Jewish Arts & Culture Lab "Sketchbook": Pt. I

I will open this series of notebook blogs with the essay questions I filled out for my application of late last year. These were the answers along with a portfolio that got me into this wonderful Fellowship:

1. On an attached letter sized document, in 150 words or less, please describe your Artistic experience(s) and the issues you explore through your work. Also please include where you produce the work (in a studio, print shop, home, etc.)

I am a mother with chronic, disabling illnesses. I was making art since ten months old. In high school, I was placed in advanced level art courses and received the president’s award scholarship at the Columbus College of Art and Design. I found creating art in an institution to be stressful and limiting. Instead, I work primarily through stream of consciousness, working through the current torments of my psyche and society.

I discover treasures of the human spirit while working on canvas or paper in a wide variety of mediums to mine my Being for some clue as to what is happening to me. In my work, I explore the mechanisms of suffering and pain and what they do to me, whether in self portrait form, embedded in the alef bet, a Torah teaching, or in natural phenomena. My workspace migrates with me through the house, depending on pain levels.

3. On an attached letter sized document, in 150 words or less, please describe your interest in being a Fellow with this program.

I need to get out of my shell and interact with other creative people but have no hope or resources for doing that elsewhere. For the past six years, I’ve been creating my work in solitude, and it has been more of a coping mechanism than a means of exploration. I don’t always know how to break out of a rut or open myself to get at the meat of what I mean to express. I feel that working alongside a Rabbi and other artists will give me a much needed perspective into my Neshama and my creative force. The theme this year fits exactly with my current place in life: breaking loose from the haunts of past trauma and old viewpoints, thought patterns, and habits that have enslaved me, and being free to live and experience all that is available to me in this world.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There will be no set order to how these images and notebook pages appear. My process work will come as I'm able to publish it, bit by bit.

"American Kundalini" random, 3 minute sketch during class break. graphite.

Process work for my wall installation piece, "I'm Not What You Make of Me, I Am What I Am Becoming", fast preliminary sketch for layout on cardboard.

Earlier sketch which was my first idea for my project for the fellow. Rejected due to content.

"Birth Pangs of The Messiah"....I'll go into a full explaination for that piece in a later blog. Though it was inappropriate for the JCC, I was urged to submit this installation to MOMA.