Four Seasons in the Catskills Ketubah
This was one of those ketubot that just made space for joy from the very first conversation. The couple requested a representation of the four seasons circling the text, and photos of green spaces in the Catskill Mountain range in New York (where the bride and I had actually met years earlier!) became the guiding vision. We discussed everything and came up with a fanciful and yet grounded vision, full of energy and growth, with spring and winter trees establishing a backdrop for the birch trees crowned in full summer and blazing autumn foliage. To balance the design, and to emphasize the different planes represented in the painting, a spring branch of a blooming magnolia and a winter twig with a brilliant male cardinal jump forward in the upper left and right to break up the masses of painted...
Read MoreDecorative Archway Ketubah
Predominantly blue, this architecturally inspired ketubah is composed of elements that recall a wide variety of decorative styles – Celtic knots, European marble columns, Persian tilework, and simple swirls that echo manuscript...
Read MoreKetubah for a Wedding in the Zoo!
A delightful couple decided to marry at the Ramat Gan Zoo in Tel Aviv, and contacted me to create an “Ark-y Animals” Ketubah! I had free rein to choose the menagerie, except for the couple’s pet Canaanite Dog, Nina, whose portrait graces the lower left of the document. It was great fun to roam the children’s shelves at a local library and find the perfect poses of giraffes, meerkats, and turtles. Who else gets to do...
Read MoreArt Deco Papercut Ketubah
A most joyous opportunity here, to create a ketubah for a very special couple who share a rare clarity of vision and the ability to communicate it! We started with just a few ideas: papercut, curvy art deco style, and a color palette that would work in any room over time. We bounced around sketches and ideas, and I even ordered swatches of wallpaper from a very high end art paper manufacturer, only to toss them out upon arrival when the petroleum aroma became too much to bear! Finally I hit upon a lovely stained glass image from a home in Melbourne, Australia. I adapted the design to papercutting and interpreted the many colors of glass in the original into multi-textured acrylic paints in a neutral palette. I enhanced the full-bodied paints with a concoction to increase their thickness, and I must admit, it was almost too much fun to play with the goo I came up with! The colors include silvers and golds, and the piece catches the light and shimmers! Several areas are even filled with micro glass beads. The coloring and texture choices in a ketubah like this are part of an organic process that grows bit by...
Read MoreBlue Water Ketubah
The request was clear and challenging! This couple had met at university where they were both swimmers. Specific college blue and a text laid out to indicate the movement of water. This simple and elegant design took shape in the center of the paper, written in Shiela Water’s updated version of Carolingian lettering, with an opening Hebrew paragraph matching the English by the tilt of the lettering. The border design is built up of multiple ribbons of watercolor paper of varying textures and weights. Dots of 23K gold leaf complete the design, catching...
Read MoreModern Yiddish Marriage Contract
A brilliant and exuberant couple, deeply involved in Yiddish folk life, offered me the opportunity to expand Jewish folk arts this year by crafting their ketubah in Yiddish and English. After writing their text, it was translated into exquisite Yiddish by Itsik Gottesman, and then the fun began! One Skype conversation pretty much brought us to a final goal: papercut art representing the seasons, heavy on tree images, four specific bold colors, and the text in a circle with the squared art around it. Particularly touching is the fact that the groom’s mother has been a papercutting student of mine over the years, so I knew as I was working, that her eyes would be processing the work in a way different from most other wedding guests! The text and design are elevated slightly from the background painting, which also features splashes of 23 K gold leaf to catch the...
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