Working for the long term

Lettering painted on mystery fabric.

One recurring issue in my Art History classes in college, is the frustration that Art Historians, restorers and viewers of later generations have with artists who use materials that change nature or even disintegrate over time. The Madonnas of early Renaissance paintings were painted wearing sky blue robes, apinted with ultramarine, that have darkened to dark lapis blue over time. The Abstract Expressionists of the 1950's used house paint or car enamel on canvas. Paintings have rotted away because the paint and backing didn't like one another.

As someone who now makes art, I understand why artists make those errors. I'm working away on the parochet/ark curtain for the Solomon Schechter School. Right now, I'm working on a celestial archway that will contain the words " Raise up the gateways above your heads". I chose a beautiful bronze fabric with a metallic sheen for the arch. I have no idea what the fabric is. I suspect that it is a rayon with a cotton content. I spent lots of yesterday trying to figure out how to get the lettering on the arch. ( I had also made an arch that was entirely too big) There are lots of ways to tget the lettering onto the fabric. I was trying to figure out the method that would give me the look I wanted, muted golden letters emerging from the darker bronze archway, and not take forever to get those letters on the fabric.

If you look carefully, you can see the dark metallic stitching around the arch.

I had a problem. I really don't know how the fabric will take to dye. One of my favorite fabrics, a copper and silk mix does not take any dye at all. I actually made a sample trying out acrylic paint on the mystery metallic fabric. It took, at least for the moment. I decided to proceed. I jazzed up the metallic acrylic paint with powdered metallic bits which gives the paint more shimmer. I debated doing the laborious task of tracing the arch onto tracing paper, drafting the letters, flipping the tracing paper over attaching it to the back of the piece, stitching the outlines with a straight stitch and then going over that straight stitching with a zig zag stitch from the front., a several hour procedure. I decided instead to be brave. I dipped a square tipped brush into the jazzed up paint and just wrote out the letters working backwards from the last letter back to the first of the phrase, shifting the spacing of the letters to fit the space. Failure means re drafting the arch, and re doing the stitching that bordered the arch.

Luckily I succeeded. If I had failed it would have been an extra hour of work as opposed to 4 hours of working the cautious way. I have gained enough excperience to be able to work the less cautious way.

Once the letters dry, I plan to outline the letters in gold metallic satin stitch. That way, even if the paint fails in the future, the lettering will still be visible.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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