Gallery Descriptions

My Diverse Pallette

Saffron Secrets
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Medium: Mixed; acrylic paint, paper

Description:​ My brushes sing with emotions as I layer pigments and textures building a narrative. Included are small saffron yellow protrusions crating crevices to mysteriously secret thoughts or wishes.  Abstract art uses languages of color, shape, and line to create a composition allowing the observers to see with their mind what they cannot see with their eyes.
Blue-- More Than a Color
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Medium: Acrylic paint, pencil

Description: Color is a language speaking volumes. In our culture the color blue is often associated with a state of mind, the bright sky, seven seas, pronography profanity, politics, etc... 
Here I paint my blue happy filled with promise.
​How do you see blue?
Lethal— Bullets Kill

Medium: Mixed, fabric hand dyed and printed, metals, beads, bullet, acrylic paint

Description: ​Though a peacemaker at heart I rage internally against gun violence. I have found myself waging war through my creativity,  visual art pieces and words, for example “Show Us” seen on my Joy Of Words page.

​Companion Piece
Not to be Unraveled
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Medium: Mixed, found object, dyed lace, paper, digital

Description: This piece is from my series “Secrets & Shadows, a Palimpsest”
Family heritage is threatened when the Jewish peoplehood were on the verge of annihilation.   The tree in this artwork is depicted as solid, sturdy and flowering with the concept of  ‘steel magnolias” --- subjected to dire circumstances yet strong enough inside to survive any challenge. It is a renewed faith in the indomitable strength of the family and l’dor v’dor- generation to generation!
Community Essential
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Medium: Mixed, fabric hand dyed, found objects, paper/digital, hand woven fibers

​Description: ​This piece is from my series “Secrets & Shadows, a Palimpsest”
​The Jewish communities of Eastern Europe were decimated; each city and community, with its culture and 
history was buried.  Ancient cities like Jerusalem are palimpsests. So it is with those European communities,  pieces of the old are available as they rebuild over them again.. Today there are now revivals of Jewish culture.
Fiber of my Being
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Medium: Mixed, fabric hand dyed, hand woven fibers, metal pieces

Description: Artistic fragnents provide clues into their imagination. This small fragment of textures is like a shard suggesting a peek into the mystery of my creative spirit. 
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Generations of Miriam
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Medium: Mixed, silk, hand painted and hand printed, digital phots, hand constructed machine lace
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Description: ​The biblical prophetess Miriam's name and character became synonymous with artistry, dance, sustenance and women’s leadership. Through the centuries women have proudly carried forth the name Miriam into modernity to this artist’s mother and then granddaughter and, with blessings, for many more generations. Within the gnarled lacy roots that frame this tribute eighteen tiny brass leaves voice a humble petition “to a beautiful life” for Miriam’s progeny.

Pandemic Art-iculated

​The Tangled Beat of Covid19

​Medium: 
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Description: ​3D art had not been my medium but the pandemic quarantine seduced the magician's wand to help me produce this metronome stabile. Palpitating concerns were accompanied by oscillating emotions of gratitude for a new awakening of creativity enveloped in the luxurious time given me all couched with conflicted doubts and fears for all of us, the unforeseen A.C. (After Corona) future propelling me to create visual and written accounts.

Companion Piece
Distancing Not Just  for Humans

Medium:  Acrylic paint
Description: ​​sadness enveloping our vast globe    Covid19 pulses like a frightening strobe
even the birds social distance   no mingling what kind of existence
tho natural for our feathered friends   its not for us humans to comprehend
Woven Together

​Medium: Paper weaving, digital images

Description: ​2020 Passover, being apart a dilema-Being apart has never been on my agenda
Zoom to our rescue - a new kind of seder - everyone there —technoogy our vindicator
our 2020 seder apart was a bouquet because it looked like no one was away
apart -disconnected—— yet forever woven together
Overwhelmed

Medium: 

​Description: ​As the Covid quarantine took hold a quietness settled in. Yet, I was surrounded and bombarded by distressing words hitting me like bullets: Unemployment, Stock Market Sinking, Expedential, Masks, Social Distancing, Hydroxychloroquine.  These and many more put  my nerves on a tight spring, a reverberating metallic sound in my body: boing!
Shattered
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Medium: Digitally generated composition, printed

Description: ​Media reports about the erosion of our American democracy have inflamed my sense of patriotism. Memory of the film “Network” where the character,  a popular TV news commentator,  encourages his viewers to stick their heads out the window and shout “I can’t take this any more”.
This art piece and poem about our contemporary state of the union is how I have dealt with that kind of rage!

Companion Piece

Digital Expressions

Sacred Time

Medium: Digital, Mixed media

Description: ​Here I have attempted to show the fluidity of time, the elusive passage of the days, the months and the years. Time is a sacred  gift to treasure. The Source of Time has given us the responsibility to value and revere it.
Muted Garden

Medium: Digital, Mixed media

Description: ​The sun casts a pearly glow blending the soft colors and late summer scents,  the last touches of that bright, blossoming  season.
This and the following 2 pieces are part of a series Symphony of Season. An exceprt from my ode by the same name as this series describes my intent: “The seasons of the year keep my biorhythms in balance, each one brings joy, newness and expectation. Just as I need the morning sun and the evening moon, the yearly cycle is my wheel of life.”
Winter, Season of Faith
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Medium: Digital, Mixed media

Description: ​Winter is a season for waiting. Its weather can often test our patience. It is the quiet, gray season; no chirping birds, no buzzing  bees and  no  red roses or purple crocuses. But, oh, when the new spring-green appears it was worth the wait!
​Autumn Carpet

Medium: Digital, Mixed media

Description: From my ode "Symphony of Seasons"..... Autumn, to be sure, is the favorite of the Almighty. The dust of memory is shaken from the trees and in jubilant celebration ignite a bonfire, a flaming leafy overture...
Rite of Passage

Medium: Digital
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Description: ​An homage to my two grandmothers who came to this country in the late 1800s at great risk. Lady Liberty, with her beaming torch of hope and promise,  lights their way.

Companion Piece

Holocaust Responses


The six images in this portfolio are selections  from my series "Burning Questions" as part of my art show "Painted Fire" . The Holocaust, the trajectory for this installation, is where I  bring a contemporary voice to speak  with different magery and medium in a more provocative manner based on universal events.
I metaphorically invite viewers for an enlarged conversation to my table to discuss  hard issues of today.

​Man’s inhumanity to man. When and how will you have the courage to stop this?

Medium: Digital, imagery on dinner plates

Description: ​​
Is violence as American as apple pie? My concerns with gun violence is laid out in my written piece, "Show Me" 

Companion Piece
How Can Your Faith Help You Be More Compassionate? 

Medium: Digital, imagery on dinner plates

​Description: We are a country that boasts a religious pluralistic society.  Church, Mosque and Synagogoue attendance is standard and honored.  Does a religious life  prompt behaviors  to learn to kindness , generosity, cooperation, and benevolence. What about Atheists?
What will your conversation be when you meet a denier?

Medium: Digital, imagery on dinner plates
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Description: ​This dinner plate pays homage to Survivor Tresa Kohn Sellers; additionally, here she symbolizes the millions annihilated. Holocaust deniers claim, that the Holocaust is a hoax—or an exaggeration—a deliberate Jewish conspiracy designed to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other people.  Holocaust deniers are generally revisionists, wanting to rewrite history books. Their misinterpretations must be challenged. It is up to each of us! Be prepared!
Irena, Your legacy is stellar. How can we harness your strength of conviction?

Medium:  Digital, imagery on dinner plates
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Description: ​Irena Sendler was a Polish humanitarian, social worker, and nurse who served in the Polish Underground Resistance who saved 2,500 children from. the Nazis. Her story is breathtaking, revealing exemplary courage.  Where did those  character traits come from. How and what can we learn from her heroic biography?
In the multicultural fabric of our country how  can we make “justice for all” a reality?

Medium: Digital, imagery on dinner plates
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Description: The Constitution lays the groundwork for our belief that there is "justice for all" yet much  of our country's history belies this.  In particular, in 2020 the Black Lives Matter movement has taught us harrowing truths. Let's. talk!
How will you answer or what will you do when you are confronted with evil?

Medium:  Digital, imagery on dinner plates
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Description: ​Distressing and tragic descriptions of huge populations across Eastern Europe turned a blind eye to the evident persecution to which  Jews were subjected. They saw individual horrors as well as have the knowledge of Ghettos, concentration and exterminations camp and seeing them in their own back yards.  What does this say of the psyche of the European culture of that time and what have we learned from the  social psychologists who have long studied this phenomenon known as the "bystander effect'?
This and the following artwork is from my series “Uncompleted Journey”  where I wrote a journal to my grandchildren telling them of the gaping emptiness in my family tree, searching the millions for those 10 family members. Through my art work and words I seek  to waken those long lost souls from tacit memory to give meaning to their existence, and, if only, to say, 'as part of history, you are immortal'.

In Memory Sara, Age 12

Medium: Digital, paper, fabric, found objects

Description: ​Approximately 1938-39, my husband's family, knowing how dire things were for their family in Poland, had planned on bringing 2 of their brothers' children to live with them in the U.S.. The paperwork had all been processed and photos sent to Chester, PA. Excitement and anticipation grew waiting for the day these cousins would arrive. But, soon all communications stopped! The reports were that all the borders were closed; the Jews living in Eastern Europe were trapped. ...... and the rest is tragic history.
Family Unknown

Medium: Fabric variety,  paints, threads, digital  photo and text, thermography
 
Description:  The holocaust left millions annihilated, amongst them whole families leaving no trace of any identification. This somber rendition lends a mournful tribute yet at the same time wistful, pensively wishing I knew them, something of their personas. We have been robbed of massive amount of human beings who could have made valuabe contributions to society!
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Magillah Esh-Magillah of Fire

Medium: Fabrics, quilting, digital, thermography

Description: ​​In my opinion, in about one hundred years a Magillah will be written concerning the historical period--The Holocaust. This is my pictorial interpretation. A Magillah is a  teaching device.  I felt telling the story would be more impactful to utilize a real family's plight through those dark years. A photograph of the Zavilevsky family  was taken in 1933 when a young American girl visited her large family in Prozena, Poland. Fortunately, she returned to America with this photograph in hand.  This pictorial story begins with that photograph as well as a famous Synagogue that was also destroyed. Together they represent Jewish European life.

My Jewish Lens

Our Tapestry Woven Anew

Medium:  Paper weaving, Digital, threads, found objects

Description: ​“Step into My Studio” Said the Artist to the Prophet, a show to honor the 40th anniversary of the stained glass windows at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, Elkins Park, PA.   The glass artist Landau, in his windows, dresses the loom with the prophets, as a timeless warp of messages from Scripture. In my weaving I acknowledge the tensile strength of that history as I lay in the weft of female names whispering forgotten threads of their narratives helping to create a newly patterned tapestry, a more completed chronicle.
The People of Israel Live

Medium: Fabric

Description: ​This Torah mantel  covers a Holocaust Scroll from Lostice, Czechoslovakia.
It is a memorial to the Six Million who perished in the Holocaust. The arms clothed in prison grab reach up in despair. These hands, filled with yearning and tension, symbolize the courage of those victims as they reach up for God. The Hebrew letters forming the words AM YISRA'AYL CHAI also reach up to God boldly proclaiming that in spite of it all “The People of Israel Live”. The rosebuds at the top symbolize life, hope and beauty affirm- ing that the Jewish people will continue to be ‘a light unto the nations’.        
Torah Mantel- Inverse Reverse

Medium: Metals, Fabric, quilting, applique, embroidery

Description: ​This mantle, formed by the metal sculptured crown, is a single entity allowing the fabric section to be removed from the structured  crown adornment, and turned, making the front and back interchangeable, lie flat over the Torah between alliyot as a respectful covering, and reversing to the white bridal gown for the High Holy Days.  The concept of this mantel, symbolic of Jewish history,  characterized by reversals of fate, as depicted in the lives of Joseph, Esther, and the Maccabeesa. The hand wrought letters of the crown shape the mantle just as Torah shapes our lives. “For out of Zion shall go forth the Law”, Isaiah 2.3.
The richly textured cinnamon silk conveys the protective treebark surface of the aytz chiam with hidden spaces where fiber strands curl and penetrate the honeycomb of passages representing the layering of Jewish history and the ingathering of the Jewish people.
It reverses to the priestly white quilted robe revealing the shofar’s echoing reverberations reaching deep inside ourselves. The undulating curved edge fastens with seven buttons signifying ‘shlaymut’ -completness. 
Heirloom Family Chuppah

Medium: Fabric variety, quilting, appliqué, thermography

Description: Commissioned  to be an heirloom and  used by the Braman family. The Jewish wedding ceremony is profoundly personal and deeply religious. This chuppah, which is an integral part of that important rite of passage, has a deep, intrinsic value to this family  and symbolic of the new home the bride and bridegroom will establish. How touching that the ‘architects’ of this family will  surely continue to bestow their  blessing on all of the bridal couples who will marry beneath this. 
Beth Hillel Chuppah, Wynnewood, PA

Medium: Needlepoint

Description: ​This chuppah’s design was inspired by a 17th century Ketubbah. The maker of the ketubbah has a fragment of the experience of participating in the cosmic wedding- that which occurred at Mt. Sinai between God and Israel, and Moses being the ketubbah scribe. Every earthly wedding is a commemoration of that even.  Each panel has 32 flowers. The number 32 in Hebrew means “Heart”. In Ashkenazi tradition the bride give a tallit to her beloved because the tzitzit (8 strands in the fours corners) symbolize the giving of the heart.  The birds are a symbol of peace, tranquility and fertility-- concepts which are always in our prayers for the bride and groom.  Gold for the letters and borders were especially chosen to denote the holiness of matrimony.
Joy and Ecstacy
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Medium: 
Description: ​Created as an exuberant celebration for life! The figures in this tapestry were later applied to a set of holiday chinaware manufactured by Lenox China.
"Sing a new song unto the Lord...praise His name in the dance..." Psalms 149:1-3 from a Silk tapestry-original in private collection.
Miriam's Cup- Flowering Waters

Medium: Glass, hand and machine contracted lace

Description: ​Miriam's cup is a modern and feminine addition to the Passover Seder table.
Miriam’s name, mistress of the sea, and all that she embodies evokes the spiritual qualities of the feminine. These sculptural oceanic forms, water currents, and the embryonic florescence of life are echoed here in Miriam’s Cup, ‘Flowering Waters’, prompting thoughts of the sensual rhythms of life, tidal flow, the moon’s waxing and waning, all ascribed to the mythical and sensual elements in woman. These shapes unite to complete the character of this cup for life’s blessings with Miriam’s robed contour.
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