On the way to Israel in December, artist Nina Bonos picked up a phone message asking her to submit a logo for the “To Life! A Jewish Cultural Street Festival” in Palo Alto. She was one of several artists competing for the honor.
“I went all over Israel searching for cues; I worked on it day and night,” said the Santa Rosa artist, who was visiting Israel for the first time. Her 19-year-old daughter, Lisa, was participating in Hadassah’s Young Judaea yearlong course there, and her husband, Dino, and their 16-year-old son, Peter, spent two weeks in Israel on a Hadassah family mission.
While poring over jewelry in Jaffa with her daughter, she saw a charm of a dove with “shalom” written in the wings. That and other images became part of the winning logo for the street fair, which runs Sunday, Sept. 9 on California Street. She will also be exhibiting other artwork at the fair.
“I could not have created this piece without going to Israel,” said Bonos. “The exuberance and elation I felt being connected with our home infuses the whole work… These pieces are my life, my experience of being there.”
The logo is a collage that marries California and Israeli visuals, she explained: “I wanted the image to be a souvenir for my trip, but it has a double meaning: The colors represent hills in California that look purple from a distance. The Italian cypress also coheres with California’s climate. The golden sun and the wavy line resemble the sand and surf for California. The stars in the sky are the Stars of David. The sky is a piece of paper that I painted when my son was born. Part of the palm tree is a shin, which stands for God’s name.” In addition, the word chai (life) is inscribed over an entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem.
“For me, this logo commemorates the realization of a dream that started when I was going to religious school at [San Francisco’s] Temple Emanu-El in fifth grade. We had pen pals in Israel, and I wanted to visit. But it took me until now to go for the first time.”
She brought very little art material to Israel — “a little paper, a tiny 2-by-4-inch traveling watercolor set and a bottle of glue.”
“I wanted a street scene because this is a street festival,” she said. “The stones behind the palm tree could be the tents lining California Avenue. The Torah is made of watercolor paper and is represented as a tree of life. The background was painted at the beach with seaweed. I try to use real elements of nature, and seaweed to me is like the tree of life from the sea. I call a lot of my work ‘Joyous Judaica.’ I want to give that uplifting feeling to others.”
The festival logo is actually the upper half of a larger collage that embodies 150 individual watercolor-painted pieces. The artist, who has exhibited at a number of Jewish events, creates fine art originals, graphic designs and artistic products for business owners, congregations and families. The total collage and other works are on her Web site, www.ninabonos.com
Bonos is very busy these days. She has also designed the cover of the 2002/5762 Resources: A Guide to Jewish Life in the Bay Area, published by the Jewish Bulletin in conjunction with Jewish Community Information and Referral. The publication will be released in the fall.
“The branches on the design are actually glowing copper,” Bonos said. “The design suggests people dancing. A lot of the time, whether I’m painting grapevines or trees, I feel that I give anthropomorphic or human feeling to these inanimate objects. I wanted the landscape to ‘come alive’ with the spirituality of nature and Judaism.”
A native of San Francisco, where she was confirmed at Emanu-El, the former Nina Liston wanted to become an artist since she was 9 years old. She went on to get a degree in architecture from U.C. Berkeley and has worked as a city planner in Santa Rosa, where her family belongs to Congregation Shomrei Torah.
Active in the Jewish community, Bonos has also been involved with historic preservation in San Francisco and feels a strong connection to the “idyllic vineyards and rolling hills” of Sonoma County. “Whether I focus on an individual grapevine or building or trees, I see it all as a totality, a total grouping.”
She is looking forward to attending the festival. “Usually, when I exhibit, I am one of very few — if not the only — artists creating Judaica. A festival with many Judaic artists is very exciting, not only for the public but also for the artists themselves,” she said.
“To me, the process of creation isn’t complete until I can meet the public and explain the work; that’s nearly as exciting to me as creating it.”