This past week I went to two different art installations/exhibitions.
One was with the group of knitting volunteers I belong to. The group is in the neighbouring village. I joined them a couple of years ago. We meet twice a month and are given knitting supplies and instructions for items required by hospitals and the defense forces. They also initiate interesting projects . For example, when a village member passed away, and her house was cleaned, they found boxes of yarn and really interesting looking knitting swatches, as well as a hand written book of instructions for the swatches in her native Russian. She was from Siberia, and so the leader of our group had an idea of putting a book together. She began making enquiries and found a young man, in the hi tec industry, who both knits, and is from Siberia. He began knitting up the swatches consulting via zoom with his mother in Siberia. The result is a really fascinating book of photos of the swatches with accompanying instructions.
A year ago we met in a Druze village for a special day for volunteers. - Mostly women, but some men also, were bused from all over the country to the village in the North. There were secular women, religious women, Bedouins, Palestinians, and Druze. We sat at tables where we didn't know each other and took part in games in which we introduced ourselves, spoke, exchanged ideas, and ate together. We listened to the interesting ,program. A doctor spoke about the health aspects of volunteering and knitting. There was music and we were entertained by a troupe of young Druze girls who danced to the Teddy Bears Picnic. The costumes and the set were all knit by volunteers. It was an uplifting day in these sad, difficult, heartbreaking times we live in.
This week we visited a nearby village that has an outdoor installation which honours a member of their community who was taken hostage from the Nova festival and killed. He worked in the fields, with the sheep, and in the kitchen - he raised the vegetables he cooked. Projects were knitted by members, including the very young to the very old members. A realistic herd of sheep - a farmstand of vegetables, hearts hanging from trees and cotton puffs symbolising hope.
Friday I went to three exhibitions at the Ramat Gan Museum. There were photographs by a Druze woman artist, showing, through really moving, mystical, powerful images that depicted the circle of life and the Druze belief in reincarnation. This was not digital photography enhanced by AI. She used cameras and different exposures to show powerful imagery. Birth, marriage, the effects of the many wars.
An installation had assemblages of a house 'rearranged, broken, shattered, reconstructed - the effects of the wars and the times we now live in - broken, uncertain, changed, disassembled. The final exhibition by kibbutz artists which I really resonated with, having lived for eight years on a kibbutz. Paintings of symbols of pride and hope, now shattered, eg. cactuses breaking and dying, withering.
It also caused me to reflect on how my art has changed, and perhaps, on what I am, perhaps, trying to do, for myself at least. In California I painted flowers, sunsets, pretty things.
When Covid began I felt the enormous change everyone did - life as we knew it, changed, and was never to be the same. Then came the fires, and my decision to come back to Israel after 42 years.Of course I have blogged about all of this, the world has changed. Israel has changed. We live with grief, uncertainty, fear, and it just goes on and on. Just today I received. an email from the American Embassy to warn American citizens here about the escalation with Iran - to check flights, to know where shelters are etc. And what art have I done during these times? Before March, and the 40 day war with Iran, I painted cactii, dark nightscapes, and now I sketch olive trees. I am doing this because:
a) I have always loved olive trees
b) I am honoring the guardians of these ancient trees - those Palestinians in the West Bank who are being attacked, whose groves are being uprooted, who have lived with and from these trees for centuries.
c) It takes enormous powers of concentration to sketch these trees - it takes time, I am out of the world of news, and concentrate on how to depict gnarled and twisted trunks, the silver of the leaves, even in pencil.
For me it is my escape from the outer horrors. As is knitting, yoga, Feldenkrais, listening to music and reading. Just for a while, I can forget.
And the storm clouds gather overhead.
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