth the effort to spot the seasons this way!  The background color took 5 different tubes of paint to mix in order to match the periwinkle blue paint chip that the couple chose.  The background was painted on a stretched sheet of watercolor paper and then the text and papercut image were dropped on top to allow the cut paper to sit a bit...

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Papercut Orchestra Ketubah

Posted by on Jun 11, 2017 in Ketubah Art, News, Papercuts, Visual Art | 0 comments

Papercut Orchestra Ketubah

As always, the drawing table is clear when I start work on a ketubah and I am wide open to a new adventure!  This couple met while playing in an orchestra, he the horn, and she the bassoon, and along with the papercut images and the sunrise on the sea, they wanted the instruments somewhat hidden in the design.  The French horn (based on a photo of his magnificent instrument from an earlier era) was the easiest since it lent itself to becoming the rising sun.  The bassoon took some tweaking, at first very recognizable with all the stops and valves, and then stripped down a bit and nestled in among some sea grasses to keep it part of the bigger picture. Creating this piece involved lots of images sent back and forth to make sure the tree was just what the couple wanted.  If you look closely you can see that the papercut is elevated just slightly from the pastel colored background so it creates a thin shadow effect.  This way the delicacy of the papercut cannot be confused with a silk screened print. Here’s a look at the text and papercut before the color was...

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Arts Residency in Teaneck, NJ

Posted by on Feb 14, 2017 in News, Performances, Yiddish Music | 0 comments

Arts Residency in Teaneck, NJ

What a wonderful residency at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, NJ.  It was Shabbat Shira, Tu B’Shevat, and the full moon even entertained us with a penumbral eclipse. This enthusiastic and welcoming congregation opened its heart to celebrate everything, and what was to many prior to the weekend an odd opportunity at best, came to be a full embrace of Yiddish!  We examined gilgulim as a contemporary construct with Jewish song as the vehicle in a lecture/recital on Shabbat afternoon.  The incredibly gifted Adrian Banner joined me on the piano for a full concert after Shabbat, and the room was full and engaged. As always, life-long Yiddish speakers with a depth of knowledge in song repertoire came up to me after the concert tickled that I had shared material they’d never heard before.  And that’s exactly what I aim for: bringing Yiddish alive with surprises and...

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