Wherever You Go There You Are

The title of this post is actually borrowed from a book I read a while ago by Jon Kabbat-Zin.  The book is about practicing mindfulness in our everyday life.  Mindfulness as defined by Zinn is a practice where "we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.”  

The artwork above was commisioned by a woman as a gift for her husband upon his 40th birthday.  The wife knew what she wanted; a papercut mounted on a background painted in earth tones, an enlarged Hebrew letter "mem" and cut-outs of musical instruments since her husband is very musically talented.  And lastly, she wanted a verse from Sefer B'reishit "Ba'asher hu sham- in his present state." The last request puzzled me.  The verse is found in the story where Avraham Avinu sends Hagar and Yishmael away from his home.  The two wander in the desert of Be-er Sheva and when there is no longer water to drink and Yishmael is literally dying from thirst God hears Hagar's and Yishmael's cries of distress and an angel from heaven calls out to Hagar and says, "Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the youth in his present state."   Even though the angels in heaven tried so to speak to dissuade God from saving Yishmael based on the evil his descendants would perpetrate against Bnei Yisrael, God doesn't listen to the angels pleas and saves Yishmael based on who he is at that moment in time.  Why, I thought would she want this verse included in the artwork?

The wife answered that her husband often likes to tell this story and quote this verse as a basis for living a mindful life.  As a practicing psychotherapist he tries to inspire his clients to live mindfully as well as practice it in his own personal life.  At first hesitant, now I was all for including the verse.  After all, probably most people on their birthdays, especially the milestone ones, spend the day (or perhaps even weeks leading up to it) obsessing over their lives thus far and fearing what is yet to come.  "Should've done this, should NOT have done that!"  All those regrets and thoughts of missed opportunities mixed with fears of aging and the future can cloud and ruin a day that is meant for celebration. 

 How nice is it to receive on your birthday a piece of artwork that serves as a visual reminder to quiet all that noise in your head and the chaos that so often surrounds us and instead calmly and serenely enjoy the best gift of all: being fully aware and present to the very moment in which you are currently in.

Let Them Eat Paint!

Ok, not really, unless it's the kind by Wilton with which you can decorate cookies.  But do let kids paint!  Or color...or bake...or create dinosaurs out of modeling clay or do anything that's fun and creative and yes, a little bit messy.  Letting kids paint on an 8x10 piece of construction paper is nice. Adding in a little glue and glitter is even better.  But, letting them paint the windows of your home is AWESOME!

And sometimes they might paint their bodies too... that's also cool. 

Being an artist it's not surprising that one of my favorite things to do with my children is artwork, and it's not just because I'm good at it or I have the patience for it, it's because I love that our artistic activities foster their creativity and imaginations.   And by letting things get a little bit messy they can relax and just be kids!  There's always so many rules by which they have to abide it's nice to just let go every once and a while and say "Guess what we're doing this afternoon? Painting on the walls!!!"

My son goes to the most amazing pre-school.  I'm obsessed with the place. Recently they started learning about Jackson Pollack (he's not even four and he can recognize a Pollack painting...sorry I'm a Jewish mother, I can't help myself).  If they raise enough funds after Pesach the teacher is buying each student a 2 x 3 ft canvas on which each child can create their own Pollack painting by drip painting it like Pollack did.  I love the idea of my son throwing paint on a canvas with abandon, allowing beauty to form from the freedom of letting a child do what he does best...making an awesome mess!

A Gift to Remember

Ok, who remembers who bought you your food processor?  Or which three friends chipped in for your Kitchen Aid? Your China? (Every setting is a different person to thank!)

But a piece of artwork specifically designed for your wedding with your monogram on it?! The givers of such a gift are not forgotten!

So how lucky is the couple who received the above piece for their wedding?  I know! (Granted once you have kids you will be eternally grateful for whoever it was that bought you that coffee maker...but you won't remember who it was...not even after your second cup...).

Speaking of which, I am now going to make myself some coffee...

Words of Peace and Truth

The picture above is of a piece I completed several months ago.  A woman ordered it as a birthday present for her husband whose mantra in life is "Shalom al Yisrael- Peace Unto Israel."  A nice refrain to live by and certainly this world would be a better place place if more people lived holding the banner of peace as their cause.

With Purim right around the corner I couldn't help but title this blog post with a phrase from the Book of Esther which also has to do with peace.  In the ninth chapter of the Book of Esther, we are told that Esther and Mordechai sent books to all 127 provinces of the King of Acheshveirosh, detailing the laws of Purim and the story of Esther.  The books were called "Words of Peace and Truth."  If there was ever a holiday whose commandments were meant to increase brotherly peace and a sense of community amongst the Jewish People, it was Purim.  We send baskets of food to our neighbors, give charity to those in need, eat a festive meal together with family and friends and drink a little liquor perhaps to mitigate any feelings of resentment or ill will we might be harboring toward our fellow Jew.

You see, the whole reason we were in Persia in the first place is because we had been kicked out of our land nearly 70 years prior to the story of Esther because we weren't able to get along with each other.  And one thing God really has no patience for is lack of peace between His children.  Esther who is a descendant of the tribe of Binyamin was willing to put her life on the line to save the Yehudim, descendants of the tribe of Yehuda.  This was a huge deal since for hundreds of years, going back to the time of the Judges, there was a lot of bad blood between the two tribes.  In fact the tribe of Binyamin was nearly wiped out in a civil war.  Oueen Esther's ultimate act of selflessness rectified a centuries old conflict that had been festering within the Jewish People.  To keep this feeling of brotherly love going and remembered for years to come the holiday of Purim was established with all it's peace promoting laws and customs established as "words of peace and truth."

And lastly, yesterday was 2/28, my oldest brother's birthday, whose name happens to be Binyamin Shalom...so peace unto you brother-man, and many, many happy years to come! And peace and happiness unto all as we celebrate this very meaningful holiday of Purim in one week's time.

"Sovev, Sovev"- Round and Round We Go

Last year while teaching Kohelet I came across a picture of a carpet page of a Bible from San'a, Yemen in 1469.  The shape of the triangle and inverted triangle with the circle in the center reminded me an hourglass sand clock.  Suddenly an idea started forming in my head.  The chapters of Kohelet would be written in concentric circles in the center of the piece and the Song of Time which begins, "Everything has its season, and there is a time for every desire under the heaven" would frame the piece fitting in perfectly with my original thought that the shape resembled an hourglass sand clock.  The result is the picture above, and below is a copy of the article I wrote for the Jewish Press several weeks ago.  The painting was on the front cover (!) and my op-ed piece followed several pages in:

“What a depressing book!” is often people's response to reading Sefer Kohelet. It seems at first glance that Shlomo Hamelech, the wisest of all men, is telling us there is no purpose to all of man's efforts whether it be in the intellectual, material or social arena. However this nihilistic view often erroneously attributed to Kohelet is not only antithetical to many Jewish beliefs taught by the Torah and our Rabbis it is even contradictory to statements Kohelet himself makes. What then is the message of Sefer Kohelet? Is there a way to spin Kohelet's oft-quoted statement “Hevel Havalim hakol hevel,” “Futility of futilities, all is futile” in a positive, perhaps even inspiring light?

The word hevel appears no less than thirty eight times in the sefer and if Shlomo Hamelech is telling us all is hevel, it is imperative to properly translate this word. When studying Tanakh and trying to define a word one needs to look at the first place that word appears and translate the word based on the context. The first place the word hevel appears is in the story in Bereishit of Kayin and Hevel. Hevel is the first person to introduce mortality into the world since he is the first human to die. Hevel is therefore defined as vanity or futility since his death teaches us that nothing lasts, all is fleeting, life is like the breath released from our bodies, non-tangible, transient. However there was more to Hevel's story, than his death; there was his life. In his life he achieved something wonderful and everlasting- a relationship with God. Through his sacrifice he was granted Divine deliverance, and “God turned favorably towards Hevel.” Although Hevel's death taught us life is not eternal, his life taught us how to gain transience in this world; through developing a relationship with God. The very fact that Kohelet tells us he has “witnessed all the deeds done under the sun, and indeed, all is futile and accomplishes nothing” is meant to inspire us to live life to the utmost by filling it with spiritual endeavors and God's Torah and mitzvot which are the only pursuits that have lasting value as opposed to everything else which in Kohelet's view is equivalent to “chasing winds.”

A couple of weeks ago I was at an amusement park with my family, enjoying the last few days of summer vacation. My three year old son wanted to go an a ride called, “Turtle Whirl.” Needles to say there was a lot of whirling and spinning going on on this ride. I could barely look at it without feeling slightly ill. My husband graciously agreed to accompany my son and I happily agreed to watch from the sidelines and take pictures. However, try as I may I wasn't able to get one single picture; the ride was spinning so fast it was impossible to capture their smiling faces. Isn't life the same. How often do we have days, maybe even weeks months or years where we literally feel like we are spinning around and around, it seems impossible to even pause long enough to catch one's breath, let alone stay focused and find meaning in it all. This idea is what inspired me to create the artwork “Sovev, sovev.” In the artwork, the majority of Sefer Kohelet is written in concentric circles, a dizzying feat in it of itself! As Kohelet teaches us, life and our daily activities are cyclical, just as nature is cyclical. The sun rises, the sun set; the wind blows from east to west, and then blows back again from west to east. As the Maharal teaches, human actions mirror nature. Even the words of Kohelet seem cyclical; Shlomo walking us through his logic and analysis of human endeavors just to bring us back to the same point, “Hakol hevel- all is futile.” The challenge is through this dizzying ride of life to find meaning and perspective.

The Avudraham explains that the words of Kohelet were culled from sermons given by Shlomo Hamelech every seven years on the holiday of Sukkot when the Jews would gather in Yerushalayim to celebrate the holiday and fulfill the mitzvah of hakhel (hence one of the reasons the book is called Kohelet). Every year on Sukkot we read Kohelet not to depress us rather to inspire us to not get swallowed up in the whirlwind of life but rather to remain focused that “The sum of the matter, when all has been considered: Fear God and keep his commandments, for that is the whole purpose of man.”

After all, if we are acutely aware that our time in this world is finite, how much more meaningful would our days be?

  

The Making of a Ketubah

I love watching an art piece develop. In truth I always have an idea of how the piece will turn out, but the end result is always a little different than I expected. It's a real creative process.  Normally I don't like anyone seeing my artwork before it's completely finished but I decided to give you, my readers, an inside peek of the process of designing a ketubah from scratch.

It starts with a sketch:

I draw with pencil a detailed sketch of the design.  Once the sketch is mainly completed I start filling it in with ink, pencil and watercolor, my usual choices of medium.  The couple who ordered this ketubah were getting married at the New York Botanical Gardens and they wanted a lot of detail of flowers and that blue should be the predominate color.  We decided to add in images of doves and olive branches as symbols of peace and harmony and pomegranates as a symbol of prosperity.  In addition, their wedding was right before Rosh Hashana so the pomegranates worked well with the time of year. (Also I love pomegranates so whenever I can add them into pieces I do!)

I finished adding in all the color for the flowers, now it's time to paint the background blue and fill in the corners.

If you notice I had an olive tree originally sketched into one of the corners, but I didn't like the way it looked.  A closer up of the olive branch would be more visually appealing and balance out the close-up of the pomegranates. (Art is all about balance, and if you don't believe me read Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, one of my favorite novels of all time!)  I also decided to add an extra border of floral papercut around the perimeter to give it that little extra wow factor!  And as you can see I've started spacing out the ketubah text.  I always save that for last since it's my least favorite part of designing a ketubah!

The finished product!

And of course no artwork is complete without the artist's signature.

It's All in the Family!

While creating the piece The Seven Species, I bumped into a woman in the supermarket who grew up around the corner from me in my hometown in NJ.  "I've been meaning to call you" she said.  I want to order a custom art piece for the Rabbi of my shul.  A couple of weeks ago was my son's Bar Mitzvah.  Everything was in order, we had 75 family members coming to us for Shabbos.  All our meals would be catered and eaten in the shul.  However, God had a different plan.  Thursday night there was a terrible rainstorm and the basement of the shul where we were supposed to have all our meals was flooded.  The Rabbi of the shul who has a huge living room graciously offered to host the meals at their home, and we want to give them a unique gift to show our appreciation for their helping us out.  How quickly could you have a piece ready?"

I couldn't help but laugh, the piece I was currently working on, The Seven Species was being made for this woman's brother-in-law who lives in Israel as a surprise gift for his 40th birthday.  I was told by the wife to keep the artwork a secret.  In my own family I was always known as the one who couldn't keep secrets.  I was about to shirk myself of that title.  I told my friend she would have to wait a couple of weeks because I was currently working on a piece for someone else, but I would let her know when it's complete.  "Ok, great" she said, "Oh and I want to keep the artwork a surprise from the Rabbi and his wife." She then told me their names and I realized I teach at the same school as the Rabbi's wife...more secrets to keep!

When The Seven Species were finished, I contacted my friend they told me they wanted a simple papercut with the words, "You can draw water with joy, from the springs of salvation."  The quote originally from Sefer Yeshayahu is recited during havdalah at the conclusion of Shabbos.  It was a perfect verse to use since it has to do with water (remember the flood that caused the whole scenario), Sabbath and God as the source of all Blessing.  The only thing they couldn't decide on was the color scheme.  My friend devised a plan that I could see the Rabbi's house when noone was home and choose the appropriate color for the piece.  This was going beyond keeping a secret, we're talking about breaking and entering here.  Anyway it was all accomplished, secrets were kept, I managed to get a peek inside their house without setting off any alarms and the result is the papercut above and below.  Hope you enjoyed my rambling story!