A
woman who grew up in North
Minneapolis told us this
story about chickens who
slept next to her
grandmother's bed each
weekend prior to being
butchered for
dinner. While I call
it Sleeping with the
Chickens, my husband has
renamed it Death Row.
I remember after I
was born that we lived on
Emerson also.
When my aunt Tillie, my
grandmother’s oldest daughter,
when she decided to take a
vacation for a weekend or
something.My mother had a sister
that lived in Wisconsin.So
she would decide to go up to
Wisconsin to see her sister.They
didn’t want my grandmother to
live alone so who do they pick
to go live with my
grandmother? Me.
I
remember my grandmother had a
one bedroom apartment, it was
upstairs.She lived upstairs.She
had a mattress must have been
about that thick (holds hands
two to three feet apart), all
feathers you know, and a stool
to get up.So when it was time to
go to bed, I crawled in to get
into bed to sleep with her . .
. next to the bed my
grandmother hadtwo live chickens in a
box and I was deathly afraid
of chickens and that’s where I
had to sleep that night with
the live chickens there.
. . . She’d go to
the shoykhet, if you
understand my Jewish, and have
the chickens killed.She’d
carry them to the shoykhet and
come back and flick them.Sit
in the back yard and flick
‘em.Every
time on a weekend.She’d
go like on a Friday morning
before Shabbos started and get
her chickens and when I’d come
to sleep with her she’d have
the chickens Friday.And
every time I went I had to go
sleep there and I had to sleep
with those chickens.I’ll
never forget that.I
was scared to death that
night.
When I
do an interview I begin with a
basic history. One of
the questions is when their
parents died and at what age,
normally a routine
question. When I asked
Boris, a Russian immigrant and
survivor, when his mother
died, I got the response "She
was shot when she was
39". With that I
knew this was not going to be
an easy interview. He
then elaborated and told me
that his mother, father and
two sisters were in a
concentration camp and
building a bunker for
Hitler. When they
finished, they were
executed. Boris was a
child at the time.
After the war he searched for
a picture of anyone in his
family. This painting is
based on the one image he
located, a sepia colored
school picture of his sister
set in the shape of a
leaf. I decided to echo
that form in additional leaves
with the names of his family
members who perished written
in Russian. I wanted the
image to be muted as if seen
through a glass.
Shirley
had fond memories of the North
Side of Minneapolis and
recounted for us her memory as
a child of the old Lyndale
shul.
We
went to the old shul on
Lyndale, the Lyndale
shul. That was a
beautiful building, it was
just gorgeous, it really was
the prettiest one ever built
in this whole state.
It had the columns. When you
walked in there you felt you
were in a shul, you were in
a house of worship.
You weren’t just in a fancy
place where this one had
candy and this one was
serving…No you went to a
shul. And of course
the women sat
upstairs. I sat
upstairs with my
mother. And I don’t
know how anybody would pray
there because everybody was
talking to somebody else,
kissing all the kids and
talking to someone else.
And
if it got late, they’d go to
shul and they’d have
services, a week before the
holidays they’d have a late
service until 11 o’clock at
night. It was always later
with the orthodox shuls
because they had more to
say. It always took
more than it said so in the
book. They had more to
read, they had more to say,
then they would stop and
they would talk to somebody
here and they’d talk to
somebody there and they’d
stand there with a big gavel
and say, “Lozan shah”. You
know people would talk so
they would say “Lozan
shah”. My mother would
give me her coat and I’d
cover up and lay down on the
empty seats around there and
sleep until they were
through. My father
would carry me home.
When I painted this
image I thought about the
women's balcony as a unique
world, separate from that of
the men. I wanted it
to be defined while the
world of the men below was
blurred and
indistinct. I pictured
it from a child's
perspective, being lulled to
sleep by the voices and with
her mother's hand resting on
her creating a sense of
safety and security.
My
interview with
Fannie was filled
with legacy stories.
The central image in
this painting is
drawn from a story
she told about her
mother.
My mother was
always afraid that
we wouldn’t
remember anything
she said or did
... and she wanted
the children to
know that she had
a life... all of
the things that
she did and saw
and heard and she
was afraid that it
would all be
forgotten.
And so she chose
me as her
spokesperson. She
would always grab
me in from play
and there would be
a cup of coffee
and milk and a
caramel roll and
she’d say .
. ."Eat,
listen to what I
say and then
Shrayb es arop,
write it down." .
. .
. . . And one day
I came home, she
was staying with
us and she was
burning all kinds
of papers,
citizenship
papers, a whole
bunch of them was
on the floor in a
bag. And she
was destroying
them. And I
yelled, “What are
you doing?”
And she says, “Did
you shrayb, write
it down?”
And at first I
didn’t know what
she was talking
about, and I said,
“no”.
Well so what do I
need all this for?
Who’s going to
care? No
one’s going to
care! "
And then I said,
“Mama, please.” .
. . Well she
stopped destroying
and ...in my old
age I discovered I
could write, I
didn’t know how,
but the kids
bought me a word
processor. I
was 77 and I
remembered Shrayb
es arop, that
would be the
title.
When I asked
Fannie if there was
something she grew
up with that is
still part of her
life she told me
of the Sabbath
candlesticks that
her grandmother
packed in her
mother's luggage
when she came
to America.
The
final image
relates to a
story from
1926 about her
father
designing a
pair of
candelabras
with electric
lights for the
synagogue in
response to a
fire caused by
the use of
candles. The
candelabras
have survived
to this day.
When I begin a painting I think about all
of the stories
from the person
and what images
I associate with
them. I
realized that
many of Fannie's
stories related
to light, fire
and legacy so I
began with a
ground that was
the color of
fire. I
then pulled out
the suggestion
of the
candelabras in
the background
and used an
image I had of
her mother as
the central
figure holding
the flaming
papers of her
legacy. A
candle in the
200 year old
candlestick
symbolizes the
passing of time.
Zelda
was a presence at Beth Jacob
where she was known as Grandma
Zelda. When we asked her
how her role evolved she
replied, "Through the
children. Because I
always love children and they
know it. The kids at
Beth Jacob know it. I’m
only known as Grandma Zelda,
Grandma Zelda.
Two little boys came up to me
and one said, “Hi Grandma
Zelda, how are you?"
And the other one looked at
him and said, She your
grandma?
And the first one said “Yes
she’s my grandma and she’s
everybody’s grandma. And he
goes like this (pointing) and
listen she could be your
grandma too if you want her to
so the second one says,
“Do you think she would be”
and the first one said, “All
you have to do is ask her”, so
he comes up to me and he says,
“Can I ask you
something?”
And I jokingly said, “Is it
going to cost me money?”and he
said , “no, would you be my
Grandma Zelda?”
I almost…I had tears in my
eyes. I said, “I would be
happy to be your Grandma
Zelda, but when you see me
what are you going to say to
me?
“No problem, if it’s on
Shabbos I’ll say Good Shabbos
Grandma Zelda. If its on
any other time I’ll say, Hi
Grandma Zelda, how are you?” Kids to me are beautiful,
I love children. I’ll take all
the time in the world to talk
to them and if they have
anything to say that they want
me to help them, I’ll be there
for them because I love kids. I was never married, but
I have a lot of
grandchildren. I have a
lot of grandchildren.
When I began this painting it
seemed that it had to be a
portrait as Zelda was so central
to the story. As it
evolved I felt that I needed to
have children filling the frame
as well as her role to so many
children was also an important
part of the story. But
that story resided in a home,
that of Beth Jacob so I selected
an architectural detail of the
building and housed Zelda and
her countless grandchildren
within it.
Fannie
was deeply involved in her
Jewish heritage. In
the course of our
interview she expounded on
her view of Yiddishkeit.
If you’re
Jewish and you don’t
display or tell or show
that you are Jewish,
you’ve lost it and then
we’ve lost it, we’ve
lost something.
Yiddishkeit is every
day. You can’t
just put it aside before
Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur.
Yiddishkeit has to be
spontaneous, it isn’t
locked in little
cubbyholes. It’s a way
of living, it’s a way of
living. It’s
part of being part of
the synagogue, no matter
which one it is, it’s
part of being body and
soul of every day living
and believing of what
they do and
knowing what it is
Tzedakah and
Mitzvah. Those are
natural words and
natural things, they are
things that happen and
you make them happen and
you learn to give from
the time you’re that
high. So it isn’t,
“well I’ll think about
it”. You may think
about increasing or
decreasing your
contributions, but you
don’t think about
contributing for your
synagogue and your
Hadassah and your
council and everything
else. It just
comes naturally and it
has to and that’s
Yiddishkeit.
In
painting this I tried to
incorporate key phrases,
you see the suggestion of
cubbyholes in the
background, but the
spontaneity of which she
spoke is reflected in a
waterfall of words.
If you look closely you
will see Mitzvah, Tzedakah
and Tikkun Olam. She had
talked about using her
hands, another expression
of spontaneity. I painted
them, but decided they
looked rather disembodied
without her face so added
it. Only when I finished
did I notice that the
"waterfall of words"
resembles a prayer shawl.
I
was going to school on March
15, 1935 on the day Germany
invaded Czechoslovakia, I
was there. My parents
were in Romania. I went to
school on that day.
They had sentries in
front. I walked up the
steps of the school.
By the entrance were a bunch
of hoodlums with swastikas
on their sleeve.
“Juden raus”. They
wouldn’t let any Jews into
that school.
Walter
was able to return to his
home in Romania on the last
train to leave for there
from Czechoslovakia.
My mother’s history
is that at age 5 her family
moved to the US so my mother
was brought up here.
At that time in 1939 the war
started already and
Czechoslovakia was already
occupied and Romania was
going to be next. So
my parents made frantic
efforts to get out. They
were on a quota system, so
many but not more.
Because of her background in
America, she went to school
here. She had to
show evidence to the
American consulate that she
had been in America.
By chance her sister who
lived in America was a good
friend of her former teacher
and she once met her and
asked her, ”Is there any
evidence that my sister
Bessie was your student?”
She says she has a class
picture. So my mother
had to show that picture to
the American Consulate and
said, “This is me, I was
there”. And on that
basis she was able to get a
visa to get the whole family
in.
Walter's
family boarded the last
refugee ship that left
Italy. On the way to
the United States, Italy
declared war on France in
1940. After
Pearl Harbor, Walter joined
the army. He was sent to
Camp Ritchie, a basic training
camp for people who spoke
German fluently, most were
refugees from Central
Europe. They were taught
to interrogate prisoners of
war. After the war he was
stationed in Czechoslovakia
where his story began. Walter
recounted his visit to
relatives, one of whom had
survived the camps. The
people came to the door
slightly opening it. What is
a man in uniform doing
here? They were
suspicious of people in
uniform anyway. So
they opened the door and I
said, “Bessie Schwartz my
mother is sending you
greetings”.
I was intrigued with the idea
of the cracked door with
family members peering out and
moving from suspicion to
joy. His experience as a
Ritchie boy was an important
part of his legacy so I wanted
to do an image with him in
uniform. I was also
struck by the chanciness of
his escape, the last boat, the
last train and a school
picture all figured in the
story.
My
interview with Trudy, a
survivor from Stuttgart,
started with her early
experience in Nazi
Germany. Trudy's
father was taken to a
concentration camp and then
released on the condition that
he leave Germany.
My father had
to report to the Gestapo
every week about his
immigration and he was
in danger if he wouldn’t
go away they would take
him back (to the
concentration
camp). So we
waited a little bit and
they came up with a trip
to Shanghai. Shanghai opened, and
let the Jews come
in. I was included
too, my passport was not
ready. My parents
left in 1939, beginning
September and they said
two weeks later goes a
second transport to China, Shanghai and I could be
on that boat. But
in those two weeks the
war broke out.
That’s how I was stuck
in Germany.
Trudy talked about
the abandoned towns of
Germany after the war as
the Germans ran from the
Russians. Every night we
stayed overnight in a
different house in a
different village and
all the villages, this
was in Germany, all the
villages were empty, the
houses. The
Germans did run away
from the Russians, they
left and left everything
behind so we had
food.... We went in
and chose a house where
we could stay and I was
sick and a few of our
friends were sick.
After
the war Trudy was reunited
with her parents in
Minneapolis. Her
father lived for six more
years and passed away on a
vacation to New Ulm, a
German town in Minnesota.
After the
funeral of my father I
got a postcard in the
mail from my father,
from New Ulm, and he
writes, “We have such a
good time, everyone
speaks German here,
German, born in Germany,
raised in Germany and
the food is so good,
German food”.
This painting incorporates
many of the images from
Trudy's stories. I
imagined her chasing after
the boat to Shanghai,
passport in hand.
Surrounding her is the
writing from the postcard
with the stamp and postmark
from New Ulm.The
words of her father
emphasize the importance
of their German heritage
even when Germany had
turned on them.The
monument in the foreground
is Herman the German, a
monument in New Ulm, a
Minnesota town with largely
German roots. The
German houses at the top are
abandoned with doors open
and curtains flying in the
wind. Only after I was
done did I notice a theme
within the painting.
The stamp has the image of
the Statue of Liberty, its
raised arm echoed by Herman
and by Trudy.
This
interview was with a Polish
survivor who was a child when
the war broke out.
He claimed he was older in
order to survive. Prior
to the events he describes
below, he was working in the
crematorium at Auschwitz.
Then
they (the Nazis) need a
transport to go to Warsaw.But
they didn’t take any people
who speak Polish, but they
didn’t know … I could speak
Polish.So
I got in between the French
and the Italians and the
Greeks and I got into Warsaw…The
Warsaw ghetto was bombed.People
were laying on the basements
there like flies. (Note:
subsequently said that he was
sent into destroyed buildings
for bricks to sell and found
corpses of those who had been
trapped in the ghetto.He
covered them with sand.)
So what they did is to blow up
the rest of it, the rest of
the building and they covered
up the other ones.Then
I had to do clean up with the
bricks and the Polish people
came in and they were buying
those things, the bricks from
the Germans.The Polish people came
in with a horse and a wagon
and they were buying those
bricks from the Germans.When
they got in they had to pay so
much and they had to show me a
piece of paper, how many
bricks they need to buy.So I
gave them the bricks they
needed to buy and sometimes I
ask them if they have bread or
something like that. Pretty
soon they got smart, they
brought me a bread, they
brought me a salami and I gave
them those bricks.I
gave them instead of 20
bricks, I gave them 25 bricks.
See the five bricks they had a
hole on the wagon and they put
it in the holder so the
Germans, because they count
the bricks when they went out.
They
gave them 20 bricks and
going out they had to show
the paper that they got 20
bricks, so they went up on
the wagon and count the
bricks, but they didn’t
count the other ones.
In
the background of this
painting is the line of Warsaw
after its destruction.
Only a church remained.
I wanted to capture the
imagery of a horse and wagon
belonging to the local Poles
who were purchasing the bricks
as well as our subject who was
loading the cart with
bricks. The sky is dark
and hazy as one would expect
in a bombed out city.
One
of our interviews was with a
woman who lived on the Iron
Range, an area in Northern
Minnesota where Jewish
communities have largely
disappeared. She has
fond memories of Virginia,
Minnesota which today has a
population of about 9,000 and
only two remaining Jews.
I
really liked living
(there). We had a
Hadassah, we had every
organization the Jewish
people have in the cities on
a smaller scale and we made
different affairs to raise
money. It was
wonderful living there.
The
synagogue has been turned into
a community center as the
Jewish population diminished.
Because the Jewish population
was small there was much more
interaction with their
neighbors and she fondly
remembers sharing traditions
with her non-Jewish neighbors.
I
never once met a person that
I thought was
anti-Semitic. My
friends in Virginia were
some Gentiles and they had
us for Christmas and I had
them for Yom Kippur.
They learned how to make
knishes. I taught them how
to make knishes.
I used to make bagels.
We were the best of friends.
In
deciding how to capture this I
studied videos of people
making knishes and combined
them in an image of hands
engaged in a shared
activity. Behind them is
the suggestion of a Christmas
tree to reflect the sharing of
traditions.
I
especially liked this image
from the painting Lozan Sha
and decided to develop it in a
small painting. I did a
detailed synagogue painting
and then coated it with a wash
of white. I
especially liked the
mysterious feeling of the
altered painting. As I didn't
have an image of the interior
of the synagogue, I based it
on her description as observed
as a child, For the broader
story please go to Lozan Sha.
This
painting developed out of the
Sleeping With Chickens
image. I found that I
was drawn to the gaze between
the young woman and the
chicken as she watched it in
terror. That seemed to
be the central part of the
image. Feathers flying
in blue and white opposition
completed the image.
Here I made the young woman
into a young girl as I was
contemplating how the image
would work in a children's
story and was experimenting
with a younger subject.
I
found that when I did the
paintings in the Identity and
Legacy series, there were
often aspects that I
wanted to explore
further. This image is
an excerpt from Lozan
Sha. I liked the form of
the sleeping girl with her
mother's hand resting on her,
connoting a sense of peace and
safety. I decided to
explore it in a close up image
with a focus on the face, the
hand above forming a frame
with the hand on which she
rests.
This
painting is based on a story of
the Kindertransport during
WWII. At 16 Hanna was sent
by her German Jewish family to
live in England with a Quaker
family. There she adjusted
to the loss of her family as
well as a new life, country and
language. Her only
connection to her former world
were the letters transmitted by
the Red Cross that she received
from her parents, carefully
preserved in her picture albums.
She told me that one couldn’t
say much in these letters
because other eyes were
watching. Hanna showed little
affect as she talked about her
family and the war. She
carefully managed her emotions.
Her story was best told in what
wasn’t said. In answer to the
question of how she knew her
parents were no longer alive she
replied, “everything stopped”.
Her parents had been very
good about sending Red Cross
letters to her, fondly signed
Vati and Mutti, until they could
no longer send them. Later she
learned that her father, mother
and brother all died in
Auschwitz.
I pictured a void
of silence. Nothing coming, a
black hole and began to paint it
in the corner of the canvas. As
I painted that black hole it
reminded me of an ear,
the dark center of it, listening
anxiously for word that doesn't
come. It occurred to me
that there must have been a long
period of waiting, listening,
before the finality of
"everything stopped" was
acknowledged. It would have been
a gradual, horrifying
realization. By thinking of
Hanna's experience at that time,
the concept of the painting
began to take form. It was to be
of that moment before full
comprehension of loss, when one
anxiously awaits the word which
doesn't come.
The form around the hole began
to take the shape of an ear, not
necessarily recognizable as such
because blues and purples seemed
like the right colors to balance
the painting. And blue is the
color of sadness, loss, so
perhaps it is fitting in an
emotional sense. Above it the
scratched in words, Mutti, Vati,
Halo, their pet name for her.
Rakhil is a
woman in her 90s who immigrated
from Kiev to the United States
to be close to her daughter
Liana. Liana joined us for
the interview and translated for
her mother.
When I asked to what extent
her mother grew up with Judaism
Liana responded, "Her mom
went to synagogue and she kept
kosher. She was
proudly Jewish. She was
singing Jewish songs,
celebrated Jewish
holidays. My mom was
born right after revolution.
Which more like era of atheism
and any religion including
Jewish religion were
persecuted. And Jewish
religion especially. My mom
knew about Jewish holidays
from her mom. Myself,
whatever my mom remembered she
told me, but we couldn’t go. We had one synagogue for
four million people in the
city. One. which
was attended by older people
who have nothing to lose,
retired people, people who
didn’t work. For younger
people, I could lose my
university, I could lose my
job. I could lose everything
if I would be, and I would be
because it was all kind of
monitored, who is going there,
who is coming. I look like her a little
bit and I recognize myself as
a Jew like, as a proud Jew
like grandma and ma.
Rakhil had also spoken about how
her mother would lead them in
songs at the table during Pesach
and proceeded to share the
Yiddish songs she had learned
from her mother. Similarly
she shared how she had learned
how to make gefilte fish from
her mother who in turn learned
from her mother. The
thread that echoed throughout
was the handing down of
knowledge and tradition, shared
through food and song even when
the practice of religion wasn't
possible.
When I painted this I thought of
this long string of women
figuratively sharing the same
table in song, wearing their
Judaica necklace proudly with
the synagogue of Kiev in the
background.
Note the number 5 which
signifies line 5 of the internal
passport that identified one as
Jewish and was the identifier
for much discrimination.
Based on an interview with
Rakhill Scheynkman and Liana
Ravkin
Shirley had
many colorful stories and in
this one she remembered helping
in her father's butcher shop.
And
we spoke only
Jewish (Yiddish),
only, there was no
such thing as not
speaking Jewish.And then my father had the meat
market and
everything in his
meat market, all
his books, books
that people had
orders, every
customer had a
book with their
name in it.Everything
was written in
Jewish you see. I
would help in the
butcher shop.I started to help in there when
I was ten or
eleven years old.
I knew all the
customers.I spoke
Jewish when they
came in to them
and they knew who
I was and if my
father had a cold
and couldn’t come
in, he would cut
up a lot of the
meat and stuff and
get it ready so I
could wait on the
people.And I would
write in English
in their book and
then I would tell
my father and he’d
translate it into
Jewish so he’d
know what was on
there.
They
used to have fresh fish on
weekends on the other
window.My father had made
a tin, a whole tin thing,
separate for each type of
fish.Usually my mother
used to take care of that.
Always, but when my mother
couldn’t be there, or
where she had to help my
dad, they put me in there.I was scared of
those damn fish, they
wiggled and jumped all
over the place. I would
say to the customer, “ You
want this one? (pointing)
and he would say, “Yeah”
and I’d say, “would you
pick it up please and put
it in” and they said yes,
they did, they knew.
When I decided
to paint that image I wanted
Shirley to be small in
relation to the fish as she
no doubt felt. I wrote
the Yiddish word for fish
which looked a bit like fish
scales so then began free
associating imagining the
butcher block paper in which
they wrapped the fish and
turning it into a stream
filled with Yiddish
fish. The yellow aura
represented the movement of
those fish that so unnerved
her.
Bernice was
our first interview and had the
distinction of singing us the
Yiddish song Ofen Pripitchik
which I used between passages in
the videos I created. She
had an exceptional singing voice
and used to be a pianist as
well. She also had a
unique style, always well
groomed and wearing a white
jacket, pink blouse and
pearls. For those reasons,
I decided a portrait was in
order. I wanted to create
the suggestion of a keyboard,
but in this case with the name
of the song on it. To the
side you can see the faint
Yiddish for Alef Bes. The
song is about teaching children
their alphabet and in fact
Bernice was a teacher as well
which made it particularly
fitting.
Bernice also spoke quite a bit
about Yiddish. When we
asked her what she liked about
it she replied, “ There’s a
lot of power in Yiddish, a lot
of fire.”
She then proceeded to tell us of
how she tries to think of new
words that she could bring to
the Yiddish class to stump the
teacher. She then shared
the word she was going to take
to class the following day. “Kasokeh, Have you ever
heard of it. It’s
cross-eyed. There’s another
word….vahikeh. That’s
somebody who stutters. There’s one more I
thought of, but I won’t tell
it to them all in one day.
It’s hard to think of new
words that she doesn’t know."
I asked how you would say if
someone was a cross-eyed
stutterer.
"Ich ben a cusoked vahikeh
mensch. One more,
“Calamutke”, Calamutke means,
it doesn’t mean sad and it
doesn’t mean depressed, it
means something in between."
My interview
with Dorothy Brochin Wittcoff
took me back to the early
history of the Jewish community
in Minneapolis. Dorothy’s
father, Solomon Brochin, came to
the US in 1906 and started an
unusual store. On one side
he sold groceries, on the other
tallesim, religious articles and
Jewish books and
newspapers. He once
remarked, “On one side I give
the customer food for his
stomach, on the other side, I
give him food for his mind.”
His store served as a community
center for the Jewish
community. Dorothy
recalled when she was a very
young child, Chaim Weitzman and
Louis Brandeis visited the
store. She told us, “We
were little kids, but my father
said to us, “You should go and
say hello because these are
going to be hugely important to
the Jewish community.” Between
1915 and 1918 he also assisted
in bringing over Jews from
Russia through coordinating with
a bank in Russia and assisting
local Jews in the purchase of
steamship tickets for friends
and family. The store was so
fundamental to both the
community and the family that I
felt that it should be at the
core of the painting.
Another story that Dorothy told
was about how their Hebrew names
were discarded by their first
grade teacher for Americanized
names, sometimes quite
dramatically. While Dvora
became Dorothy, Shear Yashuv
became Joe. I wrote the
names in Hebrew at the bottom of
the painting while at the top
you will find the Americanized
version. Since this
painting is based on Dorothy’s
story you will see Dvora in
Hebrew on one of the
tallises. After completing
the painting, I added a square
yamulke when Dorothy came to my
studio and told me that he
always wore one in the store.
Based on an interview with
Dorothy Brochin Wittcoff
Harold and
Dorothy were the only couple we
interviewed and they began by
reflecting on their 66 years of
marriage. In the course of our
interview I was struck by their
loving relationship and their
shared spirit of adventure as
they lived around the world,
Harold teaching chemistry and
Dorothy teaching English. At one
point in our interview Harold
put his hand over Dorothy's and
it seemed to capture the spirit
of their relationship. In
the painting it forms a shelter
and rests on the world.
I decided to use chemistry as a
motif and within each flask you
will find elements of their
story with a shadow representing
memory beneath it.
Dorothy's first husband died in
WWII leaving her a young widow
when she met Harold. Her
son told a story of Harold
returning from the wedding and
telling him as a three year old
child that he was his new Daddy.
I decided to make the vial red
for blood which represents the
strength of their tie.
Harold also told of his mother's
immigration to the United States
and her wonder at the glass
ceiling of the Hamburg train
station. This vial is blue as it
represents the gateway to her
ocean voyage. They were
very involved with Labor Zionism
and their son remembers as a
child they went to gatherings
where people dressed in white
and did Israeli dances. The
suggestion of the chemical
structure of salt and of sugar
is in the lower right and upper
left, both elements in a
satisfying life.
This painting felt especially
poignant as Harold passed away
during the time I was developing
it.
Yevginey
Mazo was born in
Belarus in a
small town
called Bykhov.
His father met
his mother when
he was stationed
there in
the military.
They moved to
Minsk when
Yevginey was a
year old, a move
that proved
fortunate in
hindsight.
In 1934, his
father decided
to look for
happiness in
Birobidzhan, a
Jewish
autonomous
republic. He
left the family,
gave Yevginey
three rubles,
and said that
should be enough
for his life,
and they never
saw him again.
Yevginey's mother
was one of 18
children. In
total they had 294
family members in
Bykhov. When
Germans came to
Bykhov, there
was a castle
belonging to a
Polish count.
They gathered
all the
Jews and
they were all
shot in that
castle. Because
Yevginey was in
Minsk, he
survived. He was
drafted and went
to serve in the
Russian army.
Yevginey
Mazo became an
author of many
books, and the
stories he told me
had a somewhat
magical quality to
them. There were so
many unusual stories
I wasn’t quite sure
how to capture them.
Instead I went back
to the beginning, to
a story he told me
about visiting his
grandfather as a
child. Eighteen
carriages of the
many family members
would show up to
greet him.
His grandfather had
a watch with a
golden chain, that
he had told Yevginey
would be his
inheritance, and
Yevginey eagerly
awaited that watch.
As this project was
about legacy, I
decided to paint the
lost legacy. You
will see the
carriages of his
family members
greeting him at the
train station and
his grandfather’s
watch with just a
portion of its gold
chain. Note the
broken link
representing the
loss of family.
On either side you
will find the pages
of a book, carrying
us away in story. In
the sky you will see
the suggestion of
the three rubles
that were his legacy
from his father.
