A while ago a gentleman emailed me asking if I planned a print in response to the financial situation. Two days ago, that crisis hit home when the firm I’ve been working for “downsized” half it’s workforce in a single day, causing me, and 14 other unfortunates, to become unemployed.

I don’t know if it was getting laid off (for the 1st time in my life) that did it, but today as I was driving up to Jerusalem the creative block dissolved and I got a vision for my response. The paradigm I was facing was how to be critical of those I perceive as being responsible for the crisis, without being too blatantly offensive (as I am prone to be). I also wanted to offer a vision of hope, rather than one of gloom and doom. Ever since Ahmadinejad’s Daughter I feel like I need to balance out some of the negativity and today, after Obama’s victory, seemed like a great day to do it.

I think I’d like to make a print based on a classic “Lot’s Wife ” piece where I would retain the composition but replace the unfortunate and disobedient Lot’s wife with a banker type character looking over his shoulder.

Instead of Sodom and Gemoroh I would have the crumbling bastions of capitalism represented by a skyscraper skyline. At the foreground, or maybe on the side, I would have a group of people fleeing the catastrophe towards a safer, greener, simpler existence.

I guess I’d try and capture the Utopian vision that Bill Gates has for a post-capitalist society, mix it up with a vision of a more ecologically friendly world, and offer it as a new Eden.

A good friend of mine from the US who is not Jewish wished me
“A Happy Yom Kippur” a few days back.

Happy is not what Yom Kippur is all about.

It’s the ultimate Jewish guilt fest.

A day of atonement.

Jewish holiday theology can be summed up basically like this:
“They tried to kill us, God clobbered them, let’s eat”

Yom Kippur just doesn’t fit the mold.
IT’S A FAST for Chrissakes!!!

Not that I observed it, but Yom Kippur is a weird day in Israel since everything is required by law to shut down.
Including traffic.
You could walk down any freeway in Israel on Yom Kippur as if it were a promenade.

I told you - Weird…

I’ll be sending the above portrait of Keith, commissioned from me through the good efforts of Chuck, to my printer hopefully on Sunday. We still have one more week of holidays (Sukkot - “The Feast of Booths” - don’t ask… : ), so I’m not sure whether he’ll be working Sunday. After Sukkot everything usually settles down and the country resumes to the best of its ability whatever work cycle it can muster.

Apropos the sobriety of Yom Kippur and the soul searching it involves:
I’m kinda pleased that my fee for the work on this portrait is giving me an opportunity to make a donation to Chuck’s drive to raise money for a Children’s ward in Arkansas. It makes the portrait a gift that keeps on giving…

The way I see it Israel, and Jews around the world, owe a huge debt of gratitude to the good Christian souls from the “Bible Belt” that are so generously donating their hard earned wages for Israel’s well being. I feel that donating to a Children’s ward in Arkansas is my way of at least showing the smallest bit of gratitude.

Jews are encouraged to give charity always and this holds doubly true of the days leading up to the Day of Atonement. In the book of Proverbs there are two instances of the sentence “Charity redeems from death” Proverbs, 10 & 11

This is poorly translated into the English in the Revised Standard Version as: “righteousness delivers from death” which means something entirely different…

Anyway, what does this teach us?
Why does the sentence appear twice in the same book?
The book of Proverbs is ascribed to King Solomon, of whom the bible testifies that he was the wisest of men:

“…For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ez’rahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all the nations round about.He also uttered three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; he spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish..” Kings 1, 5

Why would “The wisest of men” scribe the same sentence twice?

Over the centuries Jewish sages have philosophized that by scribing the sentence twice Solomon alluded to the dual nature of charity’s redemption. On the recipient’s side the meaning is quite obvious. For the needy charity may often be the difference between life and death, be it through starvation, exposure or just plain disregard. On the giver’s side, besides granting “browny-points” with the powers-that-be, the charity reinforces the soul against spiritual death.

On a personal level I have always felt that giving charity gave me a felling of well being and joy. I’m not sure if it was simply because I felt good about giving, or because it helped alleviate the guilt I feel for my sins, but the end result was always the same…

All the best,
Mike
: )

It’s been a while since I posted anything new on the site.
Coming back from the US was harder than I anticipated. When traveling it is blissfully easy to forget the drudgery of normal life.

I do have excuses though:
A week after I got back I underwent eye surgery to correct the double vision I had been suffering from for the past 6 years. It was a great success and I no longer see the world twice. Good riddance.

Two weeks after the operation I made my big break with Jerusalem and for the 1st time ever moved to an address that is not on Hapalmach st. I now live in a beautiful flat in a little old house in the center of Herzeliya, 15 minutes north of Tel Aviv. The really good news is that I have a lovely backyard to enjoy.

At Work I’ve been playing mostly catch-up since I got back.

What else is new?

Recently there has been a lot of talk about the Iranian Nuclear bomb and it got me thinking that I find both Iranian women and Atom bombs to be really sexy…
I know, I’m sick, but all this yammering got me wondering if Ahmadinejad’s daughter is hot.

So far I have created three new prints since I returned:

A Sexy PariSight
Is a reflection of my emotional reaction to the blatant consumerism of the culture I encountered.At times it all felt Dollar-bill shallow…

Land of the Fee
Relates to the incredible amount of signage one encounters in the US. It’s the Land of the Free but everywhere all you see are signs saying “DON’T!”.

The model is Kat - a friendly girl, photographer, and self proclaimed “Band Ornament”.Her boyfriends’ band played at the farewell party that Chuck Dodson organized for me before I left the Gallery @404B.

Recently I have been experiencing first hand, and for the first time in my life, the workings of the dull machinery that moves the art world.

Little did I realize, when I was initially invited to hold an exhibition in the States, that so much bureaucracy, paperwork, and hard physical labor would be involved.

Packing and shipping 24 art prints from Israel to the US is a royal pain in the Tuches! (Yiddish for posterior)
Especially if the prints happen to be on the largish size.
Curses on my megalomaniac weakness for working in big formats.

It turns out that the largest prints I planned for the exhibition at the gallery @404b (opens 1st of August), CAN’T BE SHIPPED BY AIRMAIL!

Call me naive, but I though that since we got people to the moon 4 decades ago, shipping “72 Virgins“, “Pharaoh’s Dream“, and “For our Sins” to Arkansas by airmail wouldn’t be such a big deal… Shows what I know.

I’m glad I had the foresight to start preparing for the exhibition now. Even so I think that what with preparing and printing a decent catalog, making labels, shipping everything to the states, preparing myself for the trip, and god knows what else I’m forgetting, this is going to be far more challenging than I thought…

The things you don’t read about in artist’s biographies…
: )
All the best
Mike

Yesterday my print “72 Virgins” was on display at the Cannibal Flower show at the Infusion gallery in Los Angeles. Here are the first impressions, as reported by Heidi, my art’s representative in the States:

“…

Dear Mike,

It was great!!! I have loads to tell you but I am on 3 hours of sleep.

First off all,
I have to say that they put the painting in the 1st placement space. Everyone who walked in the front door saw it first thing.

I met personally Shahid and LC who are both gallery owners, one at Think Space and the other at the Grind. I gave both of them my card and I gave my card and a CD to the owner of the Hive Gallery next door.

A lot of people liked the painting, but most importantly the gallery owners, who see billions of artists a day, loved the piece and would love to see more.

I am going to go by a lot of galleries tomorrow. I have more to write you but got to run,

Talk to you later
Heidi
…”

The Cannibal Flower Show” took pace on Saturday, June 28th, at “The Infusion Gallery“, 719 South Spring Street, down town, Los Angeles, CA. Full details are here. The Cannibal Flower events are really funky gatherings bringing together art, music, culture and a whole lot of cool - see this youtube movie to get an idea of what to expect.