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The Jewish Artists Initiative (JAI) is an artist-run organization committed to fostering visual art by Jewish artists and promoting dialogue about Jewish identity and related issues among members of the arts community.
Mission and History
JAI was originally conceived by the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles in partnership with the University of Southern California Casden Institute and the USC Roski School of Fine Arts.
Learn about our past and our plans for the future.
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Join us as The Loft at Liz's hosts LAMA (LA Modern Auctions) and Reform Gallery to present the works
of several master artists in our PST inspired exhibition entitled Craft Meets Art & Design.
Join us in celebrating the works of these phenomenal artists and craftsmen
whose works have changed the very nature of
contemporary art and modern design.
453 S. La Brea Avenue | Los Angeles, CA 90036 | theloftatlizs.com
I'm doing a work-in-progress performance Sunday, January 29th of my play The Dig: death, Genesis + the double helix here in LA at the Skylight Theatre as part of the InKubator series of the Katselas Theatre Company.
The play is about an American archaeologist who is summoned to a dig in Jaffa, the ancient Arab-Hebrew city at the southern tip of Tel Aviv. They've found something – something that could change everything. She's the only one who can tell them what it is.
And she's traveling in the wake of her own mother's death. And there's a lizard in her bathtub.
The play was initially commissioned by John z"l and Ruth Rauch of the Center for Jewish Culture & Creativity. They sent me to the Middle East to explore. This year it will have its US premiere.
I hope you can join us, Stacie
FEBRUARY 11 – APRIL 14, 2012
The exhibition will feature a multi-cultural group of four generations of nationally and internationally recognized artist-mothers
selected to represent the multi-faceted and changing realities of motherhood. The exhibition explores the intimate
experience of the artist as mother, and the evolving image and place of the mother, which underwent huge
transformations during the Women’s Movement of the late '60s and '70s.
“Breaking in Two” Press Release and Schedule of Events
Pacific Standard Time Exhibit: Simone Gad
BLEICHER/GOLIGHTLY GALLERY
1431 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90401
Reception: Saturday February 18, 7pm-10pm
Show dates: February 12-25, 2012
Public Viewing Hours: 12:30-9:30 p.m. Thurs-Sat, 12:30-6 p.m. Sun-Wed
As part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative, Bleicher Gallery is pleased to present an exciting exhibit by Los Angeles based artist Simone Gad. A painter and assemblage/collage artist, Gad rose to prominence in the Los Angeles art scene in the 1970’s. After being introduced to the Fluxus movement in 1972 by Al Hansen, she began making collage and assemblage painting collages on vinyl.
An actress herself, Gad’s work focuses on Hollywood, exploring ideas of celebrity and stardom and providing unique insight into the world of fame. Her career includes numerous exhibits through California, showing at LAICA Downtown and Molly Barnes Gallery, among others. Gad is highly regarded in the Southern California art scene, being the recipient of numerous awards and grants, as well as being included in many publications and texts.
The Marshall~LeKAE Gallery is pleased to announce an upcoming art exhibit by Los Angeles based artist Pat Berger, whose poignant paintings of homelessness have raised awareness and consciousness about this avoided topic. This art show was originally inspired by Pat’s visit to a food and shelter outreach in LA around 1985. This experience was followed by at least five years of activism, interacting and getting to know her subject, which then transpired into a series of 35 paintings and lithographs intended to spread knowledge and hopefully influence action to be taken to encourage change for this worldwide problem.
Pat Berger’s paintings depicting the crisis of homelessness in our society are formally straightforward and uncompromising works. These pieces are not only beautifully done in a technical sense, but also speak loudly on the subject manner at hand. With these paintings, Berger points to the callousness and disregard that we, as a society, have developed towards the people experiencing struggle and/or poverty. The support, protection and care that a community affords is often blotted out in the homeless experience by the alienation, hopelessness and dehumanization wrought by life on the streets.
Twelve of Berger’s paintings are now in the permanent collection of the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum in Buffalo, other paintings are in the permanent collection of LA’s Skirball Cultural Center. Her work has also been in a number of documentaries including the Emmy award winning “Trouble in Paradise.”
Call for Entries: Hadassah through the Eyes of the Artist
March/April 2012
Submissions to the Exhibit is open to all Hadassah Southern California.
Members and Associates in the following media:
Painting, Drawing, Prints, Fiber, Ceramic, Metal, Mixed Media, Photography
The Exhibition will be held at: Alpert Jewish Community Center, 3801 East Willow Street, Long Beach, CA 90815-1734
More information about the Exhibition and how to enter, send an email to info@hadassahsc.org and indicate HSC Exhibit in the subject line.
Featuring the work of four JAI member artists: Pat Berger, Max Finkelstein, Baila Goldenthal, Ruth Weisberg
Curated by JAI members Elizabeth Bloom and Elaine Levin
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Thanks to René de Loffre for his thoughtful review of the show. An excerpt is below. Read the full blog post here.
GOOD NEWS – Nancy Goodman Lawrence's poem, "My Father's Cup," has been published in the Fall Edition of Poetica Magazine, a journal of contemporary Jewish writing. http://www.poeticamagazine.com
And don't miss Poetica's online gallery. Two JAI artists have work included: Nancy Goodman Lawrence and Gilah Yelin Hirsch.
March 4, 2011
Are We Living in a Golden Age of Jewish Art?
By Matthew Baigell
Most people do not know that we are living in a golden age of Jewish American art.
Since around 1975, there has been an incredible but largely ignored outpouring of art based on the Bible, the Talmud, Kabbalah, the prayer books, and midrash by artists all over the country. Depending on their points of view — feminist, psychological, existential — they approach their subject matter in entirely different, personal ways. Rather than illustrate texts they challenge their subject matter, as well as invent explanations of their own. Their work has little precedent in past Jewish American art, and the artists have leap-frogged back over generations to find their source material directly in the ancient texts. Taking nothing for granted, they have few inhibitions about questioning what they find.
Born in the 1930s and afterward, they have no memory of and few ties to the experiences of the immigrant generations or to those who lived through the Depression. In addition, they were too young to suffer from American anti-Semitism or the Holocaust. They form no school, but as Jewish artists they were encouraged to “come out” by the successful 1967 and 1973 wars in Israel, the feminist, gay, and African-American liberation movements, as well as by the Jewish Renewal movement in the 1970s and 1980s. They are the first generation of Jewish artists who feel very comfortable as both assimilated Americans and proud Jews.
Largely unaware of each other’s existence because their work has been neglected by the mainstream press, the artists have recently formed organizations such as the Jewish Art Salon in New York and the Jewish Artists Initiative of Southern California to explore what it means to be a Jewishly oriented artist in modern America. In New York, their work is exhibited at venues such as the Yeshiva University Museum and Hebrew Union College.
[Related: Jewish Photos Laced With Gold]
Styles range from figurative to abstract and include cartoon and comics-styled works. Subjects include narrative cycles (a new development in Jewish American art) based on the lives of, say, Abraham, Noah, Jonah, and Queen Esther, as well as re-examinations and re-interpretations of the actions of biblical figures. Among the many interesting artists there are Pat Berger and Ruth Weisberg in Southern California, Ellen Holtzblatt in Chicago, Beth Ames Swartz in Arizona, and Siona Benjamin, Carol Hamoy, Richard McBee, Archie Rand, Janet Shafner and David Wander in the New York area.
And among very important works produced since the 1980s, there are Ruth Weisberg’s “The Scroll” (1987) a 96-foot long interpretation of Jewish history combining biblical lore and legends with contemporary history and Weisberg’s own personal history, a work unimaginable before the Jewish feminist movement; Archie Rand’s “The Chapter Paintings” (1989) an entirely personal interpretation of the Torah portions, again a project unimaginable before 1980, as well as his recently completed “613” paintings based on the 613 commandments; and David Wander’s interpretations of the five first books of the bible in a comics format.
Without question, these artists, the ones exploring Judaic subjects, are making the most valuable contributions to the progress of Jewish art in America in our time.
The Getty Foundation celebrated the publication of The California/International Arts Foundation's new encyclopedia L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980 on December 7, 2010 with an event to honor the artists in the book with a special tribute to Lyn Keinholz who worked for several years putting this book together.
Included in the book are many JAI artists. VIEW PHOTOS OF THIS SPECIAL EVENT
