Thank You Universe

I've mentioned in past blogs that I've been working on a book, but haven't shared too many details.  In those in between stages I've been reluctant to say too much, perhaps out of superstition as much as anything else.

The book is the final stage of a project that began six years ago called The Jewish Identity and Legacy Project.  It began quite by chance when I contacted Sholom, an organization that provides a continuum of care to elders across the Twin Cities. My purpose was to explore showing artwork in their facility. As we spoke, I found myself considering that Sholom was filled with stories and in an impulsive moment I blurted out how interesting it would be to interview elders and develop artwork on their stories.  They took me seriously and soon I did as well.  

I wrote and received grants for Sholom to fund the interview project and did a series of seventeen interviews. I videoed them, transcribed them and edited video. Then I did paintings on the stories and began to exhibit them and give talks, playing short video clips from the interviews. The theme was identity and legacy, but it also was an immigration story, encapsulating the stories of the three groups of Jewish immigrants who came to the US in the 20th century. The topic was well received and I enjoyed talking about it, weaving together history and story to bring it to life. 

 

Eventually I was ready to move on to new work and considered setting this series aside.  Over half of my interviewees had passed away and I had gone to a lot of funerals.  Something in me balked at ending this work.  It felt like yet another death. The interviews were in the Jewish archives at the university, where they were most likely to be seen by historians and archivists.  After talking widely about these stories, I realized that they were meaningful to the broader public. I decided a book was the final step in this project, one that shared history through the personal, the way I have often wished I learned it in school.

The process has been quite fascinating and I've learned a lot about myself along the way.  What I've learned is that there are many books one can write on a given topic, so first I had to decide which one this would be. It is not unlike paintings where you must choose a direction and let go of other paths, at least for the moment. They are small deaths of opportunity that we must accept in order to move forward.
 The path I chose was to combine oral history and artwork, each telling the story in complementary ways. 

In the process, I've learned a lot about my personal style, the kind of writing that reflects me. I read my work aloud and realize that I love the rhythm of words, that certain words feel natural to me and others don't. As I work with my editor, I am surprised at my clarity about what works for me and what doesn't. Things come out of my mouth like "that word is too foufou for me." I'm not even sure what foufou is, but it somehow describes something I'm not.  I like clean language, direct and uncluttered. When I met with the designer, I realized that I have visual preferences as well. Yeah, I know, duh, I'm an artist, of course I do. "I'm not a pastel person," I told them.  I seemed to be clear about what I was and what I wasn't.

I'm relieved to be through the final edit stage. I went through the video interviews again to make sure I transcribed them correctly and suddenly wanted to add things back in that I had let go of previously. It is a bit like when I clean out my closet and then dig back into the rejects, unwilling to let go.
 Now that I can no longer edit, I literally have dreams of errors that need correction.  Because the book also includes artwork, I reworked several paintings. It is not just words that consume me.

It occurs to me that everything we do builds on what came before.  Had I not been writing a blog and exhibiting artwork over the past ten years, I would probably not be doing this. Learning to put myself out there has been my biggest life lesson. Virtually every time that I hit publish, I had a moment of hesitation. Will anyone care? Is it too me focused? There is a moment before every art exhibition where I decide that several paintings aren't quite done, even as they are framed and hanging on the wall. There is risk in being public and it isn't always comfortable for those of us who are more inward in our nature.  It is much easier to stay in our private bubble, but we pass on so many opportunities if we do that.  My most rewarding experiences have come from taking that risk, as well as my most sleepless nights.

Writing is an in-your-head experience, unveiled upon completion, as is exhibiting artwork, another  experience where you take a risk in putting yourself out there. Public speaking is easier in some ways because you get immediate feedback. You can have a real-time dialogue and adjust as necessary. Of course the real-time nature of it allows for public fiascos also.


A big part of writing a book is marketing, something I think I will enjoy. I've already done lots of public speaking on this topic so I've had a chance to test market. I know I can share this passion of mine in a way that reaches others.  Just bringing this to print has required some marketing. I am publishing through the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest, an organization that works in this subject area and was an early partner in the project along with Sholom. It is an appropriate home that shares my objectives.

Along the way I wrote a successful grant to the Minnesota Historical Society to publish. As part of that process I had to have historians write critical reviews of my work and I was encouraged by their responses. It is easy to get so close to your own work that you no longer have the perspective of fresh eyes and thus quite affirming to have others find it of value.

There have been times in my life where I felt as if I was in sync with the Universe, doing what I am supposed to be doing, the right things for the right reasons. The Universe has a tell. Maybe that's on purpose so it can clue us in when we are on the right path. What happens is that lots of good things start to happen unbidden at just the right time. Lately I've been invited to speak at conferences, teach a series of classes, do exhibits of the work.    Opportunities to talk on related subjects are presenting themselves everywhere. Manna doesn't just rain down from heaven. You have to do a lot of work first to make it happen, but sometimes that work gets recognized with new opportunities and the timing does feel suspect. My pal, the Universe, is lending a helping hand. Thank you Universe.

Finding Our Wings

This week we had the opening of the Jewish Artists’ Lab show.  It is the fifth annual lab show and I’ve created work in each of them.  My work has changed and evolved with each one, but the one constant is that I always try to eke out more wall space and air time. I am used to working in a series and if I find a compelling idea it often begs to burst the bounds of just one artwork.

We each get a limited amount of wall space, but we also have a presentation opportunity.  There is a performance and those who write stories or poetry can do a reading.  I started the lab, not fully defining myself as a writer or a poet, but have gradually stepped into that space, in both performing and doing a blog for the lab as its Resident Writer.

For many of the shows, I have combined painting and poetry. By the third I couldn’t restrict myself to one painting any longer so I deemed my two complementary paintings a diptych and set up a memory jar for attendees as part of an interactive exercise. This year I went all out and did a triptych with five paintings, a central one, two panels on the front that open with paintings on the back as well. It is a layered piece in both concept and execution. I’ve shared a bit on the work's development in this blog previously. Since then my husband built an amazing frame for it, so I could assemble all those pieces. Of course, I wrote poetry, still greedy for more.

My work is called Stepping into the Chrysalis and is about the idea of liminal space, about how we re-invent ourselves, stepping into new space and redefining ourselves as we cross internal boundaries to become someone new. That first time that we say, I am an artist, or I am a writer, we feel as if we are masquerading. We’ve left our familiar world behind and taken that first step into the chrysalis, a place of transformation. As I read about the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, I learned that caterpillars actually digest themselves and turn into a kind of caterpillar soup. I thought of how we struggle with change, "eating ourselves alive with worry". Within the chrysalis are cells called imaginal discs that house the wings and antenna and legs of the butterfly. If you open the chrysalis of my painting, and enter the ark-like form, you find imaginal discs that house the wings we carry within us, even in our caterpillar stage. I loved the metaphoric possibilities and began to address them in poetry.

Inside the Chrysalis



Did you know,

That caterpillars digest themselves?

Dissolving their very being

In this torturous act of growth.

Seeking change,

Shedding skin.

A caterpillar soup

Of which Creation comes,

But first, Destruction,

We boil ourselves down to essence,
 
A stew of anxiety and worry

Of what comes next,

Accompanies us 
into our chrysalis,

Our private dressing chamber

Where we shed our skin,

open our being,

Tiny wings tucked within,

you would never know by looking,

Legs and wings,

Antennae yet to form,

Spun from discs of imagination,

Gold spots glimmer

On our new home,

A tiny mezuzah




A Flash of Orange



I crawl out on my liminal limb,

Testing its sturdiness

For support,

Testing my new wet wings,

Gently wobbling in the breeze,

More used to crawling than flight.

I cling to my branch tightly

With six new feet.

I used to have sixteen 

To keep me firmly grounded,

The world feels more tenuous,

Less anchored,

Still wet behind the wings,

I flap them once,

Again,

away 
in a flash of vibrant orange.

I spoke about that first time we venture into something new, still feeling like an imposter. What was interesting was the response of the audience. I had many people who I didn’t know, come up to me afterwards and tell me how it spoke to them, often echoing their experience. That helped to confirm that I was speaking to a shared experience and making the connection that I sought, always a satisfying aspect of being an artist. An acquaintance who I used to work with in the financial world, who has also since left it, was at the show.  She spoke of observing me in what I think of as my past life, we live many within one. She was curious about me, in part because of my Jewish name which was uncommon in the firm, something I had never thought of, having grown up in a town with a small Jewish community. She then watched me as I went through this transformation, exploring artwork and writing along with identity. It was interesting to see it through someone else’s eyes, to think of someone else trying to puzzle out who I was even as I was finding my way.

I think the female experience with entering a new space and identity is different than that of men.  We tend to feel we have to get credentials first before we can legitimately acknowledge our desired change. We live in a world where women are not always taken seriously without those outward trappings. Perhaps I am only projecting from myself, but I think that women often aren’t as good at the bravado and pretense that often accompanies that liminal stage. It is a stage where you leave the familiar, but haven’t yet arrived at a comfort level with the newly defined you and it can be quite uncomfortable.  I used to look disdainfully at the bravado that men seem to slip into so easily, but have come to appreciate the role it plays in helping us venture into new and foreign territory.  Sometimes we must live as if we are what we want to be, until we grow into it.