Nestled among lead frogs and old coins, Susan Brooks still has the first piece of jewelry she ever bought. It’s a quarter-sized oval of cut pink quartz she picked up at a trinket shop on City Island in the Bronx.
Holding the rock up to the eye, one can virtually live out the cliché of viewing the world through rose-colored glasses. The quartz yields a kaleidoscopic effect, which is how Brooks remembers much of high school. Her view was from the back row, through the pink crystal.
It’s just as well. Trigonometry class has come and gone, but Brooks is still gazing at jewelry.
Sixteen years ago, Brooks, who is Jewish, co-founded the Berkeley Artisans Holiday Open Studios, featuring some 50 artists in a dozen locations. This year’s open house, scheduled for next Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 24 and 25, and the first three weekends in December, has swelled to nearly 30 locations and 100 artists exhibiting their hand-painted, sculpted or electroplated wares in their own studios.
“I just went around and knocked on everybody’s door and asked them if they wanted to participate with us. And that’s how this was born,” she recalls with a laugh.
And, as the total number of participating artists continues to grow, the percentage of Jewish artists has remained relatively constant at a whopping 33 percent.
Brooks has no idea why so many of her fellow Jews are involved in the Berkeley art scene — she can only speak for herself.
On that score, her own immersion in the world of art began before she could even walk, when she was carried into New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art by her art-loving family. Some of her earliest memories are of hours spent gazing at suits of armor, medieval jewelry and portraits of European nobles decked out in finery.
Much of that family tradition remains. Brooks cuts, saws and hammers her Modigliani-like figures into silver pendants and necklaces with tools her father, a toymaker, built.
A few twists and turns down the narrow, high-ceilinged hallway in the former factory building leads to a pottery studio so full of teapots that the phrase “all the tea in China” seems tangible.
But Dina Gewing’s inspiration for her
teapots doesn’t come from China, but from Israel. Among her many large teapots is a striking blue one called “Dome of the Rock.” And you needn’t be a Middle Eastern scholar to notice the familiar blue hues and sharp golden archways of the Jerusalem mosque. But you might not notice the unpainted earth-toned base of the pot that represents Solomon’s temple.
“I took a pilgrimage to Israel when I was 17,” said Gewing, an Oakland native who attended Skyline High School slightly after Tom Hanks and concurrently with rapper M.C. Hammer.
“I met up with kibbutzniks, Palestinians, everybody. And I was just fascinated by the architecture and history.”
Like the actual Dome of the Rock and Solomon’s Temple, she has built her pottery to last.
“These are not for show. They’re meant to be used,” she said.
Going back through the building’s hallways, one comes to a black steel door. Upon opening it, however, one is treated to a lush, colorful and vibrantly lighted world, not unlike stumbling into Narnia through a musty old wardrobe.
But in this case, one doesn’t encounter a faun wearing a scarf, just the scarves. Those are the handiwork of Ruth Spencer, a Czechoslovakian-born Holocaust survivor who, following retirement, felt a need to “do something with my hands.”
Spencer’s scarves are not woven and don’t resemble your standard neckwear in any way. They look a bit like intertwined vines or colorful musical staffs — without the notes and made from felt.
The scarves are created via a labor-intensive process called “felting.” The odor of industrial-strength soap permeates Spencer’s studio, where she just finished soaking a handful of scarves with soapy water prior to spreading them out to dry.
All the artists want to have ample stock for the upcoming open house. “What Susan is doing is a mitzvah, and a Jewish mitzvah ingrained in her upbringing,” Gewing said, referring to the upcoming open house. “She promotes the artists here like no other.”
The Berkeley Artisans Holiday Open Studios will be held the weekends of Nov. 24-25, Dec. 1-2, Dec. 8-9 and Dec. 15-16 at various locations. For more information, visit www.berkeleyartisans.com or call (510) 845-2612.