By Charlene Kahn, Special to JTNews
Although cold February winds blew outside the doors, in the social hall of Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle’s North End, all was warmth and friendship.
A post-Shabbat evening of interactive art drew a crowd of adults from Seattle and the Eastside on Feb. 11 for the second of three events that sought to reinforce the connection between Israel and the American Jewish community. The first brought together area teens with Israeli artists and the day following the adult workshop at Beth Shalom an American artist-to-Israeli artist exchange took place.
“We are touching 300 to 350 participants,” said Amy Wasser-Simpson, vice president for planning and community services at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
“You can touch a lot of people through art,” observed Saraleh Haitman, a retired arts administrator and teacher who lives on Moshav Geha in Israel’s Hof Ashkelon region. Haitman was a founder of a creative women’s forum in Hof Ashkelon and taught art in local schools.
Through the sponsorship of the Jewish Federation and TIPS Partnership Together, a joint program between Federations in Seattle, Tucson and Phoenix and Israel’s Kiryat Malachi and Hof Ashkelon region, four Israeli women artists/designers have been volunteering their time to visit each of the cities. At each locale, the artists and the local community create a cooperative art project that will stay behind, a memory of the visit.
Besides Haitman, the group consisted of artist Vered Otmy, events designer Ada Bouganim, and Yehudit Ogorinsky, a mosaic artist. The women are all from Ashkelon, and were chosen by a steering committee in Israel; planning for the trip started the year before. Ashkelon is a coastal area south of Tel Aviv.
The workshop opened with greetings and a slide show of the artists’ work. Tables were set up with art materials, including medium-sized white canvas frames for each participant. Otmy, a warm, vibrant woman, began by sharing her own personal challenges, explaining that though “I invent ideas and it works,” she “too must work hard because of [her] dyslexia.” Her hard work is paying off. Known for stunningly colorful designs in paper machiér, Otmy’s works are exhibited nationally in Israel and throughout Europe.
Otmy asked the participants to create a mandala, or symbolic circular design. She partially painted an example, then walked around the tables with her fellow artists and the local organizers. Bouganim and Haitman offered advice and support where needed and invited everyone into the project. The room was full of quiet conversation, and background music gave off a relaxing vibe.
A number of local Israelis showed up for the program, happy to meet the artists, and even ended up assisting with some translation. Michal Sheffer mentioned seeing “a news article about Vered during a trip to Israel.”
Although the creative process of making colorful mandalas was the medium, the artists and organizers were also clear about their message.
“It’s a mission,” said Haitman, whose family members, originally from Russia, were Israeli pioneers in the 1920s. One of the evening’s participants, Steve Epstein, was told by Otmy that “the U.S. has given Israel a lot and this was [something] she could to do in return.”
“It’s great,” he said. “She’s right.”
The Sunday event, in which approximately 25 local Jewish artists visited the Mercer Island home of David and Lorna Isenberg, ended up lasting into the night.
“Everything was interesting, and the art was beautiful!” Lorna Isenberg wrote in an email. “People stayed until 10, talking to each other.”
Reminiscent of a summer camp reunion, the Saturday night group posed for a photo, mandalas held aloft. The completed artworks will be hung on display at the Jewish Federation’s offices in downtown Seattle, a lasting reminder of friendship and cooperation.