Artwork: Fire, Light and Legacy

This week I received the good news of a second grant to fund my ongoing oral history project on Jewish Identity and Legacy.  Early this year we completed a series of interviews with elders within a Jewish elder facility.  Our interviews were with Russian immigrants, Holocaust survivors and those who grew up in immigrant communities in the Twin Cities.  This second grant will enable us to focus upon cross-generational interviews and examine the question of how legacy transmits across generations.

I’ve been working on a series of paintings based upon the stories we’ve gathered and in the next few entries will share some of the artwork and the stories with you.  Some of the interviewees were truly amazing story tellers.  Fannie, who grew up in the Jewish community in the Twin Cities was one of the most prolific storytellers, perhaps because she had progressed to recording her stories in books.

When I begin a painting I reread the transcript for that particular person and think about whether there are some themes that emerge.  In the case of Fannie, every story related to fire, light and legacy.

Fannie had begun by telling us about her mother, a central figure in her life.  She related that her mother had told her stories when she was a child and urged her to write them down.

My mother was always afraid that we wouldn’t remember anything she said or did ... and she wanted the children to know that she had a life... all of the things that she did and saw and heard and she was afraid that it would all be forgotten.  And so she chose me as her spokesperson. She would always grab me in from play and there would be a cup of coffee and milk and a caramel roll and she’d say “Ess”, Eat, listen to what I say and then “Shreibses arupt”, write it down.  I said, uh huh,uh huh, and I’d  be busy eating my caramel roll and drinking my coffee and she’d keep me for about an hour and when she was all through talking she’d say, “Go out to play”.   I didn’t shreibe arupt, I didn’t write it down.  And one day I came home, she was staying with us and she was burning all kinds of papers, citizenship papers, a whole bunch of them was on the floor in a bag.  And she was destroying them.  And I yelled, “What are you doing?”  And she says, “Did you shreibe, write it down?” And at first I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I said, “no”.  "Well so what do I need all this for? Who’s going to care?  No one’s going to care! "  And then I said, “Mama, please.”  Well she stopped destroying and ...in my old age I discovered I could write, I didn’t know how, but the kids bought me a word processor.  I was 77 and I remembered Shreibses arupt, that would be the title.

When I asked her if there was something she grew up with that is still part of her life she replied "Benching licht".

Benching licht, Blessing the candles on Friday night.  My grandmother who came to live with us had her set of candles, my mother had her set of candles.  And you see my mother, when they were packing her up to send her to America so she could marry her boyfriend, you see the first thing that his mother put in the trunk were a pair of candlesticks.  They are over 200 years old.

Fannie also related a story about the candelabras that have been a part of a local synagogue since 1926.  The story began with a fire in the shteibel, attached to the synagogue. Her father was quite distressed by this as it was caused by candles and he thought they should have electric lights.

And he thought about it and he thought about it and one day he was walking home from synagogue with his neighbor and he was discussing the situation.  Mr Osias Silvers (his neighbor), said he was a smith… a tinsmith and he thinks he could make a reasonable pair of candlesticks. So Pa said, you mean if I get you drawings and patterns you will be able to make an actual thing?  Oh sure he said.  He does that every day for a living.  And so they started.

Mr Silvers went back to work and he asked his boss if he could have some metal strips, scraps that they didn’t want to use anymore, so that he could make something for the synagogue.   The guy says sure, so along the floor he picked up some brass strips and some metal… .And he put them in a bag and in a box and he brought them home. And he said, Mr Schwartz, nobody called anyone by their first name.  Mr Schwartz, could you make something out of these strips of scraps?  And he said, you know, I think we can make some candlesticks.  OK so he put them away and Pa went to work and designed a pair of candelabras.  They’re over five feet tall and he specified to be electrified for electricity.  And he brought them to Mr. Silvers and he said if we had a drawing he could cut it out.  He has instruments and things that could cut the metal to just like a pattern on a dress.  So Papa set about getting paper long enough and he had someone help him draw the outline of what he wanted and it was made.  The patterns were made and he brought them to Mr. Silvers and said, “Could you work from this?”  Absolutely he could work from this … and they set about making the patterning for the candelabras.

The candelabras have been in the synagogue since and in fact represent a multi-generational legacy.  Fannie restored them prior to her daughter’s wedding at the synagogue.

My raw material is story. Sometimes I have some imagery to work with as well.  In this case, I had images of the candelabras, the candlesticks and a photo of Fannie’s mother.  With fire as a central image I made the background flame colored.  I pulled out the suggestion of the candelabras at an angle and duplicated part of the image to fill in the left side of the canvas.  Making use of negative space I darkened the empty space that surrounded the form of the candelabra.  I sketched in one of the candlesticks with smoke forming an arc above.  The central figure was Fannie’s mother holding two papers just bursting into flame.  The figure is in front of the candlestick, but I liked the form of the candlestick and left the figure with some transparency so the candlestick shows through. The white of the papers, the candle and the face draw the focus.

I liked the idea of the candle burning representing the ebbing of time and the urgency to preserve legacy in the light of the flames so rapidly destroying it.  The candelabra represented a multi-generational legacy that continues to this day.

  This project has been made possible in part through the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008. Administered by the Minnesota Historical Society.

Making Knishes

It has been a while since I wrote about the artwork I’ve been doing for the Jewish Identity and Legacy Project, but I have been hard at work.  Several paintings are in various stages of completion.  As you will recall I had been working on a series of paintings based on the oral histories from Sholom Home, a Jewish elder facility. Interviewees represent Russian immigrants, Holocaust survivors who came here after the war and those who grew up in early Jewish immigrant communities.

One of our interviews was with a woman who lived on the Iron Range, an area in Northern Minnesota where small Jewish communities have largely disappeared.  She had fond memories of Virginia, Minnesota which today has a population of around 9,000. 

I really liked living (there). We had a Hadassah, we had every organization the Jewish people have in the cities on a smaller scale and we made different affairs to raise money.  It was wonderful living there.

The synagogue has been turned into a community center as only two Jews remain.  Because the Jewish population was small there was much more interaction with their neighbors and she fondly remembers sharing traditions with her non-Jewish neighbors.

I never once met a person that I thought was anti-Semitic.  My friends in Virginia were some Gentiles and they had us for Christmas and I had them for Yom Kippur, I did.  They learned how to make knishes.  I taught them how to make knishes. I used to make bagels.  We were the best of friends.

 Minneapolis was known as a hotbed of anti-Semitism at that time, but she does not remember encountering it in her small town where the religious communities were well integrated.

I had little in the way of direct imagery from which to work so in this case I had to decide how to portray the intersection of cultures.  I decided to build on the idea of making knishes. 

To that end I viewed videos of women making knishes and decided to build an image of women’s hands in action, one of those gatherings of women engaged in a common activity that bridges differences.  Behind them is a Christmas tree to represent the sharing of cultures.  The painting is titled Making Knishes.

This project has been made possible in part through the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008. Administered by the Minnesota Historical Society.

Destroying and Re-creating

Yesterday I was in the studio destroying paintings.  Well, not exactly destroying, but in the middle of my process it would certainly have appeared that way.  I have a show coming up in September where I will be showing my two series of work that were exhibited in London and Poland.  There are two paintings with which I have never been completely satisfied.  As you may recall, I had repainted my original paintings, which were on board, onto canvas for the London show to facilitate shipping.  In doing so I sometimes was able to improve on a painting, but I didn’t always succeed in a second version that I liked as much as the first.  Often I would try to change one aspect to improve a painting, only to discover that there were other aspects that I hadn’t re-created successfully that made the painting work.  I couldn’t see that clearly until my second attempt provided a contrast.  It wasn’t that the painting didn’t work on its own.  It just wasn’t the original.  Ultimately I had to accept that it was OK for my second versions to stand on their own as unique and separate paintings even if their inspiration came from a prior painting.

But now, I eyed them and contemplated whether I dared to take a paint brush to them.  Is a painting ever done?  It seemed that my semi-abstract paintings were the most challenging.  The originals often had happy accidents that resulted in an effect that I couldn’t seem to re-create. Then in a moment of bravery I began to destroy my paintings.

I find that it is very difficult to destroy in order to create, yet some of my favorite work has arisen from such actions, once totally painting over a painting and turning the subtle image that remained into a new artwork. I admire people who don’t hesitate to start anew, confident that they will land on their feet.  I’ve had to learn to take those leaps and there is always a swallow-hard moment that precedes them.  Whether it is painting out a painting, or leaving a job to venture out on one’s own, each requires an act of letting go, ending one path to find another.  I suspect there is a constellation of traits that define those of us who struggle with such choices.  I’m a bit of a packrat, not good at getting rid of things.  I keep them for history or because I might want them some day or simply because I don’t know what to do with them.  But I admire my friends with streamlined lives and aspire to at least move in that direction.  I think it is by letting go that we make room for the new and that is true in life as well as in paintings.

Five years ago I made that leap in my own life, leaving a career in finance to focus on my artwork and family and cultural history.  And there were quite a few swallow-hard moments that preceded that.  It wasn’t that I didn’t paint or explore family history while I worked, but I did it in a different way, not as intensely, not as focused and not as much in the flow, letting the process unfold.  I do consult periodically, but my new life has gradually been expanding to fill the available space.  In the period since I left my job I’ve gone in new directions.  I did my first solo show, followed by many more and then several international shows.  I began to do public speaking about my artwork and family history and discovered that when you enjoy what you do, it is a natural next step to share it.  And when you are passionate about what you do, that enthusiasm is contagious.  I discovered the power of story and began exploring that further in my artwork and I started painting in series because a stand alone painting wasn’t enough to tell the stories I wanted to tell.  Before long I was creating multi-dimensional projects because the stories demanded it.  I began to partner with organizations and individuals and I accessed technology, creating web sites, video-editing and yes, blogging.  Often I traveled to find the stories I painted.  In recent years I’ve spent a total of four months overseas in eleven countries.  Had you told me five years ago that was what I would be doing, I might have not had so many swallow-hard moments, but I would have missed out on the joy of discovering each new opportunity on my path.

So I’ve learned that letting go of “good enough” while hard, is a necessary step to get to something that I may find more satisfying, whether in a painting or in my life.  And as for those paintings, I left my studio pleased with my newly re-created paintings.  We’ll see how they appear when I view them with fresh eyes today.

Show in Radom, Poland

Having shipped my Lithuanian based artwork to London, I've refocused my energies on preparing for my show in Poland in April.  I plan to bring 9 or 10 small paintings on wood panels that capture the former Jewish community of Radom, the town from which my grandfather came. 

If all goes well, my friend Dora will be accompanying us on this trip.  Dora is a Holocaust survivor who grew up in Radom.  She was 15 years old when the war broke out.  A remarkable woman, she has been kind enough to share her recollections with me as well as commenting on the imagery that I am capturing from the 1937 film of Radom.  She has many photos and documents from before the war and during the time of the ghetto.  When her brother and mother left to be deported, her brother grabbed random photographs.  He kept them in his shoes throughout the war.  Even in Dachau his shoes were never taken from him so the photographs survived. 

While my paintings seek to capture the community that once existed, Dora brings a unique perspective to this effort.  In addition to showing my artwork we hope to put together imagery that tells her story and puts a real face on the former Jewish community that seems to be a subject of fascination in Poland.

It is interesting to me that the reaction of the Poles today is so different than that of the Lithuanians, my other series of Eastern European artwork.  In Lithuania there is often silence and a rewriting of history.  In Poland there is considerable interest in the former Jewish community.  A virtual Jewish community has developed without Jews, although one aspect of this is that some Poles are discovering they have long hidden Jewish ancestry.  The Nazis followed by the Soviets was certainly enough to make any surviving Jew obscure their religious heritage.

Dora reminded me that the Poles as a government never collaborated with the Nazis as occurred in other countries.  Still the story is not always a pretty one.  I accessed a new website recently called the Historical Jewish Press.  I typed in Radom and up popped an article from September 1945 that related the murder of returning Jews to Radom.  Having survived the death camps, many didn't survive their return home. These outbreaks were attributed to the Polish Fascist Underground and were sufficient for most returning Jews to abandon Poland.  A generation later, perhaps enough time has passed to feel comfortable learning about the community that lived in their midst.

And so I continue to work on my series of paintings and scan Dora's documents and photos.  Our effort will be to build bridges and understanding with the community that exists today.

The Pathways of One's Life

Have you ever thought about how each action lays the groundwork for the next?  Any genealogist soon learns how each document provides information that leads to the next piece of information.  A census record helps you to hone in on an immigration record, a death or marriage record gives you the names of the prior generation.  Step by step we construct a family tree by leveraging off prior discoveries.  It is only when we look behind us that we realize how far we’ve come.

Lately I’ve been thinking of the process of genealogy as a metaphor for understanding the pathways of one's own life, not just the lives of our ancestors.  Just as with genealogy, we begin to understand and manage our path through life when we understand the way each step opens the door for new paths and how multiple paths can begin to weave together into a more powerful direction than any one path in isolation.  The often innocuous discovery can lead to opportunity.  Sometimes the opportunity is right in front of us, but we don’t recognize it until we are ready. 

I am an “ incrementalist” by nature, realizing that the big stuff grows out of many little steps.  And perhaps I am more focused on this than most, going so far as to keep a spreadsheet of steps taken and what they lead to. 

Let me give you an example…Recently I was invited to show my artwork on Radom, Poland at the arts and culture center in the city of Radom.  I’ve had many people ask how that came about and I realize there is no simple answer, multiple threads connected to create that opportunity.  Just as I often retrace my steps in genealogy to understand how I solved the puzzle, I began to retrace my steps in life.

In actuality it started over five years ago when I tracked down a second cousin in Israel.  His daughter who spoke English became my point of connection.  When she was going to a conference in Montreal, I flew up to Montreal to meet her.  There I also met her cousin who is head of the Radom Society, the organization for survivors and children of survivors of Radom who live in Montreal.

And another thread…Early this year I developed the Shtetlink for Radom, Poland.  The Shtetlink is a website for Jewishgen.org that is created to help others researching family from that town.  In developing the site, I connected with people all over the world sending out 400 e-mails to fellow researchers.  One Israeli friend provided me with a homemade film of the Jewish community of Radom that dated to 1937, five years before that community was annihilated.  In taking stills from the film for the website, I realized its potential as source material for artwork.  That same friend connected me with the arts and culture center when I was planning a trip to Radom.  They very kindly assisted me in getting the key to the cemetery as well as providing photos for the website. 

I’ve been working on a series of artwork on Radom, but feeling the need for story to breathe life into it.  My work typically is a vehicle to tell a story and while the Radom work captures a picture of the former Jewish community, it needed more.  I do quite a bit of public speaking and it was through an arts connection who heard me speak that I was introduced to a woman in my community who is a survivor from Radom.  She has graciously agreed to let me interview her and incorporate her memories with my artwork.

So we have the website, source material feeding into a body of artwork, a survivor’s story, a connection in Radom and a connection in Montreal.  Now we have only to set it in motion.   I have a mental image of a pinball machine shooting the ball forward. A month ago I received an e-mail from the head of the Montreal Radom Society telling me about a new development in Radom.  I’ve written about it in this blog at An Unusual Collaboration , but essentially it was the discovery of 70 previously unknown Jewish tombstones that had been hidden away and are now incorporated into a monument, that had recently been dedicated.

Now to appreciate this fully you must realize that the Nazis used many of the Radom tombstones to pave the roads, not only destroying the synagogue and the people, but also destroying the history of past Jewish families as reflected in the cemetery.  I promptly decided I needed to get pictures of the tombstones for the Shtetlink, but how to do so?  An e-mail to my contact at the arts and culture center soon secured their agreement to send me photos.  Of course, I also shared with them the link to my artwork on Radom and the story of my interviewing the survivor.  They quickly responded with a request that I consider showing my work in April when they do a focus on the former Jewish community of Radom.

 And that is how things happen.

Creating a Cohesive Whole

 I’ve been working on the series on Radom and am beginning to think about how to create a cohesive whole as well as sections that can stand as a group.   I’ve been using a limited palette of black, white, red iron oxide and phthalo blue although more brown tones are beginning to emerge as a mix of these colors .  Red iron oxide and phthalo blue are my favorite colors and form the backbone of virtually all of my paintings.

In this series the colors will unify the imagery, but I realized I also need to keep the size of the images relatively consistent as well.  That means that images like the bicyclist which are of a smaller scale will be eliminated and new images like the market will be added in their stead.  I also am thinking in thematic series within the broader series.  While colors may vary slightly between the images, the thematic series should be more unified by color. The water carrier and the market are a pair as are the two of the women in the cemetery.   I’ve begun to group these on my art website so I can begin to picture the larger piece. In my newly completed market scene you will notice that the water carrier who has his own painting appears in the background as well. 

I am drawing imagery from a 1937 film that offers very poor quality images. This is both challenging and beneficial as it forces me to interpret and reinvent imagery into something recognizable. Some images are truly compelling in their original form.  Others require consolidating multiple images to form a painting. Many of the images are of people looking at the camera and while this may not be the normal everyday scene, I like the idea of the townspeople engaging with the viewer.  I anticipate breaking it up a bit by including some imagery of buildings, but don't have nearly as much fun doing paintings of buildings so they may come at the end.

London Bound

Late in December I will be shipping off my Lithuania based artwork to the Woolfson and Tay gallery in London.  There it will be in an exhibition that will kick off with an opening event around Holocaust Day.  As I will be speaking at the opening, I’ve begun to put words to my work.  Artwork often begins in a less verbal place and words are a way not only to explain it to others, but to make sense of it to myself after the fact.

I have come to realize that my work is very much about testimony.  When I was in Lithuania our guides were those who experienced the Holocaust first-hand.  In telling others of what occurred they offered their testimony as evidence, proof of what they experienced and witnessed.  In telling their experience they verify the events that occurred in a country where denial and minimization of those events is all too frequent.  Those determined women who told us of their experiences are in their 80s.  When they are gone, the testimony that they so fervently offer will be gone also. History will be rewritten to a more palatable version. It is already occurring.

So what is my role, a mere observer 70 years later?  Perhaps I should say, “What is my responsibility?” because I feel that I have one.  At minimum it is to take what I’ve learned and observed and communicate it more broadly.  We all use the tools at our disposal and so my artwork becomes a kind of testimony, reflecting my response to information I’ve learned and observed.  My experience has been that imagery allows one to tell a story that stays with the viewer.  By linking it with an image there is a visual hook and thus artwork is a natural vehicle to preserve testimony. 

Of Bicyclists and Water Carriers

 

I am continuing to develop the series on the Jewish community of Radom, the town in Poland from which my grandfather came.  I am using a 1937 homemade film of the Jewish community as source material and am painting in a size of 12 inches by 12 inches.  There is something satisfying about working in this size.  It is a study, a snapshot of a moment in time. Something I should be able to capture quickly, although that is not always the case.

I’ve learned that size has little to do with the amount of work a painting may demand. Someone recently asked me how long a painting takes me. Some paintings almost paint themselves. Others start with an idea that evolves. Sometimes there are happy accidents and sometimes it is a struggle and I paint over it several times before arriving at something with which I am satisfied. When I paint something that is representational it is easier in the sense that I know where I am going with it although I may struggle to capture it. When I am trying to capture a quality evoked through texture or layering, I may work it extensively. And there are those paintings that lean against the wall indefinitely waiting in vain to be announced as finished.

I am posting two that are still in progress.  The one on the left is of a bicyclist on a crowded street. As I look at a cross-section of seven paintings I find that there are qualities I like in some better than others. In some paintings I’ve used medium to build up the surface and then carved into it giving it a three dimensional quality. I plan to go back to the other paintings to try to create that same quality so they look more unified.


Since I began this series I’ve had a serendipitous development. I’ve been doing quite a bit of public speaking on genealogy and artwork and someone who heard me speak remembered that a woman she met is a survivor from Radom. I called her up and discovered a wonderful connection quite apart from our Radom link. We’ve been getting together regularly and I’ve invited her to collaborate with me in this project by sharing her recollections around some of these images. My new friend is now in her 80s, but was 15 at the time of the war so her recollections of Radom are of school mates, summer camp and visits to the country. Her world was one in which they didn’t want to speak Yiddish because they considered themselves Polish. Youth groups were focused on Zionism. The streets were filled with people who appeared very modern next to the older religious Jews in their long black coats, very much the imagery that the film captures. We talked about the stereotypes that were fostered by Roman Vishniac’s photographs and how little they represented the reality of a city like Radom. And yet there are the anachronisms that existed side by side those more cosmopolitan citizens. In the imagery from the film there is one image of a water carrier. It seemed like a very unusual image to me and I asked her about it. Who did he carry water for? “Oh there were people who didn’t have indoor plumbing who bought water from him.” She urged me to paint him as he was truly an image from the past.

 

A Hole in Time

I've added one additional painting (see bottom) to my series on Radom and reworked the top painting.  In setting them on top of each other I've also noticed that the top two paintings seem to have lines that connect quite unintentionally.  I may keep that in mind as I develop other paintings and perhaps have them assume a more precise rather than random assemblage.

The new image that I've added appealed to me because it seemed so classic.  There are always some young men who want to get into the picture and these two, particularly the one bending into the camera, seemed to fit that profile. I've got similar pictures that I've taken in foreign countries where a group of young men vied for the camera's attention.

I've been working with medium and carving into it to pull out the profiles and details of a face.  The wood paneling behind these two makes use of the grain of the wood itself.

As you may recall I am trying to use the motif of a pinhole camera in my imagery with the edges slightly darkened. My working title had been "A Point in Time", but I am now thinking of it as "A Hole in Time". It seems to fit with the theme I've been reading as of late on time travel.  Recently I cleared out some books from my bookshelves to make room for my genealogy materials that have taken up residence on my floor. In doing so I stumbled across a copy of From Time to Time by Jack Finney.  In the 1970 novel, the protagonist goes back in time to the late 1800s.  Finney's focus on the details of another time spoke to the researcher in me that seeks to go beyond dry facts to truly imagine another time.  I also loved Finney's short stories in About Time: 12 Short Stories and his sequel Time and Again.


It seemed to me that these glimpses of the once vibrant community of Radom truly provided a hole in time, allowing me  to step into and imagine a world that is no more.

Artist Under the Influence

I used to wonder what I was going to paint next, but I’ve learned to relax and ideas just come.  It often seems rather magical to me the way they arise, but I’ve learned that other interests often serve as an engine.

I am working on a new series on Radom, the town my grandfather came from.  I’ve begun two so far so I believe that meets the definition of a series.  I plan to do many more.  I’ve written about the 1937 film of the Jewish community of Radom that I received from a fellow researcher.  It captures a happy time and a cross-section of the Jewish community just five years before the Holocaust destroyed it.I’ve pulled many stills from it for the Shtetlink site that I created.  In doing so I found some images that really spoke to me.  When I put the page out on the Shtetlink I had three columns of images and I liked the juxtaposition of disparate images.  That was my impetus to create a series of small images that worked as a whole.

My second influence… I went to an open studio last week and stopped in a studio where the artist was painting on wood. Now I often paint on masonite, but she was using wood panels and I really liked her work and particularly the surface.  I liked the ability to use the grain or sand it so decided to try it as a material.  Unlike masonite the panels have sides so don’t need to be framed.  For someone who likes instant gratification, being able to hang a work immediately has a lot of appeal.

My third influence…My next decision was what size to paint.  As I wanted to create a larger image out of many smaller images I opted for 12” x 12”.  Earlier this year I had done several paintings in that size for the Foot in the Door Show that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts does every ten years.  They only accept paintings of those dimensions.  Normally I don’t work that small, but I found that I really liked the work that I did for that show so decided to explore those dimensions further.

And my final influence…Last weekend I went on a long bike trip with my husband and between pedaling managed to make use of the camera that I bought for our Eastern Europe trip.  I discovered quite by accident, as I tend not to read manuals, that it had a pinhole camera setting.  Now this worked beautifully for landscape shots.  Colors are slightly muted and a grayish edge surrounds the

center image. I soon was wondering if I could get that effect in my painting series.  My working title is A Point in Time and a pinhole image seemed to fit well within that.


So four influences drove my topic, material, size and style. Amazing where a camera on the wrong setting can lead.  This is how art happens.

If you're interested in the camera with the pinhole setting here's the link.  It also has a 12X zoom in a very compact camera, a high quality Leica lens and the wonderful additional feature of GPS.  It picks up where you are and links it to the picture.

Paintings Redux: Version Two


 Between genealogy research and conferences I’ve been finding some time to work on paintings for my London show.  As you’ll recall, I’ve taken several paintings that I’ve done on board and repainted them on canvas for easier shipping.  It has been an interesting experience to take a painting that I considered done and begin anew.  I’ve always thought that I didn’t have the patience for repeated versions of the same image.  I can't read the same book twice or see the same movie. While Monet’s multiple waterlilies, haystacks and cathedral windows are inspiring, I thought I needed something new to sustain my energies.  Now with a reason to do that exploration, I’ve had a few discoveries worth learning. I've found that there are many levels within an image to explore.

It is very difficult to take a serviceable painting and paint out portions to rework them.  There is always the fear of destroying what already exists and yet it is the paintings I destroy that give birth to my favorite paintings..  Still a blank canvas is a second chance to take what I liked and emphasize it while eliminating what I was less satisfied with.  Sometimes I found it impossible to recreate some effects.  Instead I could let go of what I had done and do something new and unique.  Often that second effort has qualities lacking in the first.


The challenge that hung over my head was to take my painting “Gedenken” which is24” X 72” and recreate it in two paintings of 24” X36”.  I further added to the challenge by deciding I wanted the paintings to be able to stand on their own as well as combine into one image.There were two changes I wanted to make from my original “Gedenken”.  I wanted to create a larger base of darker color at the bottom to balance it and I wanted to put bands of sideways letters between each band that spelled “gedenken”.  Here’s what I arrived at, both separately and together.



 The other painting that I’ve been working on is “What is Left”. This was a very simple painting of the doors of the Torah ark that remained from the synagogue from 1438.  The synagogue was damaged in the war and destroyed by the Soviets after the war.  As I studied the image of the doors more thoroughly, I discovered some details that I omitted in the original.  The lock to the doors is inserted into a star of David, now captured in version two. What looks simple is deceptively difficult.  The doors are of hammered metal and create dappled areas of light and shadow.  The hammered forms and the variations of light presented some challenges to capture.This is definitely an image that needs to be viewed at a distance to see the elements come together. 

You can find the original paintings on my art website under Lithuanian Artwork on the right.

Paintings: Version Two

It has been a busy couple of weeks since our return from Eastern Europe.  Much of my time has been spent adding my genealogy research to the Radom Shtetlink site.  If you are interested in the genealogy side of things you can find a summary of what has been added on the home page of the Radom Shtetlink (see link on right).


Currently I am working with a film from 1937 of the Jewish community of Radom.  As the film quality is poor (picture lots of people waving and the camera jumping around), I’ve decided to place stills on the website.  It must have been a big event to have the community filmed as everyone turned out to be captured on film.  There is a general spirit of gaiety that comes through despite having no sound. People bow, wave, shake hands, dance and hold their children up to the camera. And yet it is a sad film.  I can’t help thinking that most of the people in it were murdered just a few years later.  I watch for people who resemble my father, wondering if I might spot one of my great-uncles by happenstance.


 I’ve also begun to spend time at the studio working on pieces for a show in London in January.  I will be exhibiting my series of work that is based on my experiences in Lithuania.  The work will be at the Woolfson and Tay gallery.  Its founders produced a wonderful film of the survivors of Vilnius called Surviving History so our directions link up nicely.  I had contacted them originally hoping to show the film in conjunction with my artwork and ended up planning a show for their gallery.


 In order to simplify shipping, I am taking paintings that I have done on board and redoing them on canvas which is lighter-weight and doesn’t require framing. It is an interesting exercise on many levels.  There is part of me that hates to sell a painting because each one feels unique, something that I could never capture again.  Many paintings evolve in a serendipitous way through happy accidents and lots of experimentation.  There is no formula to easily reproduce it.  Occasionally I think I should be recording my steps in creating a painting, but I think too much analysis would get in the way of its evolution.  My compromise with the analytic side of my brain is to keep photos as a record of the process. If I flip through them in a slide show I can see how the painting evolved.  Because my focus is on showing a series of works, selling a core piece too soon interferes with that objective.  By doing multiple works, I am more free to let go, realizing that while I may not recreate the same piece, I may well create one I like better.


 I am giving myself permission to change a painting the second time, it needn’t be an exact replica.  Sometimes I like version 2 better.  Because paint goes on differently on different surfaces I can’t get certain effects on canvas that I could do on board.  I make lavish use of medium to try to make the surfaces more equivalent.


 So let me share a few version 2s with you.  You may remember Buried Truths based on the Polish journalist who lived in the forest of Ponar where he witnessed the murder of the Jewish community.  He wrote about what he observed and buried his pages in bottles in the ground.  The original one is on  the left and Buried Truths 2 is on the right.  The original is a little darker, murkier.  I discovered in the first one that I liked the line that cut across and wanted to highlight that so in version 2 you see it is much more distinct.  One would think that this would be an easy one to reproduce as it is not particularly representational, but it was actually quite difficult.  It may not come across well in a photograph, but the painting is built up with medium to create an almost fossilized effect when I glazed the medium with white. I also had some accidental drips in the first one that I decided I liked.  In the second version I tried to get it to drip blue across the iron oxide thinking of the drips as the roots of the trees reaching deep into the earth.

I am probably not done yet as I think I will want to make some of the background bottles slightly darker to distinguish them from the foreground and darken some of the background. Fortunately I have lots of time to play with this.


Another one which I have been working on is Sholom Aleichem with the old man who came to the restaurant in Vilnius only to reveal that he once lived there during the time of the ghetto.  There were a few themes that were captured in the original painting- a coal chute with a child who was hidden below, the gate to the tunnel which ran from the synagogue behind the restaurant under the building and out the ghetto gate.  There were also circles signifying the wall of wine bottles that now stands in this gentleman's former bedroom.  In the upper right corner they melt into the night sky.  Again the original version is on the left and version 2 is below in the center.

While I liked the image of the man in the first painting, I wanted him to be looking more contemplative so I tried a different view and changed him a bit.  I liked the wine bottles, but decided to have them overlap the man and liked having the background merge with the painting.  On the right I decided to add a new image - coal.  As the chute led to a a coal bin, I thought it would be interesting to paint coal which I did through the use of medium and glazes.  As an aside, I find that I need to take time from the studio to do other things and let ideas emerge.  In this case I was walking around the lake with a friend when I saw rocks that reminded me of coal.  I promptly took that image back to the studio. The gate still needs some work and I keep debating whether to have a child on the chute.  The scale seems too small for the painting.  It is likely that will get painted out or reformatted in some fashion.


What I find interesting about this image is that the images of coal, the circles of the wine bottles and the night sky could stand on their own as an abstract painting. Without the central figure they take on a symbolism of their own.  Perhaps they will find their way into a new painting in this form.



Both of these paintings require more work so I will feature them again as they evolve.  The third painting that I have been working on is Afikomen which is based on the hidden matzo factory in the Vilnius synagogue during Soviet times.  The imagery really didn't change between the original and the version 2, but I found that I couldn't get certain effects as easily on canvas.  As you can see they are not dramatically different except some colors appear more blended on the canvas.What is interesting about the process is that the original evolves organically.  It is only after it is done that I look at it analytically and think about repetition of form and how fields of color interact.  In version 2 of this painting I was less involved in organic evolution, but more focused upon capturing color and line.

So preferences?  Is version 1 just the prototype to be improved upon or does it have something unique by being more part of an organic evolution?  The mere exercise of putting these side by side has me itching to make changes to my version 2s.

More Paintings: I Was Here and What Is Left

Two more paintings to add to my Lithuania collection.  The first is recycled from another painting I shared on this blog called "Tombstone Braille".  I decided I wasn't quite satisfied with it and attempted to rework it.  Along the way I destroyed it and then turned it into a new painting. Despite my frequently expressed wish for an artwork undo button, I often find that my favorite works comes from being willing to destroy and re-create.

The painting is called "I Was Here" and is based on the Ninth Fort located outside of Kaunas, Lithuania.   The Ninth Fort was a place of mass murder used by the Nazis to kill 50,000 Jews.  In addition to Lithuanian Jews, this site was used for the murder of Jews from France, Germany and Austria.  The building was used as a temporary holding point prior to executions in adjacent killing fields. If the Nazis didn't complete all their murders during the work day, they held the Jews overnight until the next day.  It was in the holding cells that I saw the imagery which inspired this painting.  Carved into the bluish rose walls were names and dates.  A last attempt to say, "I was here", to assert one's existence in the face of death.   When I painted over the face in the earlier painting, it still showed through the layers of paint.   I liked the effect and decided this subject required a face to remind the viewer that a person stood facing this wall as they carved their last words.

The second painting that I've completed is based on a vestige of the great synagogue of Vilnius.  In 1938 the synagogue was celebrating its 500 year anniversary.  The synagogue survived the war, but was badly damaged and torn down by the Soviets.  In the Tolerance Museum I found the doors to the Torah Ark.  I was captivated by their handcrafted quality and surprised by how modern they appeared.  I loved the variation in colors on the metal and wanted to try to capture it with paint.  Because I made use of metallic paint, the colors change with the light.  The name of the painting is "What Is Left".

Artwork Site and Travels to Radom

This week I’ve put together some web pages to share the artwork I’ve completed on my Lithuanian travel. Completed is a relative term. Some reworking may yet occur. You can find it at http://studio409art.com/EasternEurope/index.html or click on Lithuanian artwork on the links to the right. Some of that artwork has already been shared in this blog, but these pages gather it all together along with some discussion of what I was trying to capture.

I’ve also been deep into trip planning as I will be traveling back to Eastern Europe in early summer together with my husband. Our travels will take us to Budapest, Warsaw, Radom (the town my grandfather came from), Cracow and Prague. I’ve gotten to know Radom quite well in putting together the Shtetlink site, but felt it was time to visit the town and do some research in the archives. I have no idea how I will respond to being there. Of all the places in Eastern Europe from which my family came, this is the city which is closest to the Holocaust for me personally. I have a list of at least 50 family members who died, many as close as second cousins. They all have names, ages and family histories that make them real. My grandfather immigrated to the US in the early 1900s, but everyone else remained in Poland only to perish in the Holocaust. Based on my experience in Lithuania, I know how intense this type of visit can be so sought to mitigate it with travels to other areas where I don’t have a personal connection.

I do my own trip planning and it involves considerable research that may prove helpful to others planning similar travels. The hardest part is figuring out the itinerary. I briefly considered going to both Radom , Poland and Kamenetz-Podolsk in the Ukraine where the rest of my family came from. Ultimately I decided that I needed to focus on one region at a time. Preparing to do research is even more time consuming than planning a trip and I want to make sure I allow sufficient time and focus to do it justice.

I’ve been fortunate in that a friend who had traveled to Radom advised me on how he would put a trip together in hindsight. Our travels will begin with five days in Budapest, then on to Warsaw by train. We will rent a car in Poland and travel from Warsaw to Radom where I will go to the archives to do research and put in an order. While they gather the information that I will request, we will head down to Krakow for several days. From there we will visit Auschwitz, a visit I feel I must make, but also dread. We then come back to Radom for a few days to gather the information from the archives. My friend suggested I leave enough time to make any additional requests that might be spurred by the information that the archives provide. Also while in Radom, we may do a side trip to Majdanek, a well preserved concentration camp that the Nazis didn’t have time to destroy. From there we head back to Warsaw for a few days and then on to Prague for six days. All total a trip of three weeks.

While in Radom I plan to visit both archives, the Polish State Archives (PSA) has information older than 100 years ago and the civil registration office (USC) which has the records from the last 100 years. I’ve been told that for the USC, I need to document my relationship to the people for whom I am requesting information. Not much clarity on how to do that, but I should be able to put a chain of birth and death certificates together that will take me as far back as the 1700s on one side of the family. I have ordered many records from the PSA and anticipate sending them an e-mail advising them of my arrival and what I hope to see while there.

I am especially interested in records that they have of identity papers that were required by the Nazis in 1941, the year before they murdered the Jews. Identity papers frequently have photos attached, often the only family photos that people have. I have gotten some identity papers in the past from the PSA although it seems those should be at the USC as they are more recent.

Understanding what information is where will be one of my challenges and I’ve been told that what I find in one archive may send me looking for information at the other. My other challenge will be language. I do not speak any Polish and based on my one phone call there, English speakers are a scarce commodity. They do accept e-mails in English, but respond in Polish, so I assume there are some English speakers. My friend who traveled there was able to manage without the language skills and found people who spoke English or enough that he could be understood.

The records present yet another language challenge, but one I’ve been able to contend with successfully in the past. Written Polish is somewhat decipherable in official records, but the Russian records remain challenging despite a few courses in Russian. I’ll need to brush up on my Russian before I leave as records from the 1860s through World War I are in Russian.

I am also interested in a file that sounds as if it has name changes for the Jews who first took last names around 1822/23. Prior to that time Jews had patronymics, the father’s last name with an ending added to it. It is possible that I can find the fathers’ names for my great-great-great grandparents David and Sura.

I’ve been watching the recent TV series on Who Do You Think You Are and thinking how much easier it is when you have a crew of genealogists doing your legwork. At the same time I am often glad that I’ve never found that a family member has already documented our family tree. Instead they left to me the wonderful opportunity to discover my family through my own efforts. Those efforts imbue the discoveries with much greater satisfaction than if someone had handed me the information. The search is itself a great gift for a mind that loves to solve puzzles.

Foot in the Door

Today we waited two hours to drop off a painting for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts “Foot in the Door Show”. The line was so lengthy that it extended outside for a portion of our wait on this snowy Minnesota day. It gave new meaning to the term "foot in the door". Each decade the MIA does a show in which they accept entries that fit within a 12” X 12” requirement. This sends local artists scurrying to art stores to purchase 12” X 12” canvases and I was no exception.

I ended up with two paintings and one collage from which I would choose my entry. The painting on which I lavished the most time, in fact didn’t make the cut, while the one I dashed off in two hours spoke to me. Of course the first painting was necessary to get to the second. It is all about process.

My first painting was a study of Ruta, a woman who we met at the Vilnius Synagogue. Ruta had a very old-style look that looked very at home in the synagogue. She graciously had shown us around the synagogue and was there to greet us when we attended services on our last evening in Vilnius. The image that I painted of her had the dome of the synagogue behind her as she stood on the women's balcony. The dome framed her face with blue creating an almost Madonna-like quality, not exactly the effect I was going for, but it felt strangely appropriate. Ruta will likely show up in a larger painting in another form and this study will surely inform that effort.

The painting that spoke to me was one I did of Marek, an older gentleman who was in our Yiddish class. Marek only spoke Russian so we didn’t have much opportunity to communicate with him, but I found his face very interesting and have already used him as a reference for my painting “Sholom Aleichem”. While I liked the painting of his face, it needed something more. I went to my list of Yiddish expressions and searched for something that would relate in some manner. The one quote I found was “Vi men iz gevoint oif der yugend, azoi tut men oif der elter”. This translates to “That which is practiced in youth will be pursued in old age.” When I thought about the meaning of this relative to Marek, I realized that he must have heard Yiddish as a youth, but grew up under Soviet rule where pursuing one's Jewish heritage openly was very difficult. Here he was in his 70s, now studying Yiddish, no doubt returning to something that had once been familiar. I wrote the expression in cursive Yiddish and did washes of yellow ochre and red oxide over different sections.

In addition to the studies for the Foot in the Door Show, I have also completed some additional paintings. One is called “Afikomen” for its association with hiding the matzo at Passover. When Ruta had shown us around the synagogue she pointed out a room off of the women’s section. Behind curtains it housed equipment for making matzo. She told us that they had a matzo bakery and a kosher butcher housed secretly within the synagogue. Under Soviet rule they did not allow for the practice of one’s religion, so they had to do this surreptitiously. The painting “Afikomen” is semi-abstract, but you can pick out the forms of the equipment.

I also completed my painting called “The Jews Like Blue”. In the apartment in which we stayed, our landlady and her husband had started to scrape down the walls. Soon they found traces of former tenants. They left squares of the underlying layers intact in their apartment, some of which we were certain contained Hebrew letters. Our landlady noted that Jews once lived in this home in the corner of the small ghetto. Commenting on the blue in the background, she noted that “the Jews like blue”. The painting consists of a rough approximation of that phrase. I’m often not sure if I’ve captured an expression correctly, but in this case my objective was to have the suggestion of the phrase, but obscure portions of it. So I layered medium, embossed letters and then scraped portions down until I ended up with something that has an almost waxy appearance which captures the suggestion of something hidden beneath layers, an apt metaphor for the Jewish heritage in Vilnius.

While I’ve been painting, I have also been spending considerable time on my genealogy efforts. Early this month, Avotaynu, an International Journal of Jewish Genealogy, published my article on my travels and research on Dunilovichi.

I have also been deeply immersed in website design. Having completed my first Shtetlink website for Dunilovichi, I decided it was time to tackle another so began one for Radom, Poland, the town from which my grandfather immigrated. Radom is a large city, many times the size of Dunilovichi and with that brings many layers of complexity.

Dunilovichi has fewer than 20 people researching the town. Radom has about 400. I began by contacting them all to ask for information. Soon I was communicating with people from Melbourne to Israel and many places in between. I am working with a man in Israel who has a homemade film of Radom from 1937 which I hope to be able to post. I’ve also connected with the Radomer Society in NY where I’ve been invited to attend a meeting to try to access additional information. And I’ve been contacting publishers to publish excerpts from books on the site. This has turned into a pretty significant effort, but I’m enjoying connecting with other researchers. As I have less left to find in my own history, I’m glad there are other opportunities to stay engaged in the topic. I’ve just gone public with the site, but will continue to add to it as more information becomes available. You can find it at http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Radom .

Paintings: I Speak for Them and Tombstone Braille

I’ve been slowly working my way through my follow-up on my travels in Eastern Europe. Travel is never an isolated event for me. Rather it gives birth to a number of expressions in writing, artwork, lectures, media and now web design. Each expression of my experience, enriches and deepens what I take away from it.

I just proofed an article I wrote for Avotaynu, an international Jewish genealogy journal. It will be published in their upcoming issue and talks of my trip preparation, doing research in the archives, visiting Dunilovichi and some of the cemetery research that I’ve addressed in this blog.

Over the past few months I learned how to build websites and out of that designed and created a ShtetLink for Jewishgen.org, the major Jewish genealogy website. A ShtetLink is basically a website for a former shtetl or Jewish community in Europe. My initial focus was Dunilovichi in Belarus, the town from which one branch of my ancestors came and which I visited this summer. Learning to build the website was one aspect, but then I needed to develop the content. That meant making use of some of my research, but also contacting other researchers of that town to gather material. You can find the site at http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Dunilovichi. Now that I’ve mastered my initial site, I’ve moved on to one for Radom, Poland, birthplace of one of my grandfathers and the next place I’d like to visit in my travels. I’m finding that developing a ShtetLink is a great way to connect with others who are researching the same town whose research may inform my own.

In the past few months I’ve also done several genealogy lectures and a radio interview, often weaving in my family history artwork. My photos unfortunately are languishing at the bottom of the priority list with periodic half-hearted attempts to organize them. In fits and starts, I am working on my painting series. I’ve been slowed a bit by the demands of some consulting work, but will be able to resume my painting full throttle in late January.

One of my recent paintings is called “Tombstone Braille”.
It is of our wonderful guide Regina who accompanied us to shtetls in Lithuania. There she read the worn letters on tombstones by closing her eyes and tracing the letters with her finger. It was a very strange thing to observe, a communing with something spiritual. One could almost feel the energy, a spark, bridging worlds as she deciphered the text.

The other painting I’ve been struggling with is of Fania, our guide to much of Vilnius. Fania is now in her late 80s, but as a young woman she escaped from the ghetto the day it was liquidated and her family murdered. She went to the forest, a two day walk from Vilnius, where she joined the partisans. One of the visits she took us on was to Ponar, the forest where the Jews of Vilnius, 45% of the city, were murdered. Her family lies buried in the pits. One of the people in our group asked her how she could come there and tell the story knowing her family was murdered there. Her reply was “I speak for them because they cannot speak for themselves. I speak Yiddish because that was their language”.

The name of the painting is “I speak for them”. It is of Fania in the forest telling her story. I first did a portrait of her and then darkened most of it so the focus is on her face and hands. Behind her are trees between which are the Yiddish letters spelling out her statement. The letters are embossed into gel medium and unfortunately this textural component doesn’t show up well in a photograph. I may add additional layers and deepen the embossing. The roots of the trees, also embossed and with a golden cast, fill the lower half of the painting, partly wrapping around her as she was rooted to that area by her family who lies buried there. The painting has gone through quite a few iterations and may have a few more to go.

I’ve just begun a painting called “The Jews Liked Blue”. Not yet ready to show, but hopefully will be in a later blog entry. It will be more abstract, but with writing. When we first arrived at our apartment in Vilnius, our landlady took us through it. As we were admiring her husband's wonderful artwork, we noted that there were some rectangles on the wall with mottled browns and blues. She told us that as they were scraping down the walls they came upon these surfaces and with their artistic sensibilities decided to keep them. It is a common practice in the city to retain a section of exterior walls as they once were when they redo a building, but this was the first time we had observed it indoors. She told us that Jews used to live in the apartment which is in the corner of the small ghetto. Commenting on the dominant color in the preserved section, she noted that “the Jews liked blue”. We studied the wall and were sure we saw Hebrew letters.

Thus the inspiration for my current painting which will be layers of browns and blues with Hebrew letters spelling out “The Jews Liked Blue” and then scraped away and obscured. It will symbolize the ghosts who shared that space with us during our month in Vilnius.

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