Do You Feel A Chill In The Air?

Winter Birches Ketubah, by Judith Joseph. Egg tempera and ink, 18" X 24".

I recently finished this ketubah for a couple who love to spend time in the woods in New Hampshire.  They asked for a snowy scene of birch trees in the moonlight, with the tracks of a wolf and a bear.  I added some little silvery evergreen trees, and the red branches of the willow, drawing on my memory of many winters spent  in northern Wisconsin.

Looking for wildness locally, I took my daily walk by the forest preserve (Chipilli Woods) near my house.  As I walked by the tree-lined clearing at dusk, I scanned the field for the sight of any wildlife.  I had the uncanny feeling that something was watching me, and sure enough, my eyes rested upon a large coyote.  I stopped and met its gaze.  It didn’t flinch.  Actually, it was pretty large and solid for a coyote, and not rangy and leggy like the ones I’ve seen around here.  Could it be a wolf?  There were no people around, and it really seemed wild, not like someone’s dog– especially the way it was WATCHING ME!  When I’ve seen coyotes, they’re usually shy, and kind of keep to the edges of the woods.  I’ve never seen a coyote hold its ground and just stare me down.  It was staring at me the way I’ve seen hawks in the neighborhood stare at Yorkies.

Tomorrow I’ll go back to the field and see if I can find any tracks.  Wolf-tracks (I now know, from painting them) are larger than dogs or coyotes.  It’s unlikely I’ll be able to find them in a grassy field, but I’ll take a look, all the same.  (In full daylight.)

What do you think?  Have you heard of any wolf-sightings in Northern Illinois?

Looking For Wildness

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If you live in an urban or suburban area, wildness is hard to find.  I found it at Gallery Park in the Glen, a recently developed suburb that was created when the Glenview Naval Air Base was decommissioned.  Along the verge and in between all the runways, naturalists found original, untouched Illinois prairie.  Amazingly, in our era of greed and despoilment, environmentalists successfully lobbied for a set-aside of this untouched biodiversity, and the Glen planners preserved a pristine wetland/prairie area in the heart of the development.

I have found that I can briskly walk its paved paths and crushed gravel trails, which loop through neck-high grasses, for an hour without repeating my path.  I see:  a sandhill crane, many ducks, egrets, little birds that tweet up from the path, masses of purple asters, wild roses, weeping willows, oaks.

Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic, writes in today’s paper:  “Chicago’s high-toned Latin motto, ‘Urbs in Horto’ (City in a Garden), makes it sound as though the expansive open spaces of the city’s lakefront extend to every corner of the city.  They don’t.”

Kamin goes on to quote Perry Duis, a University of Illinois at Chicago historian, speaking about the dearth of green spaces planned into post-Great Fire Chicago:  “The older industrial areas were so jammed by the expansion of factories that any kind of open space was considered to be sort of a luxury.   It’s just logical… Chicago is the most thoroughly capitalistic city there is.”

As protestors mass on Wall St. and LaSalle St. in revolt against rampant corporate greed, it is well to bear in mind the environmental results of greed, in its most basic impact on our communities.  If you can find yourself some wildness, embrace it and appreciate it, and fight for it.

The Bridge Between Health and Disease

Please come and see my Bridge Between Health and Disease.   It was commissioned by the Art Center, Highland Park, for the Voices and Visions Exhibit, an uplifting and inspiring juried show (opening reception tomorrow, 9-30-11.)

The Bridge Between Health and Disease, The Art Center, Highland Park, Illinois

From ABC- Channel 7 News blog:

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, The Art Center in Highland Park holds an art exhibit that honors women and their families impacted by breast or ovarian cancers.

In addition to 50 works of art on display, there is also a wall of statements written by women from across the country who have been affected by cancer. Caren Helene Rudman, an artist and curator of the exhibit, says the purpose of the exhibit is to empower people who live on the bridge between health and disease.

The Art Center (TAC) in Highland Park is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to education in the contemporary visual arts through its teaching, outreach, events and gallery exhibitions. TAC brings the benefits of visual expression to all sectors of the community.

Voices and Visions: Standing on the Bridge between Health and Disease
September 30 – October 30, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, September 30th from 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Free Admission to Exhibit

The Art Center Highland Park
1957 Sheridan Rd.
Highland Park, IL
(847) 432-1888
theartcenterhp.org/voices-and-visions

“Knittivists” Repairing The World

There is a wonderful project called “Tikkun Tree”, which is organizing fiber artists to contribute knitted, crocheted, embroidered and sewn leaves and doves to a fiber olive tree.  The tree will be a symbol of peace and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.  It is inspired by  “the courageous and remarkable efforts of Jewish and Palestinian citizens and activists in Israel and Diaspora who have been working toward peaceful coexistence” and also by “the many recent knittivist community needlework projects, including the pink tank, knitnotwar 1,0o0 Project , Knit a River, and the Red Sweater Project“.

I can embroider and sew, I think it will be fun to foliate!  If you want to participate, send your leaves to:

The TikkunTree Project
P.O. Box 2088
Philadelphia, PA 19103

I love to paint olive trees.  Here are some works which include olive trees from my portfolio:

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Openlands Preserves Nature and Presents Art

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When Fort Sheridan was developed as a residential community, a grant enabled the creation of the Openlands Nature Preserve.  This project is a restoration and preservation of one of the last remaining ravine and bluff ecosystems in the metropolitan region.  There are beautiful walkways, complemented by original, site-specific works of art.

Interpretive signs illuminate the environment and the art with poetry by Lisa Roberts, who curated the art selections.  The works are by Kate Friedman (Reading The Landscape), Vivian Visser (a driftwood installation called Erode), Ginny Sykes (a mixed-media mural on an underpass called Arc of Nature), Sharon Bladholm (cast bronze/resign plaques on a stone wall called Soil:  Alive With Life) and Olivia Petrides (painted obelisks called Leaf and Earthbark Prisms).

The ravine walk is wonderful, a gentle incline down to a beautiful beach.  The art is a perfect complement to the environment.  It serves an educational function while enhancing our experience of the beauty and complexity of nature, and our place in it.

Petrides’ striped prisms reminded me of the work of artist Kerry Hirth.  She is a synasthetic artist, which means that she interprets sound as color.  She created a work called Birds Lost from a Giant Sequoia Forest During Fifty Years (pastel on canvas, 12″ X 48″).  She explains that “This painting begins at the deep roots of a sequoia forest and moves up the trees toward the treetops and then further up the mountainside to a pine forest and ultimately to the sky. Between the roots and the sky, there are seven distinct sections. Each section represents a species of bird that once lived in the forest but no longer does as a result of habitat destruction. The sections are defined by the way they reflect the distinct plumage of each bird.”

"Birds Lost", by Kerry Hirth

Sometimes art as “earthworks” is a destruction or disruption of the natural environment in which it is placed.  Not in this case.  I look forward to returning to the Openlands Preserve and spending more time with the art, particularly the poetry that accompanies each visual art piece on a trail marker.

Sailing Ketubah- sketch

Colored-pencil sketch for a ketubah. The text will be on the spinnaker (rounded) sail.

This is a sketch for an anniversary ketubah.  The couple spends as much time as they can on their boat, sailing on Lake Michigan.  Their other passion is their Briard dogs, seen running in the lower left corner.  I tried to give a sense of the energy and movement of sailing, from the taut sails and brisk spray, to the gently rocking motion when you’re sleeping on the boat in port.  The skyline of Chicago is seen over the top of the spinnaker.

Chicago Skyline and Midwestern Farm Landscape

Chicago Skyline/ Midwestern Farm Ketubah by Judith Joseph, 23" square, egg tempera and india ink calligraphy on rag paper.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the Chicago skyline this summer:  from the Sears (Willlis) Tower, from different angles driving around, and from photos taken out on Lake Michigan.  As I painted it across the top of this ketubah in a moonlit scene, I tried to render the famous landmarks recognizably.

This couple will be married Sunday at a farm in Michigan, which is portrayed across the bottom of the ketubah.  This farm landscape doubles for the Ohio farm where the groom grew up.

The couple wrote their own text, which I was able to have translated into Hebrew.  (More of my ketubahs may be seen here.)

Wedding Photos: Bride, Groom and Ketubah

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I just received these wonderful wedding photos from Alyse Hockfield and Timur Eligulashvili, which show them signing the ketubah I made for them.

Creative Collaboration As It Should Be

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The current exhibit at Fill In The Blank Gallery, entitled “Habitual Growth”, is an example of a fully integrated, successful collaboration by three talented artists:  Alexis Ortiz, Julia Gootzeit and Katie Schofield.  Together, they created an environment that is so symbiotic, all the objects seem to just have grown in the gallery.  This is no small feat, considering the materials used:  ceramic vessels, nest-like shapes crocheted from plastic grocery bags, cascades of keys, little dyed, felted balls, stripes of soil and ristras of red ceramic carroty thingies.

The artists recycle, re-use, re-purpose.  All of the recycled objects bring their own stories to the table, and the artists cast them in a new context, layering different perspectives.  The result is a rich, fresh, intriguing mix that comes together incredibly well.  The exhibit will be up at 5038 N. Lincoln Avenue until Aug. 20.  It’s well worth a visit– check the gallery website for hours.

I am preparing for a two-person show next spring with artist Harriet Kohn, at PerficalSense Studio.  We discussed the idea of whether  to collaborate on work together, or just show our independent, though complementary, work.  Seeing the seamless collaboration created by Alexis, Julia and Katie raised the bar for us.  Now we have to decide:  pas de deux,  or ensemble?  This is where my inner elementary school teacher is saying, ” Judy, you’re not a team player.”  We’ll see what happens!

Chicago Skyline Meets Jerusalem

Kotel/Hamsa Ketubah, by Judith Joseph

It was fun to paint a ketubah* containing stylized versions of Chicago buildings, including (from left) the White Castle Building, 150 N. Wacker Drive, River City Condominiums, 333 W. Wacker Drive, the Willis (we call it Sears) Tower, the Aon Center (formerly known as “Big Stan” the Standard Oil Building), 150 N. Michigan (formerly known as the “Stone Container Building”), the John Hancock Building and Lake Shore Place (with a couple of random buildings in the mix.)

Can you tell I’ve been up in the Sears (Willis) Sky Deck recently?

The Chicago skyline rests upon the shoulders of a hamsa (hand of Fatima) which is made of the stone of the Western Wall in Jerusalem.  Views of the Jerusalem rooftops also appear in the top corners, in daylight and starlight.

*Ketubah:  Jewish marriage contract, a folk-art form.  See more of my ketubahs here.