work with angels
work with angels
this body of work was installed at the S. Tucker Cooke gallery in Asheville, North Carolina for the week of March 31 - April 4, 2025.
It now lives here.
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
Pirkei Avot
ARTIST STATEMENT
Witnessing and grappling with the ongoing Palestinian genocide as a Jewish person was the moral impulse that birthed this show.
The work started as a series of paintings attempting to convey gestures of healing related to genocide and ancestral trauma.
These paintings were impossible to finish.
Stones, water, and the more-than-human world pressed in throughout this process, and I began to investigate working with them beyond visual representation. I brought into my research and my personal practice the angels of Jewish tradition. Somehow, angels and the elements of the world—earth, air, fire, water—were connected, and asking to be enlisted. Or, more likely, they were enlisting me in this work.
What emerged was a kind of ritual sanctuary whose strange architecture invited collaboration from all who entered, to work alongside and with the angels and the elements.
Zichrono Livracha, 22 x 25, oil on panel
The Hebrew word for angel, malakh (מַלְאָך), is related to the word for divine work, melakha (מְלָאכָה), which is used in Genesis to describe what the Holy does when creating the world.
Are angels involved in the work of creating worlds?
Kadosh, 14 ft x 6.5 ft, oil on panel
Can we work with angels to create worlds while the grieving the horrors of this world?
Is a grief sanctuary a space of world-building?
