b.1953
Born: Israel
Active ceramist: 45 years
Why Clay?
To allow for the imprint of my hand. Thanks to the “readiness” of clay I am entranced by its fabulous plasticity to accept what I offer it. The fired clay contains “beauty” within itself, it carries the “beautiful” which is not my concern in the ideas I deal with. Those ideas are the history of culture, construction and destruction, life and death, acquaintance with different layers of the human being similar to the ongoing observation of an archaeological mount.
What do I want to convey?
My works deal with physical and mental disassembling and reassembling. On the one hand, the work preserves memories of places, eras, myths and biographical burdens. On the other hand, something new is created, which carries new meaning. Since the “stitches” between the different images don’t align them into a coherent totality in terms of the drawings as well as the meanings, these joints might be perceived as “temporary”. In this way, the spectator might intuit that the processes of destruction and renewal from the ruins continue to be present in the work, as they were from the origins of nature and culture and in the lives of each of us. Besides the optimism embedded in the renewed life, the chaos and the fragmentation bring up heavy doubts.
What characterizes my work process?
I plan the work in general lines only. I develop them in a playful process of disassembling and reassembling, I collect shards of previous works of mine and other materials, I compose them and test the relationship which emerges between them. I do this again, changing the composition into a different constellation and test again the relationship, and so forth, till I feel it is finally right. Then I add drawing and color to those constructs, not always as a last stage. Often, when I feel that there are too many elements in the composition, I reduce some with the aid of a hammer. In this process of working, meanings are created which join material from my life, art history, archaeology, mythology, zoology and more.
My tools of choice…Can’t create without them:
Hammer, glue and paintbrushes
Absolutely necessary in my working environment
Music, art books, clay shards
