For Whom is This Flower?

This week we are observing my mother’s memorial day.
Mother’s Day is coming soon (May 12 in the US and Canada)
and so this memorial day is extra special to me.

No, don’t go – this is not a sad post!
 It’s rather nostalgic and very optimistic…

My mother was 96 years old when she passed away.
She was lucky enough to see her family turning to “a clan”!
She had three children, ten  grandchildren and eight grand-grandchildren.

In spite of hard days and misfortunes, she was a merry  and optimistic
person who always saw the glass half-full.

Mom was born in Estonia, the eldest of  three daughters, in an average
secular Jewish family. When she was 25, in 1935, her assertive and strong
character helped her make the fateful decision to leave her family and follow
her new husband, Dov, who lived in the small Jewish community in
Palestine under the British Mandate.

As an expert in classical studies, Dov came to the Tartu University
library to explore ancient manuscripts.
There he found his love – my mom, who had been studying Latin …
It was love at first sight- they got married a week later.
How romantic!

But in 1938, Mom’s road of life took a sharp turn for the worst.
Three happy years were cut off by Dov’s death, from toxemia.
Penicillin was still in its research stage…
How tragic!
My mom was left alone, six-months pregnant with my sister
and with my three-year old brother. Those were hard times
in the Jewish settlement with the Arab riots of 1936-39.
Her late husband’s family took care of her. She put her two young
children in a boarding school and got a job.

She met my father, Jacob, eight years later.
Their romance was kept in the darkness, literally speaking.
My father was a member of the “Hagana” intelligence,
which was one of the Israeli organizations fighting for independence.
Being wanted by the British, he left his hiding place only at night.
How romantic!
Mom’s late husband’s family opposed their marriage since
he had no job and his future seemed unstable…
But as time passed this attitude turned to mutual love.
My father became a prominent figure in that family and even
named me after my siblings’ grandma – Vita. 

After I was born, Mom stopped working, but she was a real feminist.
She preached to us to study a profession and to be financially independent.
She was also very political. I remember the daily political arguments
around the dinner table. My father used to call her “My Golda”(Golda Meir
was a prominent politician by that time and later becamePrime Minister).
On the very day my father passed away, Mom said:
“I am lucky! I had two husbands who loved me”.

Isn’t that a wonderful example of an optimistic and positive way of thinking???

The carnation was my mom’s favorite flower.
We always had it growing in our garden.

                  I dedicate my handcrafted flower to my mom.

Its scientific name is Dianthus caryophyllus, roughly translating to
“flower of love” or “flower of gods”. It is one of the oldest cultivated
flowers whose origin goes back to ancient Greek and Roman times.
It has many symbolic interpretations, all over the world.
In the beginning of the 20^th century, it became the official flower of
Mother’s Day.

My handcrafted carnation is composed of three layers of Sterling Silver
leaves and tiny gems in its center. It is not a mimetic, but rather a stylized flower.

With this flower as a modulus, I made earrings, pendant, choker
and a fibula (brooch) connecting two necklaces.

Here are my jewels with carnation flowers. 

Enjoy.

         

I would love to hear from you.

Thank you and happy Mother’s Day!

Vita

                     

Kettle:  An Associative post

  

 This is a special post, since I hereby declare  a lottery:

You can win one of the three jewels, shown below.
All you need in order to take part in the lottery is:

  1. Enlist in my blog.

  2. Answer the question at the end of this post.

Back to the kettle:     

Have you ever tried to write your associations?

This is what I am going to do. Join me in this adventure:

This is the  legendary kettle of my trekking group with whom I have
been trekking for the past 26 years. It serves the tea drinkers,
an amorphic group who is getting bigger at the expense of the coffee
drinker group… 

This kettle leads me to two immediate associations:

It reminds me  the wonderful works of artist Anish Kapoor. 

His Art is so aesthetic; His round shapes are relaxing to the eye and soul.
But except for the aesthetic aspect, Kapoor deals with problems of human
perception, of our ability to see and understand the world around us.
His sculptures are  positioned in open and public spaces,
where the ever changing  surroundings are reflected in them
( people, landscape, weather, sky), and are considered
as intrinsic elements of the works.

My other association is my “boiling” mind.

Of all my ideas, what shall I write today in my blog:

Shall I write  about my creating process?

About  the making of a certain jewel?

About the artist Douglas Gordon, whose  exhibition  I guide these days

in the Tel-Aviv Museum?
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Shall I write about my last trek – along the ”Jesus trail” in the Sea of Galilee?

Well,  

I will write about all of these in my next posts!

As for now –

                         I hereby declare the opening  of  a lottery :

Here are three jewels which will be given to the three winners:

All you need in order to take part in the lottery is:

  1. Enlist in my blog.

  2. Answer the question in the comments below:

           “What is your association concerning the kettle?”

The lottery will be held on the 21st of April, 2013.

Bye for now,

Vita

What is a  Portrait  in the Cyber Era?

As human beings, we can understand the desire to be remembered,
and the wish to control our public appearance.

That is why the portrait was invented.

The classic portrait goes back to ancient times, but when we speak
about it, we recall the Renaissance portraits.

Piero della Francesca, Federico da Montefeltro
and Battista Sforza, 1470.

The classical portrait contains  three  main  elements :

The  model,
the background (i.e. the narrative),
and the painter/ viewer, (who are situated at the same spot).

Tizian (Tiziano Vecellio), Karl the 5^th with a Dog, 1533.

The model is usually frontally posed, theatrically dressed in his public outfit,
and is equipped with his status  symbols  (crown, scepter, sword, horse -
for  nobles, pen, books, working tools – for educated figures).

The background  supports  the  model’s  narrative (fields, manor, palace – for the nobles, study, workshop – for professionals).

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Self-Portrait, 1804
(revised ca. 1850).

The painter decides upon  the  mutual  “ relationship”  of the model and the
viewer:

The model can be fully exposed before the viewer  (by  frontal  posture  and
direct eye contact), or can be partly concealed (by  withdrawing his look
sideways or shading his eyes, even by wearing  glasses, or by a profiled posture).

Francisco Goya, Self-Portrait, 1801.

At the beginning of the 19^th century, there came an historical prominent shift:

                                               The Photograph

It seemed that the photo would turn the realistic painted portrait irrelevant!

                                         Yet, it did not “die”!

Artists confronted the challenge with new and creative ways:

Sol  Lewitt, Autobiography , 1980.

There is the conceptual  portrait.

Sol Lewitt  created an alternative self-portrait by photographing the inventory in his loft, which contained his choices, and his favorite possessions.
This, he claimed, represented himself.

Douglas Gordon, Phantom, 2011.

The contemporary artist Douglas Gordon,  followed this approach and exhibited an assortment of myriad photos, drawings and  personal objects of an autobiographical nature, which, as a whole, comprised his self-portrait.

Douglas Gordon, Zidane:A 21st Century Portrait, 2006

Gordon also suggests an  alternative  contemporary portrait forour cyber era:

He filmed the famous  football  player Zinedine Zidane during a game

(playing in “Riyal Madrid”), exclusively focusing on him by 17 cameras.
In fact, looking at this portrait takes 91 minutes – the duration of the actual
football game.

Lucian Freud, Self-Portrait, 1985.

Ruven Kupperman, Jacob Kuperman, 2005.

The Israeli painter, Ruven Kuperman, painted his 74 years old father with the same approach.

Now  we return to my first question:

Living in the “cyber” era, when a  photo is not enough, and when we are expected to give more  information about ourselves, and yet, we still want to control our public appearance,  how does a portrait look?

                                          PINTEREST

                                          is the answer!

This is the contemporary popular portrait.
It is both visual, comprised of photos, and conceptual, since the photos are
personally chosen. More than that– the combination  of  boards, reflects
personal interests and priorities.
It is not “High Art”, but  it  is  democratic  and creative, the way the cyber world is.

Here is my Pinterest title:

                                 Art, Jewelry and Vita

                   Hi, I design jewels for women like me: mature, modern,
                   chicly dressed for work, a mother and a grandma.
                   My boards reflect my life.

I invite you to visit my Pinterest, and if you like it (I mean – like me…)

please mark “like” and follow me.

Thank you

Vita

p.s.
Do you think Pinterest is the contemporary portrait?

Leave you comment below.

Thanks.