Installations
I like creating installations, they challenge me to concentrate and focus on an environment that one can physically experience differently than two-dimensional art. My preferred media is sand, stones, soil, dry oxides, water and salt. I consider these materials universally understood and facilitate my ideas and intent.
Salt Mound
2017 • Catalog PDF
Salt Mound – the deterioration of the Dead Sea and its slow demise – was a gallery installation I created for the Jerusalem Biennale 2017 and was repeated at the Derfner Judaica Museum, Riverdale, New York, in 2018.
The donation of two tons of salt from the 100-year-old company Atlit was a heavenly gift. They delivered the salt directly to the Museum of Underground Prisoners in Jerusalem where my installation was scheduled; their generosity was supreme. What is now the Museum was built by the British in the early 1930s and commemorates the Jewish underground – Haganah, Irgun and Lehi – during the period leading up the establishment of the State of Israel.
Salt Mound installation under construction at Jerusalem Biennale 2017
Meditation Room
2014 • Catalog PDF
I created Meditation Room in 2014 at the Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica Airport, Santa Monica, CA. I was invited by Arena 1 to create an exhibition: The Past Four Years and was given the full gallery space to address my recovery and the process of healing I experienced after having a serious auto accident in 2010.
The room included two of my long shadow photographs: 72″ x 24″, flanking a Kabbalistic center image: 72″ x 72″ describing the process of attaining knowledge and wisdom. The diagram dates back to the 8th century. On the floor, the triangle is a frame of 10′ x 10′ x 10′ filled with sand. Its circles are three colors of unfired clay and a meditation pillow. Included, as well, are markers directing the viewer to: east, west, north and south. On the gallery walls I hung small mediation pieces I created using archival paper.
On Xenophobia and Walls
Traveling to the city of Carlisle in northern England to create an exhibition at The Mill Gallery was a wonderful experience. I decided not to bring anything with me, but create the installation with what I needed right there. I was invited to speak and dialogue with students at the Design University of Carlyle.
In my research I found that Hadrian’s Wall runs through Carlyle and was built by the Romans in 180 BC. I decided to compare it to the wall between California and Mexico to address the issue of xenophobia and walls. My plan included meetings and conversations on the subjects with teenagers and grade school children. The Nature Conservancy (UK) supplied us with old stones from Hadrian’s Wall, as many as we needed, and we rebuilt a portion of the Wall in The Mill Gallery using the same method as the original wall: no mortar and securing it with small supporting stones.
I created large banners on the walls of the gallery designed to facilitate conversation and dialogue among all participants.
1997 • Video
Across Time, Space and the Ages
I was invited in 1992/93 to create a solo exhibition at the Stadtmuseum in Düsseldorf, Germany. This invitation was arranged by a group of Artists from Düsseldorf who came to Los Angeles as exchange artists invited by the Santa Monica Museum of Art.
My invitation to Germany was very generous: free delivery of my artwork, two first class tickets from Lufthansa Airlines for me and my assistant, a studio and funds to create the exhibition. I created the largest paintings I had ever done: 10′ x 20′ on canvas using acrylics at my 1,500 sq. ft. studio at the Santa Monica Airport. It took a year and half to create the two large paintings to be installed on the north and south wall of the (40′ x 10′) museum gallery in Düsseldorf.
The catalog and video of this exhibition describes my interaction with the German artists who were upset by the silence of the Americans to what happened in Germany under Hitler. My installation addressed the desire for healing bringing earth from Dachau to the table and inviting the community to interact. I came back for the closing ceremony to invite the community to pour the Dachau earth into the Ryne River creating a Tibetan Gesture for peace and healing.
