Saturday, October 17, 2009

Generations together.

Does being an artist run in the family?
It appears that it often does.
“Irgun Joze Mercas Europa” - the organization of immigrants from Central Europe, had the bright idea to invite artists of two or three generations from within the same family to a joint art exhibition.
I have been painting for the past 20 years to give creative expression to some of my thoughts and feelings, participated at group exhibitions and had several single ones.

But this time the call to register was different. My grandson Ido likes to make sculptures from what ever he can lay his hands on. He has created some exquisite ones from odds and ends of discarded metal tools, one of them called multi- tool.
I thought that this exhibition would be an excellent possibility to give a young man like him some exposure of his artistic trend.
The curator had asked us to send in by e-mail some examples. He was immediately taken by my grandsons work. From among my vast store of paintings he choose a set of three small paintings that were hanging on my memorial wall, scenes I had painted in 1989 after my visit to Auschwitz where my mother had perished.
Also chosen to include was a small wooden Jewel-box that my mother decorated back in the year 1913. She crafted it for her cousin, who brought it with her to this country and later gave it to me for keepsake. My mother was a very gifted and creative person and in my childhood I often admired her skills and loved to watch her do things with her hands.
My three children are creative in different ways and so are my grandchildren, as well as some of my great-grandchildren, like the three brothers aged 8, 6 and 4 year old, playing musical instruments.

Eight family groups, some two and others three or four generations within the family, participated. For the festive opening of the exhibition in the gallery of the Jerusalem Theater some 70 guests turned up.
I was proud to see that the sculpture of my grandson Ido was exposed at a strategic point of entrance so that everybody who entered was aware of it and it a brought a smile to their faces. Ido is about to start his engineer study.
The grandmother of one of the families, 50 or 60 years ago did the graphic design for a cleaning material called “Ama”, depicting a little girl with two pigtails. Her granddaughter did a very artistic variation of that picture putting different faces, including some famous actors in place of the little girl. This granddaughter is about to enter the Bezalel Art College. Another family, the father, an architect by profession, and his 14- year old son, painted each other’s portraits.

To judge by the exhibition, the joy of creativity seems to be passed on from generation to generation. All told it was very impressive. As soon as I got home I started to write an article about it to the newspaper of the organization that organized and funded the exhibit.
Danny, my son went back to take pictures to be included in my article.
I hope it will be printed in the next issue.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is very interesting for me to read that blog. Thank author for it. I like such themes and everything connected to them. I would like to read a bit more soon.

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!