The 12 Tribes

This is the rather mammoth mixed media book that I started a while ago and have been very busy with of late.

It was photographed yesterday and shipped off to Michael in order to take to Artfest.

I can't even begin to tell you how complex it is.

Every element, colour, texture etc has a reason for being there

I made the entire book by hand, starting from the boards.

It took 2 days to bind and many trial efforts BUT after much angst it is complete

The research probably took longer than making each element.

I will go into the finer details when I am back but wanted to give you a glimpse of it.

Be prepared there are alot of photos and so much colour!!!!!!!!!

Just briefly, there were 12 tribes of Israel in Biblical times.

They were the 12 sons of Jacob.

Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher and Joseph.

Each tribe had their own coloured flag and emroidered on each flag was a symbol that represented the tribe.

{{{ Below is an image of the actual binding of the book }}}

On the High Priests breastplate each tribe was alotted a different coloured precious stone, some that are today not in existance.

Some of you will wonder why it is that the stones I have used do not match the exact colour of the stones we recognise today.

There is much argument related to each stone and as we know, each stone comes in many a varied colour so please be aware that the colour I used was related to much research and in keeping with my interpretation of all the many factors that went into the long history of each tribe.

With that said, I hope you enjoy The 12 Tribes........

Reuven

Symbol: The mandrake

Flag: Red

Stone: Ruby

Simeon

Symbol: Town of Shechem

Stone: Topaz

Flag: green

Levi

Stone: Smaragd

Flag: a third white, a third black, and a third red

Symbol: the Urim and Thummim {the High Priest's (the Chief of the Chief of Rabbi's) breastplate}

Judah

Stone: carbuncle

Flag: the heavens

Symbol: Lion

Issachar

Stone: Sapphire

Flag: black like stibium

Symbol: Sun and moon

Zebulon

Stone: Pearl

Flag:white

Symbol: ship

Dan

Stone: Jacinth

Flag: sapphire

Symbol: serpent

Gad

Stone: Agate

Flag: Neither white nor black

but a blend of black and white

Symbol: A camp

Napthali

Stone: Amethyst

Flag : Wine of a not very deep red

Symbol: A hind

Asher

Stone: Beryl

Remember the story/post where i told you about finding a book

called Treasures of the Earth?

Well this is where it was that amazing coincidence that spoke of the stones of the 12 Tribes.

Flag: Like Sandstone

Symbol: olive-tree

Joseph

Stone: Onyx

Flag:Black

Symbol: Egypt and sons, the princes, Ephraim and Manasseh

Flag of Ephraim: A bullock

Flag of Manasseh: A Wild ox -

The type mentioned biblically is not in existance any more.

Benjamin

Flag: Combination of all the 12 colours

Symbol: Wolf

{This is where the parchment came in}.

Stone: Jasper

Hope you enjoyed all of that!!!

Thanks for all the comments on "Esh".

I am so so sorry that I have not been able to thank each and every one of you for your amazing comments - I promise I will soon - (feeling oh-so guilty) but please understand that I am getting ready to leave and have 3 kids that need my attention too.

Thanks and cya soon.

xox

I dont have alot of time to explain every bit of symbolism as my time is very limited now.

I have spent days binding a mammoth book - it is so large it is overwhelming.
It took many attempts ans indeed so much frustration to come up with a binding that would hold the many assemblages.

But now it is complete and will be photographed tomorrow.

So please excuse the brief explanation but I wanted this post complete prior to me going to Artfest.

BOOK 3, ESH

This is the book that fell on my foot when Michael and I were looking for elements to use in the piece.

Rather appropriate.

Behind the door hole is a cross bones which was the sign that greeted inmates at Auschwitz.

In the slide is a mini collage with an image of a gas canister used to murder the millions.

The front of the letter I explained in a previous post.

The back of the letter within the copper pocket.

Clearly visible is the Nazi insignia, opened by them, inspected and passed on - to no-one but the postman.

It was returned to Australia for the family had been killed.

My father and the group escaping. My father is on the left with the copper oval piece encircling his face.

The vintage photo holder which swings over the faces...

asking the question who survived...

who didn't.

An Auschwitz oven.

An image of a father and his children on their way to the concentration camps.

The transparency which is viewed from both sides, is a lone uniform worn by inmates of the camps, hanging.

BOOK 4

This is the final book for this piece.

A simple but powerful image of a flame painted on top of a burnt book.

A flame of remembrance or

A flame symbolising the flames that flew from the crematoria.

From the Tempest,

Full Fathom Five.

My father, his sister and brother.

I always have found it fascinating that his body stance is positioned to his left,

Whereas his siblings were facing to the right.

yes it is a photo that makes me cry each time I look at it.

Just look at his brother snuggling right up to his plder brother.

Love lost!

And for what???

This piece was explained in Cloth Paper Scissors.

This is the lock, off which came the Star of David which is housed at the very front of the piece.

The word Shoah, the English translation means,

The Holocaust is stitiched atop the striped fabric.

The word remember at the top.

When I placed the lock over random German text little did I know the significance of the final element.

for the small hole made the German word for "I" appear.

I chose the antique lens with the -3 on purpose.

Remember the -3 members of the family killed.

But look at the word that appeared within the lens of the larger hole of the lock.

The word "Zuzzamen".

Meaning "together".

Bringing it all together.

Together, remember the Holocaust!

For me it became

I will remember the Holocaust 'together' with you.

Thankyou all for Remembering with me

thank you for your amazing comments.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Thank you.

xox

ESH BOOK 2


I do understand that those of you who read this and view my artwork are sometimes affected emotionally by it and about it.

I guess, then, I have achieved remembrance of this particular subject.
For that I am content, appreciative and humbled.


I know some of you find it difficult to come to terms with but my art is about reality and the sometimes harshness of life.

I so very much appreciate when you express that to me. I know how most of you feel about the Holocaust and any Genocide. It is going on around us as we speak.
Yes, today in Darfur for example.

Does the world never learn from history?

So thanks for your comments and heartfelt responses and for coming back and viewing this book.

Witness

Pictured on the transparency are children at a concentration camp showing
their tattooed arms.

Fortunately there were witnesses to this catastrophic event for those despicable Holocaust deniers – those who say it never happened, well here is proof.

Inside the copper mesh envelope is part of a letter that my grandfather upon arrival in Australia, sent to his wife wondering where she was. His life was spared for reasons I don’t have time to go into here. The letter was sent from the Hay detention camp where he was imprisoned along with the other, now famous, Dunera boys.


The letter was returned to him with the Nazi Stamp, meaning they opened it and read it. On the back their local postman had written they the family was sent to one of the camps.

This is a transparency of the xyclon B gas containers in multitudes.

This is the gas that was used to kill those in the camps.

This is the last surviving photo of the family together – minus my father.

On top of the photo are the words “from generation to generation”. I used the words for one to consider just how many generations of families were completely obliterated.

On a personal note though it meant that at least we had one survive and from that one came the 3 of us – that is my 2 brothers and I.

You only need one to survive to continue a history.


The found door bell plate has an image of a man.

He is pictured from behind.

A witness to the fact that this was a once normal and happy family.

A witness to tragedy.

A symbolic image, as if it were my father standing there, as he was when he took that photo.

The star, which was normally a yellow fabric is represented in copper.

Chained to the page is a double sided glass slide with an image, printed on fabric, of a common sign found all over Europe at the time...

“Jews not welcome here”


On the reverse is probably my favourite element of the entire piece.

It is a mini collage in it is as follows;

Vintage German text from that era.


Fabric representing the uniforms worn in the concentration camps.


The 6th commandment. Though Shalt not murder – taken from an Antique Bible.

And the RANDOM torn word directly below the commandment saying “MAN”

Now the number 498 was pertinent. I will endeavour to try to explain this but it involves Jewish Numerology – “gematria”.

When you add up the numbers 4+9+8 you get 21.
Add the 2 and the 1 and you get 3.

3 members of my immediate family murdered =

... “Though shalt not murder 3 members of my family”.

Amazing coincidence – OR not.


The break in the glass happened whilst attaching the tape – but I left it as in my humble opinion it suited the theme of the element –
A Shattered family,

So many shattered families

So many shattered lives.

The Hebrew word "Zachor" , REMEMBER, stitched on top of a burnt authentic “Tallit” – prayer shawl.

For anyone concerned that I have used authentic texts and material of religious items, do not despair.
I sought and received Rabbinic approval to do such.

Attached at the bottom I placed a bead that looked like a flame.
As a remembrance of the day that a Jewish person dies, each year a 24 hour burning candle is lit in their remembrance.

A Continuous flame burns for Holocaust victims as no known date for the murder of most is known.



Hence the "everlasting" flame under the photo is for the family.



Throughout the entire Holocaust period the Nazi’s took great pleasure in burning religious items, books etc. It is against the laws of Judaism to burn or discard any religious items for example they must be buried as they either have the name of G-d on or in them.

{{{{{{ By the way...}}}}}}

Without going into too much detail, whilst sometimes I have to pay a hefty price, I regularly buy Jewish items, mainly holy books off EBay from vendors who have no idea what the items are.
But the thought of them throwing them away makes me ill.
Which brings to mind something, should you come across any items or books whilst you may be “junking” that you think may be of personal value to me please email me -I would be more than happy to consider it. Thanks.


The final page of this book is a symbolic reminder of “Kristallnacht” -The Night of the broken glass” (hence the mica representing the shattered glass) and the burning of the books.

To complete the genocide of entire peoples the Nazis wanted to burn all traces of Jews, world wide.

The same cannot be said of others persecuted and killed by the Nazi regime. I promise I will expand on this issue in the future as I am about to embark on a piece related to this topic.

The words I chose come from a thrice daily prayer which says the following...

Because You (G-d) hear the prayers of your people, the people of Israel, with mercy. Blessed be G-d, who hears our prayers!

I will leave you to ponder that insertion of mine.

Thankyou

for

taking

the

time

to

read

this .

xoxo

What would I do without you guys, you sure know how to make a girl feel good about her work.

Thanks yet again for your unbelievable responses to the books, well Book 1 at least.

I am on the final page this evening of that book about which I spoke of ages ago.

Well it is kind of a book but its really an assemblage piece in the form of a book.

But then I have to bind it and that will be a massive challenge.



In between all of that I have been making some minibooks

for yet another huge project.

I will upload the next book of the collaboration piece, ESH next post.

I think I have about 10 things on the go at the moment (AGHHHHHHH!!!)

Thought I would give you some light reading instead today.

So here’s some pics of the process I go though just to make a mini book.

I use a very traditional method to do such...

And I bet you think this is finished, well no.

Time to grunge it up....

Let the fun begin.

Lets make a parchment:

Take an old book cover

Cut it up



Cut one side off and

Paint it – I dedicate this cover to Ro Bruhn and Judy Wise – look I have been wearing sunnies to do this page/element

Believe me I had no choice for the bright colours of this element. It goes with the story.

Get some really heavy gauge wire



Curl the ends

Smash the #$&!*^) out of it

How cool is that.

Get some real animal hide

Make sure it has been stretched really thin

and then

Rip it

Cover the wire

Smash the hide so it stays put

Sew it

Ink it

Burn it

Now pick or rip out some of the stitching – huh???

yes un-pick some – giving it that used and abused look.

You may have noticed I used the wrong side of the hide - the 'so called' yuk side.

it looks more authentic that way.

And voila...




This is just one minor element for this massive project. The research involved has taken most of my time to be honest.


Ahhh details details details.

Art and Soul reigstration starts tomorrow - hope you can join me.

xo

“Esh” – The 4 books explained.

The books that I did within the housing were done as a dedication, not only to my family members who perished in the Holocaust but to all families, in particular to the 1 ½ MILLION children, who died.

The books are in no particular order.

BOOK 1

Pictured on the front are two small children.
The photo was taken whilst they were living in the Warsaw Ghetto.

I decided to use a transparency which was placed over the prayer which is said a number of times during the day.

The words are...
"...Accept willingly and with mercy our prayers."

The strange and accidental thing about the placement of the transparency over the prayer was that the Hebrew letter “shin” landed exactly on top of the Magen David, the Star of David.

Why is that significant?

Well, many of you would have noticed that on the door posts of Jewish homes there is a thing called a mezuzah, a parchment with a prayer inside. That prayer recognizes G-d as our Holy one. Hence, you will see that letter on the outside housing of these mezuzahs.

It was quite freaky that it should land on the Star of David.

The letter Shin also stands for the word Shaddai, a name for G-d.
Trivia...
Because of this, a Cohen (priest) forms the letter Shin with his hands as he recites the Priestly Blessing. In the mid 1960s, actor Leonard Nimoy used a single-handed version of this gesture to create the Vulcan Hand Salute for his character, Mr. Spock, on Star Trek.



The striped fabric, paper and ribbon you see used in this book and throughout the other books represents the uniforms worn in the concentration camps.


The hand made marbled paper was used to represent the fires of the burning crematoria, these two children did not survive, and they perished in one of those camps.

I used the book cover as it became apparent when I was searching for something to use that the very fragile letters broken off from the very aged book – made, what looked like the word Berlin.

Berlin, Germany was where my father was from.

Page 2 and 3.

Photos of my father’s younger sister and brother, Bertha and Nissan, later killed in either Auschwitz or Therezienstadt. Most people who were in the Warsaw ghetto were transported to Therezienstadt, however there is the belief that they went to Auschwitz.

The 1 ½ torn from an antique ledger alludes to the numbers of children killed hence it is placed near the children here.

After Artfest my cousin in meeting me in New York to hand deliver me family letters that my grandmother wrote to one of her sisters who is still alive, living in Cleveland. Those letters may give me more insight into where they were transported to. I normally go to Cleveland to see her but cannot this trip so the documents and photos and memorabilia are coming to me to scan and use in a later piece.

The stamped script on the binding of these pages is a German stamp.

The 3 black crosses adhering the photo of Nissan on page 3 represents the 3 family members killed as the larger black and white cross or x represents all those slaughtered.

Why the white?

Because white represents purity. These children were pure and innocent when killed.

Page 4

Pictured here, is Bertha on the right with a cousin Judith who survived.

I used olive green as Bertha went by the name Blumele which in Yiddish means Blossom. So the allusion to fauna and the reason you see the vertigres flowers near her.

Quite by accent and you know how I like to layer – if you look in the top left corner I had randomly ripped paper from the ledger.

The letters ripped were "WIL", the first part of our surname.

Then if you look down the bottom at the layered papers is "EN", the middle part of our surname. Another mystery and certainly not done on purpose.

Page 5

I printed the names of the concentration camps on fabric. No comment necessary here.

Page 6

The word WHY is hammered into the copper with a fortune tellers hand.

Why can be interpreted as the following.

Why, fortunately did my father survive?

And/Or

Why did this happen?

The photo on the other side of the glass slide says the word Survivor and there is an image of my father, who escaped at age 13 and made it (7 months later) mainly on foot to the then Palestine.

I cannot show you this image at this stage as it is being used for another publication - my apologies.

The text torn from a random book shown here, reads as follows,

“Fragments. He was hungry”.

And

“And he pursued his walk”.

The fragments referred to the fragments of his life – I cannot go deeply into the section for this image is explained in a piece that will be published later this year.

The hunger and walk, well I just explained that.

Page 6

The page is torn from a very vintage and quite strange Jewish prayer book I found at the markets on the other side of Sydney.

Sitting atop is a transparency of children walking to the trains that took them to the camps.

Page 7

Another photo of Bertha and Nissan placed under YELLOW stained glass.

The yellow was chosen specifically because the mandatory stars that Jews had to wear were yellow.

There is a favoured saying in German that grandparents often used as a term of endearment to their grandchildren. The term “Mein Goldenness Kind”, My Golden Child. I was often called that as a child by my grandfather. It came to mind when I was working on this page. So I placed the image atop gold and green paper. Again the green an allusion to bertha’s name and the fact that they were in their garden when the photo was taken.

Thanks for all the heartfelt comments – I am strapped for time to answer everyone as I am in panic mode to prepare some pieces for Artfest. Please understand that I very much am humbled by your comments and the emotion surrounding them.

It makes me so happy.

This evening I had the good fortune of spending a few hours with Professor Yehuda Bauer, the worlds leading educationalist and authority on the Holocaust. After his public lecture I was honoured to take him out for dinner to discuss some matters.

I am currently in research mode for an art piece that I hope to do soon.

I need you to know that no piece I do is without extensive research. I would rather not engage myself in a piece if I do not have the correct facts.

The piece, about which I would rather not reveal yet, is related to the Holocaust but not about Jewish people.
He has linked me to a museum where whilst I am in Los Angeles prior to Artfest, I will spend some significant time reading oral testimonies.

How fortunate I feel to have spent some 3 hours picking the Professors wonderfully educated mind.

And all in the name of ART!

Thanks
xo

“ESH”

A further explanation and deeper look at the collaborative piece with Michael.





I thought some of you may wish to view the images that did not make it into the article about our piece in Cloth Paper Scissors Issue 16.


At the outset I would like to say yet another thanks to CPS for their generosity of space that they afforded this piece. It was remarkable and I am eternally grateful.


The box, which houses the books, represents an oven at Auschwitz. As I take you through, you will understand more.





When viewing the front of the piece one can see the train tracks leading into Auschwitz which sits behind a piece of smashed glass that has been treated with paint.




The word Zachor, which in Hebrew means “remember” and is the symbol of the Holocaust, is placed in the very middle of the front of the box.



The wire coming from that attaches to the pressure gauge, unifying the elements but more importantly purveying the message of the what really went on when so many people were told they were going to have a shower only to find that they were crammed into a room and xyclon b gas emitted from the so called shower heads – the gauge – allowing the Nazi’s to know when the right amount of gas was released to kill hundreds at a time.

Michael had torn the number 120 from an old ledger. Little did he know what that number meant? For in Judaism, when someone celebrates their birthday,

We say, may you live to be 120 – emulating, as it were, the life of Moses who lived to that age.


Hence his picking 120 out of a ledger with 400 pages was extraordinary in context to the subject matter.

The image of the woman is one who was killed. She, representing the 6 and the million written just above her head.




The Star of David was found on an old lock that we found so that was detached and placed at the crown of the piece. The main part of the lock was used later as you will see.




The crystal pieces represented the fires burning at the crematoria, 24 hours a day for many years, killing, not only Jews but Homosexuals, Gypsies’, Little people and others that did not fall into the Aryan criteria.

The crystals emanate from a sink drainer - which looks very similar to the small hole in the ceiling from which came out the gas.

The piece with the door opened.



You should be able to see 3 rocks placed in a grate at the base.



Jews do not take flowers to a gravesite. Instead we place a rock, a piece from the earth, on the grave of the departed. Hence the 3 rocks representing the 3 immediate family members, that my father lost in Auschwitz. His mother, younger sister and brother.



The back of the piece where cleverly Michael took apart a pipe type object which is almost identical to the look of the actual oven doors where the bodies were cremated. He is a genius!

The 111 – representing the 3 family members.



Side view...

Behind the rusted grill is an image of a little boy waiting to go to Buchenwald Concentration camp. The transparency is difficult to see here but he is wearing an armband with that name on him.

The other side view ...

There is another image of a man with his religious shawl on and those around him in their striped garb.

This is how the books look inside the piece with the door opened.

I will blog about the books in the next post.

The Art and Soul Portland workshops are up for viewing.

You can see the classes I will be teaching there.

xo