JONATHAN DANIEL TEPPERMAN: CULTURAL POST IDENTITY ART:
HISTORY AS A VEHICLE FOR MODERN INTERPREfATION
A Thesis
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree Master of Fine Art in the
Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Jonathan Daniel Tepperman, B.F.A. *****
The Ohio State University
2004
Master's Examination Committee:
Richard Harned, Adviser ~Approved by Steven Thurston ~ Q Mary Jo Bole Advisor Graduate Program In Art ABSTRACT
Every piece I make is a decision to turn left, right, do a u-turn or travel in space and time. So, when looking at me as an artist, one must start looking at that path.
As a Jew, I was raised and educated within a culture of subversion. It is only natural that I seek it out in my research, art and life. In researching Jewish art there are many examples of dominant cultural symbols being used by Jews and subverted for their own purpose. In exploring the past I have found great inspiration in combining history and the consumer global culture of my own time in my art.
When creating art, I see myself as an imagery, concept and visual DJ, mixing and sampling to create fresh grooves, like a post modern match maker. My aesthetics are closely tied to pop and kitsch culture. I approach my work like a painter of Polish
Synagogues, whose intricate style has been referred to as Amor Infiniti (love of Infinite).
When looking at Jewish folk art, I see that it contains many of the things I already value aesthetically, such as the use of patterns, symmetry and lush textures. The immediacy of glass, as well as its long connected history with the Jews, makes it a perfect material to rapidly make meaningful and enticing sculptural elements.
My thesis show was an opportunity to explore some of the ideas bouncing around in my head, setting these bits and parts to simmer, creating a delicious soup of a show.
ii Dedication
To my parents, for their unconditional support and for raising me with a combination of social consciousness, creative thinking, compassion, and "Do It Yourself
Judaism." To the Bay Area Glass Institute (BAGI) for being my sparing partner, helping me sharpen my skills in the Judo of art and life, and to the Ohio State University library for being broad and deep enough for my inquisitive mind.
iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Einar and Jamex De La Torre, and all the other artists who have encouraged me and given me so much support and input. In addition I would like to acknowledge Crusty the Clown, Kyle Broflovski, Marc Chagall and Abby Hoffman for expanding my concept of what a Jew is.
lV VITA
May 9,1972 ...... Born - Denver Colorado, America
1985 ...... Bar Mitzvah-Fresno California
1996 ...... Co-founder of the Bay Area Glass Institute,
California
1998-2002 ...... Executive Director, The Bay Area Glass
Institute
2000 ...... B.F.A. Spatial Art, San Jose State University
2002 ...... Guest Lecturer, The California College of
Arts and Crafts
2002-present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State
University
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Art
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Abstract ...... ii
Dedication ...... iii
Acknowledgments ...... iv
Vita ...... v
List of Plates ...... vii
Chapters:
I.Turning On and Getting into Jewish Art...... I
2. Condensing Jewish Research and Systems of Cultural Interchange ...... 3
3. Put Up Or Shut Up: From Thought to Art ...... 6
4. Please click on the question that best fits your problem ...... 11
Appendix a - Library List...... vi
VI LIST OF PLATES
A~ ~~
1. Bet Alpha (early 6th c.e.) ...... 23
2. Hammath Tiberius (late third or early 4th c.e.) ...... 24
3. Mazel Tov Cocktail ...... 25
4. "Google This" ...... 26
5. "Google This" Instillation ...... 27
6. Mad Money Megillah ...... 28
7. Bacon Tree ...... 29
8. IHusion of Wealth Mizrah ...... 30
9. Illusion of Wealth Mizrah: Detail...... 31
10. Matza ~radox ...... 32
1 11. Italian brass Hanukah lamp, l8 h cent ...... 33
12. Drawing: Griffin Motorcycle ...... 34
VII Chapter 1
Turning on And Getting into Jewish Art
I have been going to Baja California for many years to spend Christmas and New Years with the De La Torre brothers, two Mexican glass artists. They encouraged me, both in conversation and by the example of their work, to look to my cultural tradition as a resource for making art. I was resistant to this idea for multiple reasons. Because of a commandment that prohibits the use of graven images, and because of my lack of exposure to Jewish visual culture, I was under the false assumption that
Jewish art did not exist other than as patterns and text. I also thought of Judaism as being hokey (and besides the point), I associated myself mostly as a cultural Jew. Wanting to do something "New," I think I was also resistant because of the flood of identity-based art that was so prevalent in the artistic generation before mine. I find that when I am tremendously resistant to something, no matter how hard I try to avoid it, I eventually end up doing exactly the thing I was avoiding. [I should start resisting becoming being rich and famous.]
This inevitable force proved itself in the winter quarter of my first year of graduate school. I went to the library and checked out a book on Jewish folk art. This
1 book opened up my world. I am now obsessed with researching Jewish folk art, symbolism and history. My studio and house are littered with piles of books about art, ceremonial objects, ritual, history, observance, and significance. I read these books on the bus, eating cereal, in my studio, before going to bed, and in the bathroom. Research always leads into more research. I have pored through books on Yiddish, Ladino (mix of
Hebrew and Spanish), Jewish paper cuts, Chanukah, coffin art from Africa, symbolism, iconoclast, Baroque, tracking cultural influence, airports, Globalism, Renaissance painters, Jewish artists and glass history. (See Appendix A: A Library List)
This pile of information condensed into an artistic vision, and I am creating sculpture that addresses the vast possibilities of this base of research. I am interested in taking my distinct cultural history and using it as a vehicle to talk about modem interpretations, such as: Jews historically as outsiders, creating a world border culture, and systems of cultural interchange. I think no one culture is an island, rather they are all part of a web of history and influence that shifts and changes continually. I am interested in ritual objects, their aesthetics, why they were made and how they could be used as a structure to talk about society. I am also interested in the Jewish Diaspora as a model for global systems, using art to explore my personal relationship to greater
Jewish culture and universal experiences of assimilation and resistance to cultural digestion and in the end to make my work "Post Identity," so that it speaks to much broader audiences and issues.
2 Chapter2
Condensing Jewish Research
Systems of Cultural Interchange
In my work I am using a concept, which has existed for thousands of years and is now called "Globalism." Globalism creates a framework for me to talk about systems in the world today: travel, business, products, information, disease, plants and animals. In looking at the past and the way Jewish art was influenced by local and distant cultures, I can draw from my world. My world is a high speed, frantic, interconnected, hybrid world that gives me an infinite base of concepts and imagery to pull from and allows me to create mixes and hybrids of these things. I am like a visual DJ, mixing samples, pulling from many sources and synthesizing them into something new. In using the Jewish culture, history and iconography to talk about America, the world and myself, I am part of a distinct tradition.
The imagery and iconography that I use as my creative and aesthetic base is like a good broth of different influences distilled from icons that move through the Jewish Diaspora from Europe to North Africa and back. These are represented in the paper cuts found in these places in the nineteenth century. The range of historical
3 Jewish influences and Jewish Culture exchange goes from Ethiopia to China and back again.
In exploring this artistic mingling, it has helped me to look at all cultures as a web of influence and the nationalistic idea of pure culture as being flawed. It is clear to me that religion is not pure, nor is it an autonomous divine creation. In my research, I see artwork that was originally a pagan image and was then appropriated by the Jews, might be then borrowed by the Christians, only to go back to the Jews and from there to the new-age movement. For example, in two of the earliest Jewish Synagogues, Bet Alpha (early 6th c.e.) (Plate I) and Hammath
Tiberius (late third or early 4th c.e.),(Plate 2) there are floor mosaics that show the twelve signs of the Zodiac, which are linked with the twelve tribes of Israel, and are connected to the twelve lunar months of the year that the Jewish calendar follows.
The image of the Zodiac became a standard in early illuminated
Jewish manuscripts. It was then borrowed by the Christians in their illuminated manuscripts, and then Jews of a later time fused elements of these extrapolations with their own interpretation leading to the use of the Zodiac in Mizrahs, Hanukias, and
Synagogue wall paintings. These Zodiac images became popular in America with the resurgence of interest in the occult, leading to their popularity within the counter culture of the 60s, it wiggles into culture by way of cover art of funk albums turning into new age symbolism. So many of the symbols I came across in researching the history of Jewish art sway back and forth, crisscrossing time and borders, making webs and chains of connection that endlessly intertwine like a 60 hour Google®™
4 search fueled by a Grande Latte®™. These images find their way into lawn furniture, planters, bargain household decorations, advertising and architecture.
Early Jewish synagogue art was a dominate influence on early
Christian Byzantine art and all that followed. The most famous examples of this are the Dura Europos Synagogue Murals (third century), the Bet Alpha Synagogue mosaic floors (early sixth century), and the Hammath Tiberius Synagogue mosaic floor (late third early forth centuries). It is not that cultures don't have an art history that specifically lead them to their current states, what I am saying is that when talking about French culture, you have to look at it in a context of European culture and western culture, which is based on Roman culture, which was based on all the cultures they conquered. Roman culture was influenced by the artisans, crafts people and academics that they brought to the Roman Empire and added to a base of Greek culture. Greek culture was based on all the cultures they conquered and traded with, etc.
Because the Jews have lived throughout the world, there is a great diversity in their culture, but it is also interwoven with other cultures. Because of the close-knit Jewish community and Jews often not being allowed to own land, many of them were merchants with vast networks of trade and personal contacts which permitted them to transport credit over vast distances, helping to strengthen their ability as merchants. This vast connection of trade also allowed ideas, goods and imagery to flow back and forth through most of the world.
5 Chapter3
Put Up Or Shut Up From Thought To Art
My thesis show, .. Google This'', gave me a chance to presentto the O.S.U. art community what I had been up to. The exhibition was a chance to make concrete some of the ideas that had been tumbling and writhing in my head. This was a time for me to make work balls out, pushing myself intellectually and physically.
I started out with a few pieces and a complexly layered, potentially dangerous, overly ambitious, and vague idea of what was to develop. It was all clear to me and yet I had no idea what was going to happen. I approach my work in the same way I take on life: I have an intensity of focus that is everywhere and nowhere, yet always leads me in a clear direction. When making art and working with glass I plan, plot and prepare, letting things flow, flip, twist and tum, knowing that even when I'm lost
I will end up in the right place in the end. What is the right place? I'm sure I will know it when I get there. My decisions are calculated and controlled by chance. "Should I use all four glass chickens and make another rat, or just go with three?" Setting the chicken down, I think that's probably not the best place for it, tum around and accidentally knock it to the ground. Three chickens it is. At the same time I will spent a week trying to create a border to cover the ends of the corded fabric, yet work with the piece not only conceptually but aesthetically, giving it a sense of unity and completeness.
6 Running in the mornings with my headphones on, I slip into a trance where the asphalt reveals the answers to my questions, and trash piles lead me to new ideas. Three months of breakneck, obsessive work. Infused and jolted along by hours of help from people crazy enough to stay up with me all night drinking highly caffeinated beverages and grooving to old funk; a thesis show materializes. After pushing so many of my friends and students to leap into the quagmire of an overly ambitious project it was only a matter of time for me to get smacked in the head with the kannic rebound that sent me into this chasm of a show.
So, enough already with my Fakackda ramblings, ya want to know about the show. Here's your virtual tour:
Outside the gallery, you pass under a field of dense clouds made out of hundreds of plastic shopping bags, hoarded from under every kitchen sink and grocery store in town. Glowing and ready to burst, emptying their consumer goods in a downpour of products like manna from heaven, these plastic nebula hover, tempting the viewer. A potential napalm menace ready to cover you with the burning sticky desire to shop till you drop.
Entering the gallery you cannot miss seeing an 8-foot vinyl burgundy bottle. This giant pifiata, Mazel Tov Cocktail, is frozen in mid air, ready to unleash its potential power, like a grenade covered in rhinestones. It's complete title is: Mazel Tov
Cocktail: A gift to Arial Sharon. Ya k.now I should probably give one to Arafat. as a matter of fact I think Bush JR could use one. gosh so many gifts so little time. (Plate 3)
7 Mazel Tov! Congratulations, but a congratulations that can mean: great job you jerk-off, how did you manage to screw it up so bad. Like Pandora's box, this tacky vinyl pifiata makes you giggle even though you have no idea what will come out of it if you hit it. A mountain of Matza Balls? A river of candy? Or an endless flow of death and destruction?
Who wants to take the first whack?
This looming comic and sardonic pifiata entices you into the gallery, you find yourself bordered by sculptures that combine to create a cross-referential, mixed media installation. One entire 16x 24 foot wall is covered with fabric, glass and stuff pushing and pulling your depth perception between 2-d and 3-d. This is viewer shock and awe. (Plate 4)
This wall installation is based on a "Mizrah", which represents the eastern wall of a synagogue. It is a wall of Angels, transportation Puttis persistently delivering goods and materials with the power and noise of a gang of bikers in formation plowing their Barleys across the globe. These freight Angels are aiming straight for a triple layered global cake. This royal crown of infectious diseases with a topper of planes and guns exploding from the clouds. In the bull's-eye below this sickly tiara, hovers a fish eating its own tail. This leviathan, made from blown glass and twenty three used back burners salvaged from jet fighters is mesianicaly caught in a vicious cycle of violence and surveillance. Security cameras are contrasted by a patterned background containing the
Turkish symbol of protection from the evil eye. Osama Bin Dough Boy impishly rides the surveillance equipment, dubiously avoiding detection so he can terrorize the world with gooey carbs.
8 This circular enigma is flanked on either side by two glass and vinyl pifiata torahs. In the center of these torahs are sand cast glass breastplates. They act like lenses, revealing a bluish glow of television light. As the monitors flicker information, it highlights the images of lovers, the Buddah and gas pumps. These sources of wisdom are capped with dazzling glass satellite dish finials distracting your attention and stealing you focus. All the sculptures are woven together by patterned fabric a pressed tin shadow of columns, lions, and the blank tablets of the law that create a border bouncing your eye back and forth across a vast plane of silky blue fabric vibrating with rows of embroidered flowers.
Stepping back for air, and some perspective, your eye is pulled by a freestanding sculpture on your left, the Mad Money Megillah. (Plate Sand 6) This object is a source of portable wealth and cultural. Misted with green and black on a creamy background, a column of history supports this sculpture like the color of money provides comfort for the American economy. A layered scaly mosaic, like the ever cyclical nature of the Leviathan, stacks up to the mirrored surface of a colossal pill, a looking glass that creates a space where the viewer and installation become one. At the apex we find a dazzling and gaudy Megillah; mirrored and gold leafed, it alludes to wealth and splendor, but is closer to a bad wall hanging in a 70's bachelor pad. This vessel of culture sports a convenient handle for quick getaways.
You might turn further left, to be puzzled by a Christmas tree decorated with pork products and something that looks like little glass pieces of skin. This white plastic tree is topped by a jeweled Circumcision Tool and stands on an ornately decorated gold and silver base. (Plate 7) The similarity of the tree base and a wall piece, further
9 your left to drags your attention to it. You might be blinded by this Mizrah form, layered with silver and gold leaf and glittering with the sparkle of fake gems, the glass hands spread in the priestly sign of the Cohen, blessing this veneer of prosperity, with protection from evil beaming from the eyes on the palms. (Plate 8) Under all this glaze of glitz are thinly veiled decorative objects collected from hardware stores, bargain outlets, yard sales and dollar stores. (Plate 9) Other emblems of false wealth: credit cards and a cell phone pull the compilation together.
When this glaring illusion of wealth becomes too much perhaps you decide to head for the door only to be checked by the sound of whining motors pulling your ear, whirling brass grinding wheels spinning at a speed that can't be safe. The wheels pretend to grind away a border of faux painted plastic matza. It is bordered by gold cord that connects it to a thick, paper-cut inspired, sand cast glass panel that solidly occupies the central part of this sculpture that is a, "hung like a classical painting." (Plate
10) The glass panel's symmetry and balance contrast the motifs of guns, trophy toppers and a Menorah.
A decorative element whose center hovers like a divine halo above the head of Jesus. While he sits at the table in the Matza camouflaged casting of Da Vinci's last supper. This whole framed ensemble might make you ask, "Was Jesus a Jew?" Had enough, it's time to step out of the gallery to refill your beer, grab some more noshes and debrief with some friends bathed in the warm glow of lit plastic.
10 Chapter 4
Please click on the question that best fits your problem.
I work in glass for many reasons. Artists can create objects faster in glass than just about any material I. know of. Although it has taken me years to get to this point I can make, anneal, and hold a sculptural element within 24 hours. Glass is a material that all but requires collaboration. From bit-work to sand casting it's a team sport. Working with glass plugged me into a tight knit, interconnected, international, community of crazy artists. If you know the basics of working in glass, it's like being a musician who can step into a jam anywhere in the world and groove out. I contrast the beauty of the glass material against the reality of my work. Glass is a substance that is infused in our every day life, yet it has a peculiar and rich history, working as a marker for the development and interconnection of cultures. When I follow the development of civilization, it is directly paralleled by the development of glass as an art and a technology. The glass I used in this installation was is an allegory of symbols imbedded in our world. The glass acts as a vehicle to convey my thoughts illustratively. Its transparent reflectiveness is a duality that is inherently visible and invisible at the same time and only by looking at the light, shadow, and reflection of the other things in the installation can you see what the object is. This is not so different from looking at the 12 migration of symbols through out time and space. Just as the reverse silvered glass creates a sense of depth that allows you to enter the material as well as the work, the mirrored surfaces bring the viewer into the work at the same time, allowing them to see fragments of the bigger installation in the individual pieces. If I turned out the lights and pointed a laser at the mirrored glass, would it bounce around the room creating a web of light, like a hi-tech security system in a movie? This installation is a 3-d interpretation of 2-d images that were 3-d objects. It is and is not a metaphor, folk art, craft, sculpture, painting, identity art, political, ethnic, representational, historical, conceptual, universal and allegorical. It is work that is visually interesting enough to make some one stand and look at it and giggle, or wonder: what the hell is this guy thinking about? The Griffins are an old Jewish symbol, connected with the cherubs that were on the Ark of the Covenant that held the original Ten Commandments. It is also representational of Angels in general. The imagery of the Griffin goes back to Egyptian and Hittite imagery. Griffins were part of the imagery in the first temple. Or something 13 like that. My "Idea" came from a sketch I made of an Art Deco Griffin on a Hanukah Menorah that turned into a motorcycle. (Plate 11 and 12) Within the context of the giant Mizrah wall piece, I had Griffins in my show to represent transportation, which is an important means for moving goods and ideas around the world. The silver leafed sand cast glass wheels contain images that reflect this, planes, trucks, forklifts, limos, back hoes, dump trucks, the Buddah, and in- flight sized Jaeggermeister bottles. These Griffins are made of cut up tires; a universal sign, and by product of, transportation. In America, used tires take up a huge part of our landfill. I was able to get all the tires I used free, because it costs a lot to dispose of a tire. When I asked a local lawn mower repair shop if I could have some used tires, they jokingly told me "you take one, ya gotta take them all". Outside the U.S., old tires are recycled into soles for shoes, building material and decorative planters. By recycling and transforming this symbol of transportation, pollution, and waste into the wing of an Angel, I'm making a metaphor for the power to tum evil into good, heralding a pseudo messianic age where the evils in our world could be transforming into new growth. The contrast between the tire and the richness of the gold cord show the closeness of wealth and squalor combined giving a holistic view of the complexities of global economics. Perhaps it is the embodiment of the Profit Elijah riding around on a Harley drinking small sips from Passover wine cups? In making the Torahs, I was thinking about sources of knowledge. Some find wisdom and an understanding of the world from religious books. And some from the 14 media. I remember arguing with my grandmother about something, and her final conclusion was "I know! I watch a lot of TV". "Because it's on T.V." is equivalent to saying "because the Bible says so". These pieces are also about absolutism and narrowness of vision and the lack of ability to take information objectively from multiple sources. The glass finials have glass satellite dishes at their tops, conceptually allowing you to tune in to a broader range of sources. The dishes are frozen transparent, to that formative moment of reception when you thought that you had got "it". Looking at the T.V. screens in the body of the Torahs, through the thick cast glass, is like taking a walk on a summer evening, the smell of fresh moist rain and sounds of the night, as you voyeuristically watch people basking in the glow of their televisions. In the sculpture, you can use the remote control Yad (torah pointer) to change the channels of the T.V. monitors through the sand cast glass, but the picture screen is vague and obscure. Still, perhaps the Y ad/Remote is a symbol of the power to change and get new perspective. Perhaps it is about control, or is it just a symbol of our laziness in questing for knowledge and insight. Like cable, there might be a hundred channels and nothing to watch. In our modem culture, do we endlessly flip though channels never really finding answers? The silver stars on the torah covers create constellations referencing to astrology which is a place people jokingly or not so jokingly look for guidance and insight to their lives. Or are they simply trying to find guidance in an ancient source of wisdom? 15 The Jews have been considered aliens and foreigners in places were they lived for hundreds to thousands of years. This situation created a border that was not mapped but existed as part of the cultural fabric. This separation of Jews was further amplified by the creation of Ghettos, Mellahs and Shtetls. These forced restrictions on Jewish communities created a border culture. Growing up in California, the border culture, I am most familiar with is the border between Mexico and California. Having grown up in a predominately Latino community, I see clear connections between the Jewish ghettos and the barrios. As a border culture, the Jews developed as a people separate from the dominant culture but are also influenced by it. Like Barrios, Shtetl and Ghettos were incubators of culture. Jews saw their existence as outsiders as a temporary condition, until they could return to the holy land, like the Chicano's desire to reclaim Aztlan. These hybrid cultures are part of their surrounding, and at the same time are subversive to them. It was inevitable that I would be influence artistically by Latino culture. My whole childhood was inseparably fused with Chicano influences, food, aesthetics, tradition, language and music. It makes sense, that something like having a pifiata at almost every birthday would lead me to seek out technical training from the pifiata maker near my house while I was in undergrad. When making work, about the history and change in San Jose culture by the Dot-Com boom, that I would make a life size back hoe pifiata, and from that, the next logical steep is making a giant pifiata 16 Manischewitz wine bottle. Like French culture am I the sum total of all that has influenced me? Both and neither. It has to be about me to some extent, but it is meant to be inclusive of the viewer and open to interpretation. The work uses Jewish history to talk about the present, similar to the way science fiction uses the future to talk about our society today. History might be the key to understanding, but this work is rooted in the contemporary world. This is not merely art about being Jewish or Judaism. Jewish visual culture and history is a framework that I use to explore the world I live in. My work, like Jewish history, is persistent and fluid. It exploits it's in-betweenness for survival. It is resistance and passivity at the same time. Is history just a story? What dose it mean to be googled? Would it be an insult to tell some one to google them self: Last night, at the bar I got so googled. I was googling Jordans collectible personalized Vietnam Zippo lighter. He googled you? What a jerk! Google is a term like Kleenex or Xerox that has taken on its own meaning. I'm always being told to google it What would happen if instead of a thesis I only submitted a list of images from my show and a list of subjects to be googled? (During 17 editing Richard wrote on my draft that he would have my head in a basket if I tried this) Have you ever googled yourself? It's called ego surfing. What would you call some one who googled the girl they had a crush on. I feel kinda stupid, you know that girl who works at the library, I googled her. You goolged her? That's creepy. Well if you don't like it: Google This! While making the pifiata I was thinking that politics and life are often like .. a game. Two sides maneuvering and strategizing to win. But it is a game played with real people and real lives. The world is ridiculous. The pifiata only creates a shadow of the world. Just like art, all the materials of a Molotov cocktail are mundane and utilitarian, but combined they create a sticky burning that is unshakable. A Mazel Tov Cocktail is a tragic comic gift This gift is for a person responsible for setting in motion a system, which causes unbearable conflict, and sadness in the world. Dose somebody have a light? The Leviathan is a mythical sea creature that will battle the Behemoth. This messianic battle between land beast and sea beast will end in the destruction of both and all will feast on their flesh in a tent made out of their skins. Who will feast on the spoils of war when both sides loose? Like in the movie he Matrix the Leviathan also represents the cyclical nature of things, the seasons, or a world with revolving cycles of violence, surveillance and injustice. 18 Tragedy leads people to fear. Fear leads to the desire for safety. Safety leads people to be willing to give up their freedom. That leads leaders to play on that fear to restrict freedom and increase surveillance in the name of safety. We are now batting an international war on terrorism, but perhaps our desire to take decisive action on insufficient information has let one of the worst kinds of terrorist slip past our scopes. The Carbohydrate terrorist! Yes I'm talking about Osama Ben Doughboy. His evil hordes of sleeper cells are hiding every whare. Innocently infecting our grocery shelves with messy Carb. Bombs designed to slowly kill us off with sticky frosted cinnamon rolls and easy bake cookie dough. Who will stop this sinister plan? When does a symbol belong to one culture or religion? When a group incorporates a symbol from another group how do they make it their own? With time and movement, symbols are transformed, evolving like some species of turtl~ developing meanings that allow it to survive. The piece "Matza Paradox" explores the symbol of the last supper as an example of this Darwinian symbolism. Word on the street is that the last supper was a Passover Seder. On one of my trips to Mexico, I found my self walking out of a little tourist shop with a badly cast sculpture of the last supper. This impulse buy immediately started me thinking. All these Dudes in this cheap copy of a copy of a painting by Leonardo DaVinchi were Jewish. I wonder if any of the loud American tourists buying this knock off thought about what this symbolized and what these plastic Jews were doing! So I went to the OSU library. Why would DaVinci show Jesus and his 19 posse eating bread at the last super? Silly Painter Jews don't eat bread on Passover. How and why did this little detail get changed? If you sculpt and paint Matza is it kosher? "Matza Paradox" grinds away layers of newly applied meaning in order to "restore" a symbol. Your movement causes the dangerously motorized copper wheels to grind away the layers of emblem co-opting, symbolically allowing us to see the original, but in order to see the whole picture we still have to fill in the blanks. The Mizrah influenced glass panel has a background texture of worn wood. Like a fragment of wood that came from a larger whole, repeatedly dragged in the surf of history and worn by the ocean of time, this large sand casting, sports symbols that's meaning may also transform with time. What would people think if the everybody at the last supper had Peius and Y amikas? "Mad Money" is a term from my mother's era. It was the money that young ladies would carry, in case their date went sour. This way they had money for a taxi home. It also referred to money set aside for an emergency. Being an object maker, I continually ask myself why did the Jews make these elaborate ritual objects out of silver, gold and other precious materials? Was it an act of devotion, a meditation on passing on individual material wealth to the community? Or was it because, as a people, Jews were often forced to leave their home at short notice with impending danger, often only taking what they could carry. As a culture, what do you take out of the burning house of stability and community? Oy, vay! Here come the Cossacks to bum our village, quick: grab the mad money. 20 These objects were portable sources of wealth and cultural knowledge and just like a girl out on a date with a "nice guy" who finds herself in a bad situation, a nice Jewish girl has to have a stash for when the community that had welcomed them 300 years earlier as a source of comers and trade, now wants to take too many liberties. Need money fast? We'll melt down your ritual object! Instant cash payments! What are the Mad Monies of current groups on the run? Does Al Quaeda have golden Ak47s or Koran covers, encrusted with diamonds,. ready to be melted down when things. get tight? Could you see a political activist pawning his ipod to buy a ticket to Mexico when the Feds are closing in on him? Are chromed out low riders, with air brushed murals of Azetlan, a piggy bank on wheels? Why not make a silver and gold Megillah (scroll of Ester) with a built in handle so it is easier to carry on the run? Why not make all my sculptures out of money and precious material, so people can cash them in, in a pinch? The illusion of wealth is the foundation of a consumer society~ In America it is impossible for everybody to have the level of wealth that the media tells us we should obtain. So my grandmother creates a Kitsch pseudo, roman, suburban palace with faux-Baroque furniture, and a basement decorated to invoke the Ming dynasty. This is the same reason "hoods" from my neighborhood would drive a leased BMW and sport pagers when they lived with their parents in a overcrowded rental apartment and worked at McDonalds. Blinded by this layered desire and glittering with the sparkle of fake status, we need the glass hands spread in the priestly sign of the Cohen, blessing this veneer of prosperity, with the protection from evil that beams from the eyes on there 21 palms. Under all this glaze of glitz are thinly veiled status object we hope people think are from the palace of Versailles, but in fact have been collected from hardware stores, bargain outlets, yard sales and dollar stores. How embarrassing, our relative's tacky attempts at status through false emblems of wealth. I have to go, my cell is ringing. Could it be a collection agency calling about my over drawn Visa card? I was having a discussion with my girlfriend, who is not Jewish, about having a Christmas tree. I was resistant to the idea. "I'm a Jew. Jews don't have Christmas trees. I don't care if you call it a Hanukah Bush. Too many Bushes in my life already." She replied, "You won't have a Christmas tree, but you eat bacon?" "Bacon: bacon's O.K. only those orthodox Jews keep Kosher." What else could I do: I ordered 200 pieces of plastic bacon, bought 8 bags of fried pork skins ( chicharones ), and decked the halls, adding foreskins to complete this trio of little nibblets as well as to re-affirm my covenant with God. Every tree has to have a topper. A jeweled Circumcision Tool is just the right touch. I asked ·my brother, a Reconstructionist Rabi, "From the point of view of Jewish law, what was worse, eating bacon or having a Christmas tree?" He said, 'vi'hat it's a definitely no no to eat pork," and as far as having a Christmas tree, crowned by a Circumeisition Tool, the only thing he could think of, off the top of his head, was that it might fall under the ban against worshiping pagan symbols. 22 So here is the paradox: the reformed Jew gossips about the member of the congregation who has a Hanukah Bush "and there not even a mixed marriage, please pass the bacon." On the other hand, you ask an Orthodox Jew: which is worse, the tree or bacon, and he replies "Bacon! You would eat bacon? God forbid! Did you say some thing about a tree?" 23 Plate 1: Bet Alpha (early 6th c.e.) 24 12 Plate 2: Hammath Tiberius (late third or early 4th c.e.) 25 Plate 3: Mazel Tov Cocktail 26 27 Plate 5: "Google This" Instillation 28 Plate 6: Mad Money Megillah 29 Plate 7: Bacon Tree 30 Plate 8: Illusion of Wealth Mizrah: Detail 31 Plate 10: Matza Paradox 33 135 Plate 10: Italian brass Hanukah lamp, 18th cent 33 1; I) \ Plate 11: Drawing: Griffin Motorcycle 34