September, 1995
After
many years of formal art education and practice, I now understand and
publicly acknowledge how totally my work is an extension of my
spiritual and religious curiosity, a muse which has been relegated to
a minority position during the twentieth century. Furthermore, I
believe that the imagery that I produce is guided, in a very
literal way, by the spirits of those who were my ancestors. I
am only too aware that my position is considered naive by a majority
of those who teach, create and critique art; so be it. I do not wish
to suggest that my work is without intellect, for it reflects my
concerns as a feminist, a citizen, a wife, a child, a mother, a
sister and a Jew, not necessarily in that order. My art is not,
however, constructed from intellectual abstraction, but rather comes
from working through very personal questions, the answers to which
are often provided from a dimension beyond myself.
My early work, some of which is depicted here, was centered around
basic questions which explored the nature of my existence. I was
interested in the relationships created by the specifics of my life,
most importantly being female and being Jewish. Those two aspects of
my identity were and still are sometimes at odds with each other, and
in the work I tried to bring about an understanding of what it means
to be a feminist and a Jew.
The difficulty of being a feminist and an
observant Jew in a male dominated Jewish hierarchy was addressed in
Ferboten ,
a plexiglas, wood and mylar construction. A 127-foot-long painting on
mylar, depicting the dreams and aspirations of Jewish women (to
participate in religious rituals, study Torah, own property but not
be treated as property, and live an equal life), has been crushed and
shoved into a clear plexiglas padlocked box; surrounding the box are
two groups of five black-hatted men (representing the
minyan), whose outstretched arms form a black web that
encircles and binds the compartment, veiling the contents. The
cabinet is standing on the shoulders of four women, forming the base
and support for the whole structure, depicting the principal role
women have played in shaping and supporting an institution that, on
the surface, appears to have been largely the creation of men.
The Keeper in You
Are Our Keeper can be taken to mean one who
protects or one who controls. The stylized wooden figures translate
the rhythms of a liturgical poem used in the High Holiday Service
into a visual motif illustrating both the security and rigidity of
repetitive pattern. The sculpture is intended to question the nuances
of the phrase "you are our keeper", which appears in the poem.
Trapped in
Character was created in reaction to the roles we are
forced, or choose, to play every day of our lives. The most dangerous
roles are the ones we don't think about anymore, the ones that
supersede our intellect and determine the character of our
existence.
I believe that my current work, paradoxically, leads me in new
directions while returning to often-studied territories. My
understanding of what the older work means has been enriched, while
at the same time I have begun to develop a softer, more personal
attitude in my approach to artmaking. In the past, working through
questions about my heritage and cultural identity led me to
re-examine my ancestors for an understanding of their identities;
i.e., who they were, why they were as they were, and what they had to
teach me. In the case of Spirit
House , also an early work, I saw the house
as a reflection of my structure, constructed of and supported by
those who came before and who were essential to forming my spiritual
foundation. The scrolls, or mezzuzot, that each totem
carries are my stories about the influences they have imprinted on my
soul.
All of those things were important, and they still are. I now feel,
however, more closely aligned with those persons as I create my art,
not as much for what I want them to teach me as for what they want me
to know. I believe that I am now looking into questions which are, in
the final analysis, far more important than the earlier ones. These
are the types of questions which strip existence down to the
essential elements, and of which the ancients are in a position to
teach me far more than I could hope to learn on my own. This is a
very subtle difference that is difficult to write or speak about, but
the reader might find it to be similar to an accomplished musician
who, in looking for the core after years of successful study and the
creation of elaborate musical forms, returns to those teachers who
can answer the most basic and perhaps profound questions of music
making. I think it is crucial to understand the change.
The print series Nefesh
Ami (The Soul Of My People) was
an important body of work for me, for it was a first step into this
new direction. The series uses elementary shapes and assigns to them
traditional symbolic meanings: the circle is used as "the whole",
"the unbroken", for "never-ending life" and for "consecrated or
ceremonial space"; the pyramid represents "life force" and "power",
and so forth. These forms are combined with the figures of the
persons close to me, and the images are made available to me as I
meditate. I work intuitively, and perhaps I should say that I
understand the images more for the way they "feel" than the way they
look. I do believe that the look of the imagery is significantly
independent of my determination.
I am currently involved with an immense study of the Hebrew language,
the Kaballah and other writings by the Jewish mystics, in an effort
to read first-hand what it was that they had already discovered
centuries ago.
Sandi Knell Tamny