The current exhibit at the Zack Gallery – the Festival Ha’Rikud group show, called Israeli Music through the Years – is a fundraiser. Every painting on display has a silent auction sheet beside it, and people can bid on the pieces they like. The bidding closes on June 1, with all the proceeds going to the gallery.
“Babushka” by Carl Rothschild (photo by Olga Livshin)
Opening night on May 15 was a festive affair. Almost all of the 60 participating artists came to mingle and cheer one another on.
“The gallery offered all the artists boards of a universal size to paint on,” explained gallery director Linda Lando. “I sent the boards to the artists about three months ago to give them plenty of time. Every painting in the show is the exact same size, while the selection of the artists is eclectic. Some are professional artists I’ve had on my radar for years. Others are JCC members or their friends who learned about the show and applied. One entire wall of the show is dedicated to paintings created by Louis Brier’s residents attending art lessons. For many, it is their first show. Some never even painted before. It’s very brave of them to put their art out for everyone to see and judge.”
The paintings are as different as the artists themselves, although the theme is the same: music in one guise or another. Some artists lean towards Jewish mythology, like Penelope Harris’s mixed media “Miriam and her Sisters.” Three women dance in the painting, all wearing timeless clothing in soft colours.
“Legacy” by Wing Yee Wong (photo by Olga Livshin)
Dancing seems to be a popular subject. In the artist Givon’s painting “Rikud,” four stylized women dance, their colours and shapes flowing into one another, while “Babushka,” by Carl Rothschild, dances alone, exuding humour and sharp lines; her balalaika leans on a wall beside the dancer, adding a Russian flavour to the painting.
Nini Rostoker-Shipman’s “Let’s Dance” is all about shoes. In the subdued brownish image, a couple dozen pairs of worn shoes – sandals, slippers and flats – lie docilely side by side, like a collection. Only one pair of shoes stands out. These are high-heels with sparkly buckles – real shoes glued to the image. Perhaps some fashionable woman from the artist’s family danced in those shoes long ago? The shoes look impertinent enough to enjoy dancing.
Other works explore music’s players, the musicians, as well as musical notations or instruments. In this stream, Maggie Farrar’s portrait of Leonard Cohen attracts attention. The showman’s ubiquitous hat sits rakishly on his head, and the names of his famous songs scroll across the canvas.
“Sabras Rejoicing” by Marlene Konyves (photo by Olga Livshin)
Below the portrait of Cohen hangs a piece by Wing Yee Wong called “Legacy.” The painting is popular with the auction bidders. It depicts an Abyssinian cat with its disproportionately big ears and haughty eyes, one yellow, another green. The cat is clutching a guitar and staring at viewers with contempt. There is an inscription on the guitar handle, demanding, “Feed me.” It’s hard not to smile while looking at it.
Musical instruments are also featured in “Where are the Ladies?” by Marion Eisman. In the mischievous painting, an all-male klezmer ensemble jams a merry tune on a shtetl street.
Another orchestra, in a piece by Alan Woolf using a pastel palette, is much more serious. These musicians perform a classical concert in the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre. The musicians’ tiny, delicate figures look like pencil sketches on the background of an azure Israeli sky.
“Miriam And Her Sisters” by Penelope Harris (photo by Olga Livshin)
In contrast, Iza Radinsky’s instruments play by themselves. No people populate her bold painting, just bright colours and ringing notes.
Bright colours also characterize Marlene Konyves’ “Sabras Rejoicing” – a bunch of gleeful blooming cacti – and Jocelyne Halle’s collage, which incorporates several of her Israeli photographs. “It is my first attempt at collage,” said the well-known photographer, who has exhibited her work at the Zack before.
And then there are abstracts. A rhapsody in green in Claire Cohen’s painting hints at melodic skeins and vague instrumental shapes. Sidi Schaffer’s “Eli, Eli,” with its butterflies flitting across the joyful blue ether, is infused with faint sadness – the title of the painting is the same as the song that inspired it.
“I love that song,” said Schaffer. “It is well known in Israel. It was written by Hannah Szenes, a Hungarian Jew. She immigrated to Palestine and became a paratrooper during the Second World War. She was killed by the Nazis when she was only 23, but her poetry is famous in Israel.”
It is impossible to mention all 60 artists who are participating in this show, but it can be said that all of the work on display demonstrates a love of art and music.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Donna Karan’s Urban Zen includes pieces to be worn year-round. But the project is grander than a fashion line – it is a broader approach to life that she hopes will speak to many people. (photo from fashionmodeldirectory.com)
With the sun finally out for days running, spring has truly sprung. We can now satisfy the urge to take out our colours from the back of our closets. That bright pink silk blouse in its garment bag is once more seeing the light. Whatever the current look may be, nothing compares to feeling at home in our classics; those pieces that are, at least to us, forever “in.”
In 1985, Donna Karan introduced to the world of fashion the “Essential Line.” In her first private collection, there were seven simple pieces that continue to be timeless. These include the oversize sweater, a bodysuit, jersey dresses, Lycra tights (no longer just for exercise class), a white shirt, loose trousers and a tailored jacket. Over the years, she would incorporate new pieces, in her go-to favourite colour, black.
Karan, born Donna Ivy Faske, in 1948 in New York, was raised by a fashion-model mother and suit-designer stepfather – she was practically destined to have a lifelong career in fashion. The many awards she has received are but one proof of her talent for it.
At the age of 14, Karan quit school and embarked into that world, working in a boutique. At 20, she was accepted into the renowned Parsons School of Design. After graduating, she became, at 26 years old, head designer of the Anne Klein fashion house.
In 1984, Karan divorced her first husband, Mark Karan, and married Stephen Weiss. With full force, she began her own label. The line was geared to “design modern clothes for modern people.” She wanted to create clothing that she herself would wear and in which she would feel comfortable.
After dressing the likes of her best friend, Barbra Streisand, many A-list Hollywood stars and high-powered women in politics, Karan launched a new brand in 1988, DKNY, a line of less-expensive clothing. Seventeen years later, her business expanded into a men’s fashion line, fragrances, bedding. She also wrote a memoir, The Journey of a Woman: 20 Years of Donna Karan, among other accomplishments.
Karan’s Urban Zen came to fruition in 2001. While watching her beloved husband lose his battle to lung cancer and experiencing the sale of her empire to the multinational LVMH (where she stayed on as head designer until 2015), Karan learned that everyone must “find their calm in the chaos around the world.”
Urban Zen includes pieces to be worn year-round. But the project is grander than a fashion line – it is a broader approach to life that she hopes speaks to many people.
Karan believes it is fundamental to blend Eastern healing together with Western science. While watching her husband undergo chemotherapy, Karan found mediation, yoga, acupuncture and other holistic remedies essential for healing, and for acquiring some sense of inner peace. She built a harmonious sanctuary in the hospital where her husband was being treated, Beth Israel Medical Centre in New York. The sanctuary is a place for patients, loved ones and staff to go to recover from broken spirits and find solace. Its philosophy and practices have helped ease suffering to such a degree that, now, many hospitals and hospices have adopted its methods. The concepts are taught to doctors and nurses through Karan’s foundation, UZIT, Urban Zen Integrative Therapy Program.
On a personal level, this fashionista-writer, who has always loved and appreciated the fun of fashion, also experienced an “aha” moment while researching this article. Being a cancer survivor and having overcome some unwanted surprises life has thrown my way, this spring, I am determined to embrace perfecting my downward dog as much as finding my new bag – devoting time to practising gratitude and investing in my most important asset, me. My tranquility and health are more important than any blouse.
Ariella Steinis a mother, wife and fashion maven. A Vancouverite, she has lived in both Turkey and Israel for the past 25 years.
The exhibit Painting Intimate, showcasing the work of penny eisenberg and Ray Ophoff, is at the Zack Gallery until May 11. (photo by Olga Livshin)
The exhibit Painting Intimate introduces Vancouver art lovers to two very different local artists: penny eisenberg and Ray Ophoff. Different in their approaches, their styles and their creative philosophies.
“I have always liked painting,” eisenberg told the Independent. “I painted as a teenager, then stopped for a few years. I resumed painting in my 20s, but I was a closet painter then. I had several jobs in those years, worked as a cook and in retail. I kept on painting as a hobby, but, when I was 30, I took a class at Emily Carr. The instructor liked my works and suggested I apply for a full-time program.” She did.
Graduating from Emily Carr in 1995, she has been a full-time artist ever since, working in various themes and in a range of sizes as she tried to find her niche. For her, there is a huge gap between the words “picture” and “painting.”
“People buy pictures and hang them on their walls,” she said. “But I’m interested in paintings, not pictures. I’m trying to learn what is painting in the 21st century, when there are so many pictures around.”
Lately, as this exhibition demonstrates, all her paintings have been small. “I like working on small canvases,” she said. “I want to figure out what I want, and the small size allows me to create more paintings, to experiment with different series and subjects. Sometimes, I even work on a few different series simultaneously.”
The current show displays several of her series. There are hazy cityscapes, pulsing with light. There are brightly textured flower bouquets. A number of the paintings are from her latest series.
“In this series, I’ve been exploring the history of women in the arts, how other artists painted their female models,” she said. From 18th-century artist Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin to fashion photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries, eisenberg has transformed other artists’ women through the prism of her own artistic vision. In her abstracted compositions, which follow the others’ outlines but express her own esthetic, eisenberg had made all the portraits small and intimate – and faceless.
“There are two reasons for all my figures being faceless,” she said. “When we identify emotions, faces are what we look at. I wanted to show emotions without the faces, through paints, colours and shapes. In this series, I also examined who influenced whom in the art history, and how it reflected in their female model paintings.”
The internet age is another reason for this approach. “I view the reality of contemporary culture as a series of faceless interactions through social media,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to express. Hence, the hashtag in the title of the series, #otherartistswomen.”
Ray Ophoff has 15 paintings in this show, most of them flowers and landscapes in exuberant, uplifting colours. (photo by Olga Livshin)
When Zack Gallery director Linda Lando suggested eisenberg apply for a show, the artist embraced the opportunity. “I wanted a show at the Zack, but it is a large space,” said eisenberg. “I couldn’t handle the stress of filling it all by myself. I asked Linda if I could invite a friend artist, Ray Ophoff, to share it with me.”
Like Eisenberg, Ophoff is a long-time participant in the East Side Culture Crawl. In fact, that’s how they met.
“Many years ago, I visited her studio during the Culture Crawl,” recalled Ophoff. “I had a painting – a landscape – in my own studio at the time, and I saw that she had painted the same place, but it was much better than mine. We started talking and became friends.”
Ophoff has never studied art formally, or taken classes. He is a salesman by profession and paints in his spare time. “I’m entirely self-taught,” he said. “But I read a lot about art. My yearly spending for various art magazines runs to $900.”
Ophoff has 15 paintings in this show, most of them flowers and landscapes in exuberant, uplifting colours. Blown-up to 10 times or more of their real size, his flowers attract viewers with their deceptively simple beauty and their graceful allure. They would gladden any space, and people appreciate the optimism of his imagery.
“I sell almost everything I paint,” he said. “Mostly it is through the Culture Crawl or the First Saturday project. People come to my studio. I don’t even have a website.”
For Ophoff, his art is the only outlet where all the decisions are his alone. “I paint what I want,” he said. “When I walk through the woods or parks or gardens, I take photos. I always know: this is the image I want to paint. Not the entire photo, just a small fragment of it. My painting is not a tree or a flower. It is about that tree or that flower, my version of that tree.”
He considers himself an editor of imagery. “I edit everything unnecessary out of the image,” he explained. “When I find the perfect image, I always know. It is almost like time stops. I know: this will be a great one. Maybe not my painting of it, but the image itself.”
Ophoff’s canvases tell stories. They animate the flora around us and invite our imaginations to unfold. Despite their larger size, his works are, in their own way, as intimate as eisenberg’s much smaller compositions.
For both Ophoff and eisenberg, Painting Intimate is their first show at the Zack Gallery. The exhibit opened on April 11 and continues until May 11.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Artist Monica Gewurz’s “Woven Tallit” was inspired by her father.
Judaism’s history, traditions and clothing and my Peruvian upbringing are always latent in my inspirations,” artist Monica Gewurz told the Independent.
Gewurz will be one of more than 90 exhibitors at Art! Vancouver, which takes place April 19-22 at the Vancouver Convention Centre East.
“Both of my parents were Polish Jews,” said Gewurz. “My mother left Poland before the war to Palestine as part of the youth aliyah to help establish Israel. My father left Poland to study in France where, after completing his studies, he went to Peru to work for a French mining company. During the British Mandate, my father volunteered to help build the underground tunnels as part of the Jewish resistance. He met my mother and, in three weeks, they were married. My father had to return to work in Peru, where they both stayed. I was born there and left in 1976.”
Though Gewurz’s mother was a nurse, she “had a passion for rendering still life in pastels and watercolours.”
Gewurz left Peru, she said, because of the military situation there, “and the increased level of antisemitism in Peru and in South America in general.” She obtained both her bachelor of science and her master’s in landscape architecture and environmental planning from the University of Guelph, in Ontario, then worked for the federal government in Ottawa until 1987. She moved to Montreal, she said, “to work in the private sector for pension funds and, later on, for Canadian Pacific Railway, working on both environmental decontamination and commercial real estate planning, marketing and sales until December 1997. I moved that year to Vancouver because of the rise of the separatist movement in Quebec and the lack of professional opportunities because I was not fully bilingual.”
Monica Gewurz will be participating in Art! Vancouver, which takes place April 19-22.
During her career, Gewurz has worked in both large-scale commercial real estate development and sales; eco- and cultural tourism planning and marketing; environmental assessment; and for the Canadian government dealing with aboriginal issues. Her work in jewelry, photography and painting began as hobbies. However, in 2014, she received a fine art certificate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and embarked on a new career as a professional artist. She is currently enrolled in Emily Carr’s advanced study certificate in painting.
“My textured paintings strive to reflect and connect cultures through the use of ancient and modern materials, colours and techniques,” she said. “I use texture to blur the line between painting and sculpture, integrating man-made elements such as paper, natural elements like semi-precious stones and gravel, and traditional textile designs from various cultures, including Israel and my native Peru.”
Gewurz also travels a lot, which has allowed her to study different art forms, she said. She has been to Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bali, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, India, Israel, Turkey, China and several islands in the Caribbean. She said she always tries to visit museums and historical sites when she’s traveling. Last summer, for example, she participated in a guided art tour through the rivers of Holland, which included visits to UNESCO sites.
Her travels and love of archeology and tribal symbolism inspire her art, she said, and lend it broad dimensions.
“I am attracted to the abstraction of stylized figures done in wood, metal or in textiles that are decorated with simple colours … the myriad high relief textures and multicolour metallic patinas that have been created by weathering and the use of metals to indicate status or ceremonial purposes.
“I am also attracted by their simplicity, honesty and inventiveness, and the fact that they are all made with natural materials and pigments,” she said. “Distorted yet primal in its raw geometry, it provides my inspiration to create a new artistic language with new forms, colours and meanings.
“In my paintings, I use an earthy, quiet palette echoing the colour found in metallic patinas, Raku pottery and ancient glass. To accomplish the above, I use intense turquoises, luminous teals and yellows, haunting blues, earthy ochres and siennas, deep burgundies and mysterious charcoals and blacks. I also use metallic paints and foils to accent textures to give my paintings more luminosity.”
Gewurz really does seem to communicate with the earth. Her sea- and landscapes are alive with colour and texture. In some paintings, it’s almost a wonder how the water stays within the frame, its flowing movement captured somehow into a moving stillness.
“My studio is located amidst the rainforest with an ocean vista,” she said. “I am surrounded by the subtleties of changing skies and rhythms of the ocean. Hikes into the local mountains, forests and beaches up the north coast inspire my abstract work.
“The abstraction of the constant changing of shapes, colours and patterns of light in the reflected water and changing skies during sunrises and sunsets mesmerize me and are a source of my inspiration. I am fascinated with the contrasting nature of the organic and how that can provide an escape to a dream-like place.”
As for works in which her Jewishness played an important role, Gewurz offered the Independent a few examples.
The mixed media piece “Woven Tallit,” she said, “was inspired by the one my father wore until he passed away.” It not only depicts a tallit in the early stages of being made, but also symbolizes, she explained, “the tapestry that we call life, where individually we are nothing much more than a single thread intertwined with others, and also the ‘woven’ aspect of the various cultures and religions that have come together to create modern Israel.”
Gewurz created “Rachel de Matriarch I” and “Rachel de Matriarch II” to honour her mother, whose name was also Rachel, and who was “an artist, and had similar abilities and qualities as Rachel the matriarch,” one of the four spiritual matriarchs of the Hebrew Bible, she said, noting that “Rachel means a small lamb, and she is described as ‘beautiful of form and beautiful of appearance’ (Genesis 29:17).”
“Although she is no longer alive,” said Gewurz of her mother, “she continues to guide me in my daily life and artistic journey.
Monica Gewurz’s “Rachel de Matriach” was inspired by her mother.
“In terms of symbolism,” she added, “the pose of Rachel is of deep thought, dreaming and hoping for the well-being of all people in the world. The texture, patinas and colour palette of copper, earth tones and turquoise are inspired by the simple but colourful clothes, jewelry and headdresses that Rachel would have worn while working in the fields.
“The many layers of this painting are reminiscent of the layered depth of a person’s life, and like looking into ourselves. While the surface layer is easily recognized and understood, deeper exploration is needed to reveal the complex and veiled richness of the person within.”
The last example Gewurz gave was her “Friendship Shawl,” which she described as “an abstraction of a silk and gold scarf which can be wrapped around the shoulders of two friends. Friendship is one of the key values of Judaism and a fundamental building block of the global community.” This painting was also inspired, she said, “by the patterns formed by the warp and weft of the friendship bracelets woven over the centuries by aboriginal people from Central and South America. According to tradition, a person will tie a string or fabric bracelet around the wrist of a friend while making a wish or prayer for them … the wish will come true if the bracelet is worn until it falls off by itself.”
Gewurz is represented by four different galleries. “I have been represented by Ukama since 2016, the Kube Gallery and Sooke Harbour House Gallery since 2017 and, this year, I will be also represented by Mattick’s Farm Gallery in Victoria,” she said.
In addition to paintings, Gewurz also creates “wearable art.”
“They are all based on my paintings,” she said of these works. “I take a portion of the image and expand it so it is an abstraction of a painting rather than the whole painting. I have been doing it only for one year, mainly as part of participating in the Slow Clothes fashion show held as part of the Harmony Arts Festival every year, and to give them away as a thank you for people that buy my artwork, i.e. somebody who buys a large painting receives a scarf or a pillow as a gift.”
Gewurz also donates a percentage of her sales to the Brooke Foundation, whose mission is to improve “the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules” around the world, and to the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) in Vancouver. She has donated art to numerous organizations, including the B.C. Cancer Foundation, the Children’s Heart Network Foundation and the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign.
“It is a way of giving back to the community that has supported me in the past and continues to support me,” she said. “I like to donate art, money and time: ‘it’s better to give than to receive.’ I also like doing something useful and helping others, which makes me feel good about myself, which increases my self-esteem, and greater personal empowerment and better health.”
Other Jewish artists in the exhibition include Art! Vancouver director Lisa Wolfin – “I am doing a forest with a pipeline going in front of the forest to show what is going on in B.C.,” she told the JI. As well, Wolfin’s sister, LeeAnn Wolfin, and daughters, Taisha Teal Wayrynen and Skyla Wayrynen, will be showing their work. The event also features artist demonstrations and workshops, speakers and panel discussions, dance and other performances. For schedule and ticket information, visit artvancouver.net.
Ava Lee Millman Fisher at the opening of her solo exhibit, I See Music, on March 1. (photo by Olga Livshin)
The new solo exhibit by Ava Lee Millman Fisher, which opened at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery on March 1, seems eclectic at first glance. It includes landscapes and floral compositions, Judaica and symbolism. But all the paintings are united by the theme and name of the show: I See Music. That’s how the artist perceives the world around her.
“I see music and I hear colours,” said Millman Fisher in an interview with the Independent. “It’s what my art is all about. I have synesthesia.”
According to a dictionary, “Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report a lifelong history of such experiences are known as synesthetes.”
Every one of Millman Fisher’s images includes musical notations, and the compositions’ colours flow like notes in a symphony. “I’ve always loved both music and art, since I was a child,” said the artist. “I had trouble choosing what I wanted to do professionally, until life interfered. After high school, I won a vocal scholarship to McGill University. But I never stopped painting.”
Millman Fisher specialized in classical opera and lieder (songs for solo voice, with piano). She sang a lot and taught music for awhile. Later, she went back to school to become a licensed music therapist. Throughout her entire career in music and mental health, she painted. “I love painting,” she said. “It is my visual voice. I often think in musical terms when I paint.”
She has been fortunate as a commercial artist. “I started selling my works when still at university,” she said. “Friends saw my paintings. They liked them. Someone wanted to buy. The word-of-mouth spread.”
From the beginning, Millman Fisher has painted in watercolours and created works with Jewish themes and images. “My paintings could be subdivided into two categories,” she said, “both well-represented in this show: secular art and Judaica. My Judaic pieces are very important to me. Unfortunately, there are not many places in Vancouver to showcase them. On the other hand, people from all over the world buy them. I have a Facebook page, and it helps a lot with promotion. By now, my Judaica paintings have found homes in Canada, Israel, the United States. Imagine: they want to buy my paintings in Israel, despite there being such a wide selection [of Jewish-themed work] inside the country. And, of course, I’m willing to ship anywhere.”
Millman Fisher recently sold a large Judaic painting to a client in New York. She couldn’t hide her joy as she told the story. “That lady from New York has been following my Facebook page for years,” explained Millman Fisher. “She said she loved my art but had no space in her home. When she moved to a larger home, she bought one of my paintings.”
The Zack Gallery show includes Ava Lee Millman Fisher’s piece “Libretto of the Lilies.”
But Millman Fisher doesn’t only sell her art. “I’m always happy to share, to give them away,” she said. “I like donating my paintings to Jewish causes and organizations. Some of my pieces hang in Vancouver Talmud Torah and in the Louis Brier Home.”
One of her most interesting Judaic pieces in the show is a large painting called “Miriam,” which also has a long subtitle. Its visual structure is no less complex. “I needed to tell Miriam’s story,” Millman Fisher said. “She was the first music therapist in history. She always brought her tambourine to the gatherings and employed music to calm people.”
The artist pointed to a dense flock of birds framing the painting. “Each bird is individually made from rice paper, cut and glued to the painting,” she explained. “There are dozens of them, and they are all different.”
The musical snippets written inside each bird are also different but, together, they could be built into a song of Miriam. The painting is representative of Millman Fisher’s mixed media work.
“Originally, I painted in watercolours,” she said. “I still do and I love watercolours, but, about 15 years ago, I began experimenting with mixed media. At first, I saw the technique in other artists’ works and liked it. They would put anything into their paintings: coins, fabrics, souvenirs. Then I became a friend with a Jewish lady from Iraq. She passed away some time ago but, before that, we were good friends for years. When she escaped Iraq, she brought some golden chains with her, concealed in her clothing. She gave them to me and urged me to include them in my paintings. That was the first mixed media I did. Those paintings are almost all sold by now, and the chains practically gone. I have only a few fragments left. I used some of them in the ‘Miriam’ painting.”
Millman Fisher creates her mixed media on wood panels, and the works consist of many layers and involve a number of materials, including crystals and rice paper, metal and ribbons. “Sometimes, I cover the paintings with lacquer to make them shiny, but it doesn’t always work,” she said. “I would have an idea when I start a piece, but then it might change as I keep painting. The images have a life and will of their own. They often depend on the music I listen to when I paint. The pieces dictate, and I follow.”
Like everything else she does, Millman Fisher signs her name in a unique way. Her signature is her first name, Ava Lee, followed by a treble clef below. “My favourite moment is when I finish a painting and sign my name,” she joked. “The treble clef denotes my connection to music. It shows my double nature: a musician and an artist.”
I See Music is on display at the Zack until April 7, and there is an exhibit-inspired poetry night on March 15 at the gallery. For more information on Millman Fisher’s art, check out her website, creatavalee.net.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Inception’s collaboration with FashionTV brings viewers backstage. (photo from Inception)
Netflix has become the go-to service for finding the latest and greatest movie and television programming. An Israeli startup called Inception wants to do the same for virtual reality.
The Tel Aviv-based company operates as both a production studio and an aggregator of curated virtual reality (VR) content. On Feb. 6, it announced the launch of a new channel to introduce more VR into the news experience, offering 360 top Associated Press (AP) videos across a broad spectrum of historical, cultural and social topics. The channel can be downloaded from the Inception app across platforms including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Microsoft MR, Samsung Gear, Google Daydream, iOS and Android.
Inception, which first caught Israel21c’s attention at the launch of the Tower of David Museum’s Innovation Lab last fall, received a $15 million investment in August 2017 from European television conglomerate RTL Group. The Series A round also included angel investors James Packer, Gigi Levy-Weiss and iAngels.
RTL’s FreemantleMedia owns the rights to dozens of big-name television shows, which helps explain where Inception is going. For example, Inception wants to use VR to transport viewers truly behind the scenes of the reality TV program The X Factor. Imagine standing beside the singer – or sitting with the judges watching the performance – in a 3-D immersive and interactive environment. Right now, that experience has to be pre-recorded but, someday, VR users will be able to jump into a program as it happens.
Live streaming is “already technically available today and we believe that, with the right content it will become mainstream,” Inception chief executive officer Benny Arbel told Israel21c.
Or, here’s another scenario. Imagine exploring in virtual reality the Shadow Monster’s tunnels in the Upside Down on the hit Netflix show Stranger Things.
“The beauty of VR is that it lets you actually enter a new location or scene,” said Arbel, “whether you’re a spectator or a participant.”
Inception’s focus on serialized TV sets it apart from other VR companies like Within and Here Be Dragons, which produce beautiful but mostly one-off VR experiences. Among the dozens of VR entries on Inception’s website are collaborations with Time Out for virtual walks through exotic locations (from Thailand to Tel Aviv) and FashionTV, where you can sidle up to a super-model as she heads down the catwalk.
Inception has standalone projects, too: a partnership with Pitchfork is the driving force behind the pop culture magazine’s new VR Music Channel. And Inception is developing a VR experience that transports visitors to the world of medieval knights at Jerusalem’s Tower of David Museum.
It’s the episodic content that gets Arbel most excited. With Time Out, he said, “we continuously add new content about different city locations and venues. We hope users will start using these channels for their city updates instead of existing TV or the web.”
If and when they do, it’s likely to start with a “360” experience, which Arbel called “the biggest enemy of VR.” He explained that 360s are flat, non-interactive videos that allow you to explore VR on your computer, often via YouTube. While Inception makes 360 video versions, too, Arbel said, “It’s a necessary evil, a way of promoting what we do to everyone.”
Inception’s collaboration with Time Out brings virutal reality to virtual tours. (photo from Inception)
Inception’s VR content is video-based. Depending on which way you turn your head or make a gesture, a new video will be triggered. This is a bit reminiscent of Israeli pop-star-turned-startup-maven Yoni Bloch’s Interlude, now renamed Eko, which develops tools for making interactive (though not VR) videos.
Inception was founded in 2016 by Arbel, Dana Porter, Effi Wizen and Nitzan Shenar. The company’s 30 employees are spread out in offices in London, New York and Los Angeles, in addition to the Tel Aviv headquarters.
Inception is “platform agnostic,” Arbel stressed. That means its content “will play well with all the different kinds of headsets out there,” including Oculus, which Facebook acquired for some $3 billion in 2014, as well as Samsung’s Gear, the HTC Vive and Microsoft MR.
Some of these devices operate by placing one’s mobile phone into the headset, but those aren’t so popular or user-friendly. “People don’t like giving their phone to someone else,” said Arbel. “The most interesting segment is the standalone headsets, where there’s no phone or computer required; the graphic engine is built into the device and it’s connected to the cloud via wi-fi.”
Arbel added that new and improved headsets come out every few months and the next generation of the Oculus may be the “hero device that changes things for everyone.” According to Statista, the installed base of VR headsets is projected to grow to 37 million by 2020.
What about the kind of virtual experiences made terrifying by science-fiction TV shows such as Black Mirror, where the VR is broadcast directly into a user’s mind without the need for goggles or other external hardware?
“We know for a fact that what we are seeing today is just early days of VR form factors,” Arbel said. “We are sure hardware will change dramatically and become much easier for us to include as part of our daily lives. Precisely because of this, we make sure that our content can be viewed on any type of device – even the futuristic ones.”
In the meantime, and for those without a headset, Inception’s VR experiences are available on the Apple and Android app stores. For more information, visit inceptionvr.com.
Israel21cis a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.
Artist Lauren Morris at the opening of her solo show, Dressed in Colour, at the Zack Gallery Jan. 25. (photo from Lauren Morris)
Dressed in Colour, Lauren Morris’s new solo exhibition at the Zack Gallery, perfectly reflects the artist’s relationship with the world. “Everything about me is colour,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “Colours bring this show together.”
This is Morris’s second solo show at the gallery, the first having been in 2015. She is known for her vivid flowers and colour-infused compositions.
“I always explore new colours, always learn, always take new photos. Living in Vancouver makes me want to paint even more colours,” she said.
Inspiration has not always come easily, though.
“About five years ago, I took a sabbatical. I didn’t paint for more than a year, didn’t know what to paint. I was stuck,” she said. “Before that period, I always used someone else’s vision as a starting point: photographs I found online, other artists’ pieces. But it stopped working for me. Then, I realized that it doesn’t matter what I paint. I began taking my own photographs. Now, I base everything I paint on my own experiences. I love nature, I enjoy flowers, and it all comes out in my art.”
Influenced by nature, Morris creates large canvases where colours, shapes and light intertwine into unique flowery abstractions, beautiful but never photographic or even realistic. Her flowers come from her imagination, with depth and texture adding meaning. “There is always something mystical in my paintings, something unknown,” she said. “A lot is going on in every picture, and the multiple layers create reflections.”
Morris paints with acrylics, but this medium, despite its growing popularity, has its quirks. “Acrylics dry fast, and they often become dull when dry,” she explained. “To brighten the images, I use varnish on top of acrylics. Varnish makes the magic come out. People even ask me if I paint in oils.”
“Water Lilies” by Lauren Morris.
Her flowers are larger than life. One can’t even see the overall image until one is at a distance from the work. “When I paint, I often stand back a lot,” Morris said of her creative process.
For her, a painting is never finished until it is no longer in her possession. “Yesterday, I saw something wrong in one painting in this show,” she said the day before the exhibit’s opening night. “Something bothered me, so I brought my paints and touched it up.”
Sometimes, she starts a painting with a preconceived image, but, like living things, her pieces frequently have a mind of their own. “My paintings often surprise me, and I always allow them to happen,” she said. “If I planned something else, but the image evolved somehow, I find it fascinating. If something doesn’t work, I fix it. I don’t have an anxiety. I don’t fear the canvas.”
Morris trusts her intuition, and it makes her paintings vibrant. It also makes her an excellent teacher. Lately, she has been teaching adult art workshops at the Designers Collective. “Most of my students are beginners,” she said. “They come to the workshop and they’re unsure. They think they can’t paint. I teach them not to be afraid. I bring art to people. I tell them: there are no mistakes in art. It’s not about technique. Art is a self-exploration. If you don’t like something you already painted, we’ll cover it up with something new. Maybe the old image will peek through, like a reflection of something different…. I try to make people believe in themselves. It’s almost a therapy class.”
She applies the same approach of playful exploration to her own work, fearlessly searching for beauty in her art. “I’m never bored when I paint. My art excites me. I get absorbed by my paintings,” she said happily.
Morris’s canvases seem to thrum with the strands of silent music, a quiet serenade of water lilies in a deep-green pond or a loud trumpeting from the white, extravagant bouquet exploding with elation.
“Before, I always listened to classical music when I painted, but, a few years ago, I stopped,” she said. “Now, I paint in silence. I still love music, but not when I paint. Maybe, it happened because there is so much noise around us, with the internet and the city life.” She doesn’t want the ambient noise of the urban sprawl to interfere with her paintings. “I want to create a mood,” she said. “I want to make people happy.”
Not surprisingly, people find delight in her paintings. In the past five years, she has been participating in the Eastside Culture Crawl, and sales – a challenge for any artist – have been encouraging. She has donated several of her paintings to various medical establishments around Vancouver, and her website also gets lots of traffic.
Her commissions have become almost a business, and she treats them as such. She starts practically every day with a few hours in her studio. “Each painting becomes a project to complete,” she said. “When clients come to me with a commission, my interior designer’s background kicks in. They have a vision of what they want: a size, a shape, a place on a wall in their home. I understand someone’s vision. It doesn’t make me feel constricted. If I’m able to get their vision right – the size, the colour scheme, the overall impression – I’m glad.”
Dressed in Colour is on display until Feb. 24. For more information about Morris and her work, visit lmdesignsstudio.com.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Artist Dina Goldstein is a proven storyteller, so it’s not surprising that she was asked to take part in the exhibit Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid, which opened at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco on Sept. 28. Metro Vancouverites will also have the chance to see her photographic interpretations of 11 “classic Jewish tales” – Snapshots from the Garden of Eden – at the Zack Gallery this month.
Jewish Folktales Retold was inspired by the book Leaves from the Garden of Eden: One Hundred Classic Jewish Tales by Howard Schwartz (Oxford University Press, 2008). As CJM executive director Lori Starr explains on the exhibit’s website: “Schwartz elucidates four varieties of these tales: fairy tales, folktales, supernatural tales and mystic tales. Fairy tales, he writes, are ‘fantasies of enchantment.’… Folktales ‘portray the lives of the folk as they imagined them, with … magical and divine intervention.’… Supernatural tales portray fears about the powers of evil entities and, finally, mystical tales are teaching stories of the great rabbis.”
“I was asked to participate over a year and a half ago,” Goldstein told the Independent. “At first, I discussed this with the curator, Pierre-François Galpin. At that time, I was planning on starting another series and I told Pierre-François that I just couldn’t take this on, as I saw it as quite an ambitious project.”
But, Goldstein was curious enough that she asked Galpin – who worked with CJM chief curator Renny Pritikin on the exhibit – to send her Leaves from the Garden of Eden so she could take a look.
“After receiving it,” she said, “I found that I really enjoyed reading these ancient stories. I told him that I could possibly photograph a few pieces as a contributing artist.
“I became intrigued by a few specific characters in the book and proceeded to take on more than I had anticipated at the beginning. I continued to photograph 11 pieces for the exhibit. I also decided to photograph the series in black-and-white large-scale tableau.”
Goldstein had free creative rein. “The museum did not give me any direction at all,” she said. “In fact, I came back to them with the chosen characters and ideas that I had for the retelling of these folktales. They did not see the work until it was completed.”
Dina Goldstein was one of the artists whose work was commissioned by the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco for the exhibit Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid. (photo from Dina Goldstein)
The characters Goldstein has reinvented for contemporary audiences include Lilith (from the story “The Queen of Sheba”), Elijah (“The Cottage of Candles”), Golem (“The Golem”), King Solomon (“The King’s Dream”), the Princess in the Tower (in the story of the same name), the positive spirit Ibbur (“The Soul of the Ari”), the malicious spirit Dybbuk (“The Dybbuk in the Well”), the Tree of Life (“An Apple from the Tree of Life”) and Ashmodai (“The Bride of Demons”). She has also created an image inspired by the story “The Hair in the Milk.”
“I selected characters that were relevant and reappear throughout many of the tales in the collection,” Goldstein told the Independent. “I chose characters from each of the four types of tales: folktales, fairy tales, supernatural and mythical tales.”
She created two images for Ashmodai.
“I very much enjoyed this narrative, ‘The Bride of Demons,’ with relevant themes of desire and retribution,” said Goldstein. “The story is quite long, so I wanted to create a diptych to illustrate and interpret it in my own way.”
The Snapshots catalogue explains, “A devil king, Ashmodai is mentioned in talmudic legends and Renaissance Christianity. He is regarded as the demon of lust and is responsible for twisting people’s sexual desires.”
In one of the Ashmodai images, a woman in a bridal dress looks happily at herself in a half-length mirror; there are other mirrors in the room, which show her from different angles. In the second image, we see what looks like a garden, with the woman, buried, screaming, only her head and bridal veil above ground. The quote accompanying this disturbing scene is, “… And he longed to look at her … but he remembered the words of the rabbi and did not turn his gaze away from the king of demons. If he had, he would have seen his bride buried in the earth up to her neck, for she was almost lost to the Devil.”
All of Goldstein’s tableaux are striking, fascinating to explore and contemplate.
“I very much enjoyed uncovering these richly textured ancient tales and short stories, which include magnificent characters: kings and queens, princes and princesses, witches, mystics and malevolent wandering spirits,” she said. “Each of the characters face extraordinary challenges – placed in front of them by fate – that they must overcome. Every society is replete with myths and legends that transform and bend into parables that attempt to make order of life. It is this impact on culture, old and new, that led me to create a body of work that plays with satire, metaphor and irony.”
Goldstein’s photographic creations challenge viewers’ perceptions, asking them to reconsider the stories they’ve been told. Her collections include Fallen Princesses, which imagines how 10 of Disney’s princesses would face the challenges of real women; In the Dollhouse, which focuses on Ken and Barbie’s not so happily ever after; Gods of Suburbia, which brings various deities down to earth; and Modern Girl, which looks at consumerism in Western culture using the imagery of Chinese pinup girls from the 1930s.
The creative process for Snapshots from the Garden of Eden was similar to that of these previous works.
“I do my usual research online and then I hit the library for historical references,” said Goldstein. “I like to get a sense of how these characters have been depicted in art throughout history, what has been written about them from various sources. Many of these characters are actual historical figures. Others are supernatural and exist in various forms throughout the stories.”
It took her eight months to produce and photograph the series, she said. “Much of my work is in preproduction, organizing the cast and crew, the locations, and collecting all of the props and costumes and details that are germane to the final result of the piece.”
She concluded, “I am very fortunate to live in the city which has so much talent to utilize. All of the cast and crew are from Vancouver. I reached out on Facebook and social media to find all sorts of strange items – people pulled together to help out. I am thankful to Gordon Diamond, who has been a great supporter of my work throughout the years. Gordon will donate the series for viewing at the Jewish Community Centre in December.”
And, because of that, local community members will have the chance to see Goldstein’s work at the Zack. Snapshots from the Garden of Eden opens Dec. 14, 7 p.m., and runs until Jan. 20.
Pnina Granirer’s current art exhibit, which is at the Zack Gallery until Dec. 12, features work highlighted in her memoir, Light Within the Shadows. (photo by Olga Livshin)
Pnina Granirer has always been an experimenter. She enjoys trying new artistic techniques, forms and directions. Consistently ignoring the trends, she has forged her own path towards meaning and beauty.
Granirer’s memoir, Light Within the Shadows, was launched on Nov. 16, as part of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. The event was held in conjunction with the opening of her solo show at the Zack Gallery. As the exhibit includes some of the same paintings and drawings Granirer highlighted in the memoir, it serves as a mini-retrospective of her artistic life.
“People often told me, you had such an interesting life, you should write about it,” she said in an interview with the Independent. So, she did. “I wrote bits and pieces over the years, but my painting always interfered. I’d get distracted by a painting or a series and I would forget what I wrote before. I realized that I couldn’t paint and write at the same time.”
The concept of time is significant. “Time is what differentiates visual art from any other creative expression, like writing or music,” she explained. “According to some research, people in a museum spend an average of three seconds in front of a painting. But, to read a book or listen to a symphony or watch a movie, they have to spend hours. The same is true from the creator’s point of view. When I look at my painting, I see everything at once, all the details. I know what and where I have to fix. But, when I looked at my manuscript, I needed to read from the beginning to remember the details I had written in the previous chapters. I needed time.”
To solve this dilemma, she stopped painting about four years ago to concentrate on writing. “I wanted to tell my story and, for that, I needed words. Painting wasn’t enough anymore,” she said.
Granirer started by reading a number of memoirs. She took creative writing classes. She delved into history and studied old family photographs, while researching her family roots. And she wrote.
“By 2015, I had a very long manuscript, but I still didn’t have the ending. Then, in June 2015, we visited Romania, the country of my birth, for the first time in 65 years. When we came back, I ended up in a hospital. Had two surgeries. Suddenly, I knew what the ending was. I was fortunate. Serendipity is the new motto of mine. Of course, my life was not all roses, but I cherished everything good that happened to me.”
A consummate professional in everything she does, Granirer knew that finishing a manuscript was only half the job. “I needed to structure it in a way that would make sense,” she said. “I decided on a story in three acts to highlight the three stages of my life, three languages, three countries: Romania, Israel, North America.”
She also had to deal with one of the most important considerations for any memoir writer: the people who feature in the book, especially the ones who are still alive. Granirer was very sensitive about the issue. “When you write a memoir,” she said, “you have to think about other people’s feelings, of course, but it was my book, my life. I tried to avoid offending anyone, but I felt I had to be as honest as possible. I didn’t lie. If I couldn’t say anything nice about someone, I often skipped that person. I did mention some disappointments in the book but, mostly, I focused on how lucky I was.”
After that, it was time for test readers. “I asked a few people to read the manuscript, and the feedback was very encouraging. Then I found a wonderful editor – Pat Dobie. She did a stellar job. She cut off about half the text, everything that wasn’t my story, but rather historical background or stories of the other members of my family. Pat said it takes the reader away from my story. She also rearranged some sections and paragraphs to make the flow better.”
The next step – publication. Again, Granirer embarked on a period of extensive research. “I thought about traditional publishing and contemplated looking for an agent, but I didn’t have the time,” she said. “I’m in my 80s. When you send a book to an agent or a publisher, you have to wait for a year to get an answer, and it might not be a yes. But, even if it is, and they accept it, it would take another year or two until publication.”
To skip that waiting time, she published the book herself, with the help of Granville Island Publishing. “They were great,” said Granirer.
Yet more research was needed to choose the right title and the right cover. Of course, the cover would be one of her paintings; that was never in question. It was an artist’s memoir after all. But which painting? After browsing through her archives, Granirer finally picked the painting that became the cover. “It has my son’s footprints, when he was young, like a child’s journey. It seemed fitting,” she explained.
Selecting which illustrations should accompany each of her story’s three phases was another crucial task. “Some of the paintings I included are still in my studio, others have been sold, but I have the JPG files,” she said.
Now, she is deeply involved in the next stage of the publishing business – promotion. As she does everything in her life, she approaches it with panache and determination. In her publishing endeavour, like in her art, she is aiming for total success.
Granirer’s art is at the Zack until Dec. 12.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Norbert Mantik and Rebekah McGurran of the Hive Printing. (photo from Rebekah McGurran)
The Eastside Culture Crawl is an annual tradition. This year marks the 21st time that artists and craftspeople on Vancouver’s Eastside have opened up their studios to the public in the fall. The Crawl runs Nov. 16-19, and includes more than 500 artists in 80 locations. Among the artists featured are Jewish community members Ideet Sharon-Martin and Rebekah McGurran.
Sharon-Martin hails from Israel. She studied computer animation and, since graduating from the Vancouver Film School in 1998, she has been working as an animator full-time. But, she has always loved art and, in the last couple of years, has resumed painting, as well. Visitors to her studio (204-1000 Parker St.) will be delighted by her mixed media representations of origami birds soaring through various images.
“I find the Eastside Culture Crawl beautiful,” she said in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “The artists are so welcoming and open. Actually, the Eastside Culture Crawl is what brought me back to painting. I started attending it in the last five years, and what began as ‘feel good’ inspiration became this strong need to create with the more traditional mediums than the computer, which is my day job. After three years of attending, I started stalking the art supply shops. At that time, I had a lot of self-judgment; I didn’t think I really had anything to offer to the art industry besides animation. When I finally finished procrastinating and started painting, I was amazed at how exciting and fun it was. I had a feeling that I arrived ‘home.’”
She paints on weeknights and weekends. “Animation and painting are each their own entity,” she said. “During my animation job, I explore and implement acting, physics and body language into the characters I am animating, but I work exclusively on my PC. When I am at my art studio, my inner child comes out and gets messy with the paints and papers and glue. I lose myself in the process and, as a result, find myself.”
The origami birds appeared in her paintings a few months after she picked up the brush again. “The birds symbolize freedom,” she explained. “I woke up one day around that time and realized that I had the freedom to make the choices concerning my life. It was empowering. I began questioning whether I was living the life I wanted or if I was doing what everyone else wanted me to do. The birds have accompanied me on that journey, or personal growth. They ascend, and I imagine myself with them.”
Sharon-Martin’s children inspire her birds, as well as her dreams, but there is also another inspiration, one that seldom appears in artist statements: quantum physics. “I am a quantum physics nerd,” she said. “I read a lot about it. It fascinates me that, at the quantum level, everything is connected. Us, the trees, the animals, the chair I am sitting on – they are all parts of a unified field. I think a lot about the connection between energy and physical form, how each seems to affect the other. It definitely affects my art: energetic and geometric layers and patterns explored on canvas.”
In addition to selling original paintings, Sharon-Martin also sells prints of her paintings. “I’m not the only one,” she said. “Artists do it to bridge the gap between art and people. Many people don’t feel that original art is accessible to them. Perhaps it isn’t affordable. In some cases, the art world is so foreign to them that they are unsure how to approach it. I am so happy that I offered prints last year. I noticed that many people felt more comfortable to flip through the prints rather than look at the originals. My prints led to connections and to many great conversations, which may not have happened otherwise. Last year, a woman who bought a print contacted me a few months later to purchase the original.”
Affordable artwork takes many forms, not just prints to hang on a wall. McGurran and her partner Norbert Mantik sell custom-made T-shirts, towels, bags and other merchandise, all printed with their original designs. Their small artisan studio at 1895 Powell St. is called the Hive Printing.
“This is our third year doing the Crawl,” said McGurran, who was born in Vancouver, but lived in Toronto for a time before returning to live here. “I think it’s an amazing event for both the public and the artists. It gives the public access to spaces and studios they may not otherwise see and a chance to meet artists on their own ground instead of in a craft show setting…. For artists, it is a lower-barrier way to introduce their art to the public than some of the more expensive juried craft fairs.”
McGurran has a degree in urban planning and environmental studies from Toronto’s York University.
“My partner and I moved to Vancouver from Toronto five years ago and decided we wanted to try something different,” she explained. “We looked into a few businesses and loved the idea of going creative. We bought an existing screen printing shop with the idea to do our own line of design. Before we took over, the shop just did custom printing.”
The Hive does both custom printing and original designs. “My partner actually executes the designs, with feedback from me,” said McGurran. “He has a background in industrial and graphic design, as well as a little bit of experience with screen printing, but, for the most part, we both sort of learned screen printing on the fly. It was a lot of research, trial and error, as well as assistance from some local experts in the field. Running a small business is challenging, but I come to work every day with my partner and my dog and I’m never bored.”
According to McGurran, one of the nicest aspects of being a craftsperson is participating in artisan events such as the Crawl.
“I love the Crawl,” she said, “because it means that people come to us and see the process, as well as our space. The studio is in an old bank building, complete with a vault we use as a darkroom. I think people have a much better appreciation for the work we do if they see us in action.”
