Naming the Essence

Ever wonder how artists come up with the names of their paintings? Naming is important for it is through naming that we capture and distill meaning. Following our discussion in the Artists' Lab* about Essence, I realized that naming is the act of identifying Essence.

An artist friend of mine enlists a poet to name her work. Generally my names flow naturally, but when all else fails a husband with a gift for alliterative riffs can prove helpful. Naming a series is of greater import than an individual painting as the title must capture the purpose and meaning of a broad body of work.

My husband was responsible for titling my family history series Putting a Face on Family History, a name with a certain alliterative resonance. It also carried a deeper meaning for I was getting to know my ancestors as I painted them.

When I developed my series on how Lithuania was rewriting the history of the Holocaust, I was struck by the sheer silence on the topic. The Silence Speaks Loudly came out of that awareness. My series on the former Jewish community of Radom, Poland had many layers. I had been reading time travel literature which seemed to focus on stepping through a hole in time. I had also decided to paint the series in a style based on a pinhole camera photograph. My source material was a 1937 film of the former Jewish community so a Hole in Time fit on many levels. 

My most recent series, the Jewish Identity and Legacy series is more of a working title. The scope of the stories is much broader and harder to capture with one title. I also didn't know quite where it would take me when I began it as I had to complete 17 interviews before I began the paintings. I have found that many of the stories related to immigration, but also the connections between all of those of Jewish heritage. When I interviewed a Ukrainian woman who came over after the demise of the Soviet Union, I realized that my story and hers were only separated by the fact that my family left the Ukraine in the early part of the 1900s. Had they stayed we would have the same story, assuming my family had managed to find safety during the Holocaust. That knowledge could lead to a title for a show in the vein of When We Came or Had They Stayed as that is really the only difference between the experience of the early immigrant communities, survivors and Jews from the former Soviet Union. I am always looking for the uniting thread that applies to all paintings in the series.

After I name a series, I then have to name each painting. Some titles are generally descriptive while other have greater depth. I like many of the titles of my paintings in my Lithuania series because of the meaning they convey. One of my favorites is Buried Truths, a painting based on a true story of a witness to the Holocaust who wrote about what he observed each day and buried what he wrote in jars in the forest. I liked the idea of truth being buried, but eventually sprouting. The painting I Was Here took some debate on my part. The painting is of a face superimposed on the wall of a holding cell and the script inscribed on that wall, the night before the resident met his death. Was it I Was Here or We Were Here? I opted for the individuality of I as carving one's name into a wall is an act of individuality.

The painting Shalom Aleichem is composed of many stories, much like the author who shares its name. Our parting remark to the woman who told us the stories embedded in the painting was also Shalom Aleichem. The woman who owned a Lithuanian restaurant had told us of the ghostlike figures they had witnessed when renovating their space in the former ghetto. We told her if she saw them again to say Shalom Aleichem which means Go In Peace. When I tell the stories I always end with that one and then note the name of this piece playing off the words peace and piece.

The names of paintings in the Identity and Legacy series tend to evolve out of the stories on which they are based. Sometimes the name comes before anything else. When I painted Hana's story of being on the Kindertransport, I remembered her telling me that she knew something had happened to her parents because "everything stopped" and she ceased to receive Red Cross letters from her family. They had met their death in Auschwitz. The painting became Everything Stopped and helped me find the imagery within it.

Often the title distills the story and only is known after the process of distillation that leads to the painting. From Her Mother came as I realized that the central theme of many stories was the handing down of tradition from each mother to her daughter.

When I did a painting on the old Brochin's grocery/deli, I thought of a quote by its founder. With food on one side and Jewish books, newspapers and prayer shawls on the other he said he sought to feed the mind and the stomach. Mind and Stomach didn't flow so it became Body and Soul.

The husband of the Brochin daughter, who I interviewed together with his wife, was trained as a chemist and part of his story was his long and fulfilling marriage. I used a chemistry motif of flasks and vials containing stories as well as their shadow memory. At the top of the painting was his hand clasping that of his wife, a gesture that touched me and which represented a fundamental part of his story. The title became A Matter of Chemistry.

To a wordsmith and storyteller, naming matters. Hopefully it leaves you with the central idea that the work is trying to convey, the essence.

*The Jewish Artists’ Laboratory is an arts initiative through the Sabes Jewish Community Center featuring 17 artists exploring the theme of Text/Context/Subtext through study and art making. The project is funded through The Covenant Foundation and similar projects are being done in both Milwaukee and Madison. Artists explore how the theme of Text/Context/Subtext is relevant to Jews and non-Jews, to religious and non-religious, to the community and to the individual, to the artist and the non-artist.

Essence and Absence

Today at the Artists' Lab* we continued to explore the work that we are doing for the exhibition. I shared my work with some of the attendees and found that the story is indeed powerful in the retelling. I have also made some alterations to the painting that make it work better visually. Can you tell what I changed?

The cans were too distracting, but as they were part of the story, I wanted to keep them in the image. I did a wash of blue black over them to make them less obtrusive so the emphasis remains on the two women. I also changed the flow of the path so it curves off to their side and is more irregular in form. Every painting is filled with many little decisions that help create the final image that you view. Some are conscious, others just happen as we find what pleases our eye.

At the Lab, our discussion began on the subject of Essence and Absence. In basic dictionary definitions, essence was defined as the property or group of properties of something without which it would not exist or be what it is. Absence was the state of being away from a person or place. We were then asked to write down the essence of our project in one word and then what is absent.

The essence came easily. I wrote the word TOGETHER. Dora and her mother were either going to sit down and get a bullet in the head or continue walking. What was important was that they would do it together. Each was inextricably bound to the other. Hmm, an interesting turn of phrase as the story which was its inspiration is often referred to as the binding of Isaac. It took me a moment to come up with what was missing although it was fairly obvious. They were on a march with other prisoners and guards, but none of them are included in this image. The focus is only on these two women. I found this very simple exercise valuable, especially in my work which is so focused on story. What am I trying to convey? What is at the core? What do I omit, and why?

We then looked at a number of works by artist David Moss and discussed them relative to these themes. Moss is best known for his beautiful illuminated ketubahs (marriage certificates) and is credited with reviving the art form. What I found interesting about his work was the thinking that goes into it. Some artists just create and the process is outside of conscious thought. Moss has a process not unlike mine, minds that make and savor connections between imagery and ideas. He has a book of ketubahs called Love Letters which includes the many that he has done for couples as well as his correspondence with them as he tried to find the essence of their relationship and reflect it in his work.

We viewed his rendering of the Binding of Isaac. Interestingly this was made for a Jewish day school. A story of a father about to sacrifice his son would be enough to give a child nightmares, but apparently the children quickly learned to read the imagery and tell the story. The images of this 45 foot scroll are color coded and through changing forms, but constant colors, they tell the story through ideagrams. We were given the text of this passage and asked to find the various sections within the images. You can do the same with the images at the top of his website. Although I don't think all of the imagery is included, it will give you the flavor of how he uses color and forms to tell the story, all without using representative imagery.

In his imagery Abraham is symbolized by white forms, Isaac red and God blue. we get to extrapolate that a light blue represents the angel who speaks in God's stead. Time is represented by yellow, an interesting way of representing the passage of time, a concept which is given as much significance as the protagonists themselves. I particularly enjoyed some of his clever use of form. When Isaac asks his father where the ram is that they will be sacrificing you see the brown which represents animals in the shape of a ram's horn morphed into a question mark.

What I found particularly interesting were images that showed Isaac within Abraham and Abraham within Isaac, and both within God. To me it reflected the concept of being bound in a far different way than the narrative, bound to each other, what happens to one, happens to the other.

During our recent open studio event I was visited by some friends from our humanist Jewish group. They asked me if I would be willing to do the commentary at Rosh Hashanah using my painting. Rosh Hashanah is the time when the story of Abraham and Isaac comes up in the readings. The show will be up in the same building during this time so it will be an apt opportunity to explore this work further and my more contemporary interpretation of the themes of the original story.

*The Jewish Artists’ Laboratory is an arts initiative through the Sabes Jewish Community Center featuring 17 artists exploring the theme of Text/Context/Subtext through study and art making. The project is funded through The Covenant Foundation and similar projects are being done in both Milwaukee and Madison. Artists explore how the theme of Text/Context/Subtext is relevant to Jews and non-Jews, to religious and non-religious, to the community and to the individual, to the artist and the non-artist.