sarah in nyc

One of the things that experience has taught me is that the best order for doing work is not always  the instinctive one. I am working on an atara that includes the following text אִלּוּ פִינוּ מָלֵא שִׁירָה כַּיָּם, וּלְשׁוֹנֵנוּ רִנָּה כֲּהַמוֹן גַּלָּיו, וְשִׂפְתוֹתֵינוּ שֶׁבַח כְּמֶרְחֲבֵי רָקִיעַ, Even if our mouths could fill with song as water fills the sea, You can listen to a musical setting of the text while you read the rest of this post I had already dyed the strips of silk that would be layered to become the sea. Here you see them both separately  and layered.  I dyed the velvet that would become the sky. You see it both wet, and dry Years ago with less experience doing these things, I would have built the sea and then added the lettering. I want the letters to sit inside the sea, partially submerged and partially above the water the way a body is in and above the water when swimming.  That...

 Over the past several days I finished dyeing the cotton for the brit milah pillow. I had wanted the text to be in the cosmos and the cosmos populated with a few heavenly bodies. This is my sketch for the project ( in case you don't commit every word I type to your long term memory).  One of the things I have learned with years of experience doing this sort of work is how to plan how to attack the various tasks needed to complete the job and in what order. I cut the fabric to pillowcase  size and pressed it to be sure that it is colorfast. I then sketched out a moon, a couple of stars and a something that is either a planet or the sun onto a white linen men's handkerchief. I have a bag full of beautiful ones in my stash and I thought that the finely woven white linen would be perfect for the job. After I sketched out the shapes and the text to go inside I went over my pencil line in gold paint and then floated color inside of the gold lines. Then I t...

My childhood friend Rachely has a new phone with a camera and has been posting beautiful nature photos mostly from her neighborhood on Facebook. Her lovely photos have sparked a conversation between Rachely and her friends  about honesty and photo editing. I have been using a digital camera for a long time now. One of my frustrations with a digital camera, actually with cameras, in general, is that they don't always capture what your eye is seeing. I might be drawn to take a photo because of a particularly beautiful quality of light. Once I take the photo the quality that drew my eye, might be missing in the photo. I feel that this is an honest use of photo editing. With the magic of photo editing, I can show what it was that my eye actually saw. I have also discovered over time that while digital cameras are wonderful, they have fairly limited digital brains. I bump up to the limited abilities of my digital camera when photographing some of my work. ...