A spectrum of local artists, from long-established to newcomers, has signed on to show their work next month in what has been called the first specifically Jewish open studios in the country.
“Jewish Arts Renaissance,” a weeklong exhibit beginning Sunday, Nov. 14, will showcase the work of 117 Bay Area Jewish artists from Healdsburg to San Jose.
The event takes place at Anselmo’s Cafe and Showroom in Oakland and at venues throughout the East Bay. The Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay is organizing it, along with the Jewish Arts Community of the Bay, or JACOB.
“I never do open studios,” said figurative artist Daryl Grossman, who lives in Fairfax. “This was different, because it meant joining a Jewish community of artists. My work is not Judaica, yet the idea was exciting to me.”
On the other end of the spectrum are artisans whose work is specifically Judaic and meant to be used — like Marjorie Wolf, a textile artist from Piedmont who creates tallitot.
“A lot of strings pull me to this,” said Wolf, who just retired from a 30-year career as a health-care administrator. Wolf majored in textile design at Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts but only now, in her early 50s, is making it her full-time pursuit. “This Jewish open studios came at a perfect time for me.”
Many other artists specialize in Judaica, including Nancy Katz, a Berkeley textile artist and the event’s artist organizer.
“To have visibility in a Jewish arts community that exists globally is thrilling,” she said. “To have federation recognizing us and wanting the community to recognize us — that’s a big deal.”
In addition to drawing and painting, “there are a lot of ceramics, a lot of photography, a lot of sculpture, and a good range of Judaica,” said Jamie Hyams, who came up with the idea for the event and works as community programs director at the federation’s Center for Jewish Living and Learning.
While artists in a number of communities, including San Francisco, hold open studios, this is the first such event with a Jewish focus, Hyams said. “I did a lot of research and this is the first time this has been done anywhere in the country.”
Event chairman Seymour Fromer, the co-founder and director emeritus of Berkeley’s Judah L. Magnes Museum, said the event is definitely meeting a need.
“Our first call for entries was answered by almost 100 people,” he said.
Grossman, who has exhibited in Israel, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver and the North Bay, is representative of many participants who have been producing work in a fine arts context all their adult lives.
He has focused on what he calls “minimal line figure drawings” for three decades. Frequently he paints with twigs — “usually from camellia bushes” — but uses brushes on larger pieces. He will display both portraits and figures in Jewish Arts Renaissance.
“For me, a successful work speaks to and of the human experience,” said Grossman, whose stick-and-ink drawings offer an impressionistic interpretation of the figure. “There need be nothing, no one between the viewer and the art. If it works it is because it is my intention to be understood.”
Tallit artist Wolf, who views the show as an entree into an arts career, hopes to meet other Jewish artists, get creative inspiration and enjoy a new exposure to a community that knows her already as a vice president of the East Bay federation.
“All my wonderful Jewish experiences have had tallit as a part of the experiences,” she said. “I’m looking at new things I can do with this — and, believe it or not, much has changed over the years in textile work, too.”
Organizers say the East Bay is the perfect venue for such an event. For one, the community, which has a large number of live-work lofts, is home to a large number of artists working in a variety of media. For another, Fromer said, there is also a sizable Jewish community in Northern California.
“If it’s fabulously successful, we will have brought unaffiliated people into the Jewish community through art, which is an unusual entry,” Hyams said. “We will have forged a bond between the Jewish establishment and the Jewish arts community. We will give a vibrancy to JACOB, the Jewish arts organization that had its heyday 20 years ago. And we will turn people on to new forms of expression.”
Many established artists besides Grossman have said Jewish Arts Renaissance will be their first open studios experience, Hyams said.
“Several people said they don’t do them because it requires staying open Saturday,” she said. “Or they’re held in December and the feeling is very Christmas-y, trees all around and so on.”
When the planning for the East Bay event was in the works earlier this year, it was conceived as a tour of private studios. But that concept was suddenly clouded by security concerns when a series of firebombings, then shootings, turned the summer acrid. The solution: Fewer sites with more artists — eight to 10 at each one.
“We originally hadn’t planned to have all these centrally located spaces,” Hyams said. “We had to find sites, we had to find wall space, places where we could take nails down, put nails in, show ceramics in, shlep to. But the up side is, now there are fewer sites. When there were 100, chances are each person might have gotten two or three visitors.”
The decision on who will show where “is largely geographic, recognizing the shlep factor,” Katz said.
Work will be shown at the Contra Costa Jewish Community Center, 2071 Tice Valley Blvd., Walnut Creek; the Berkeley Richmond JCC, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley; Jewish Community Services of Oakland and Piedmont, 412 Monte Vista Ave., Oakland; the Richmond Art Center, 25th Street and Barrett Avenue; and other public spaces yet to be determined.