Feathery palm trees, swaying dancers, and butting rams are untraditional focal points in the contemporary Jewish papercuts of artist Deborah Heyman.
In reinterpreting this nearly lost, venerable Jewish folk art tradition, Heyman, of Irvine, finds inspiration and content for her own creations in the personal upheavals and simple pleasures of a modern life.
For local artist Rebecca Levy, building a body of work literally begins with the building. "Each one is different and has a charm of its own,"
The Los Angeles recording artist and producer composes and reinterprets Jewish melodies with accessible, contemporary riffs. Taubman\’s popularity shifted to high gear since debuting a joyful \”Friday Night Live\” Shabbat service in 1998 at Los Angeles\’ Sinai Temple, which he performed in June in Orange County.
He was the guy with all the good lines. The late Saul Steinberg helped establish The New Yorker magazine as a purveyor of visual excellence. \”Art of the Spirit,\” an exhibit at The Jewish Federation running through Dec. 15, is a welcome reminder of the late illustrator\’s visual wit.
When Boris Eifman\’s ballet, \”Tchaikovsky: The Mystery of Life and Death,\” premiered in Moscow in 1993, angry picketers surrounded the concert hall.
When most people think of a spiritual awakening, they don\’t necessarily think of such a thing taking place at the GAP. But then again, artist Orit Arfa isn\’t really into conventionality.
While walking down the streets of Manhattan seven years ago, dressed in her ankle-length skirt and modest Orthodox clothing, Arfa caught a reflection of herself in a revolving door.
\”I felt I looked really shleppy, and it didn\’t really reflect who I was inside and what I was feeling,\” she said.
Arfa immediately marched straight to the GAP and into a new pair of jeans. \”I was jumping up and down! There was this freedom. This spiritual freedom. It seemed like the whole world opened up for me.\”
For Arfa, the experience was not only religiously liberating, it was creatively liberating.
\”I knew that part of my challenge was to break the stereotypes of the ideal Jewish woman, both for myself, and I wanted to paint the foremothers as sexual, sensual, beautiful, vibrant women,\” Arfa said.
Decades after Sigmund Freud probed unconscious human drives in his case histories, his grandson, Lucian, appeared to do the same on canvas. The 110 works in his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art reveal his subjects in unflinching, microscopic detail — enough to make grandpa blush.
The UPS man brought an envelope containing a beautiful ray of hope, an exceptional picture book by Jane Breskin Zalben titled \”Let There Be Light: Poems and Prayers for Repairing the World\” (Dutton Books, $15.99).
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