My friend Diane Fredgant helping me mount the show
at Jewish Theater Collaborative/ Milagro Theater !

I couldn't have done it without her help. Diane has an attention to detail! 

Here's some info on how I work....and pictures of each mask will appear one by one, for the next several days.

Hebrew letters often dance across a fanciful screen in my mind’s eye. Translating this dance of letters and images becomes a meditative experience. I journey deeper into the meanings and fight the limitations that a solid yet fragile medium offers me. As I cut and shape the glass, I find myself singing a niggun (a wordless tune) or an actual verse that has inspired my art.  The rest of my world is put on hold; I lose track of time, and I become fully absorbed in meanings beneath meanings and beyond meanings. The product of my meditation is rarely as complex as the journey I have taken. I laughingly refer to my work as shiny, pretty things....but beneath that language is a hidden urge to share my relationship with the sacred.

I am grateful to Sacha Reich and the Jewish Theater Collaborative for the generous invitation to create masks of some of the central character in Chaim Potok’s book, Davita’s Harp.

The process was incredibly similar to studying Torah. I found myself reading and re-reading the text; searching for meanings and trying to understand not only what was written, but also appreciating the white space surrounding the words. 

Sometimes I sang union songs, other times I sang a noggin or some of the prayers Davita and Annie were silenced from singing. I humbly offer my interpretation of these dear characters. They have become like family to me.