Upcoming session: Nov. 21

On Sun., Nov. 21, the salon will meet from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Derfner Museum (directions here) in Riverdale. The presenters will be Jill Nathanson, who will discuss her current exhibit; Susan Chevlowe, director of the Derfner Museum, who will address the museum's collection; and artist Deborah Ugoretz, who will offer a PowerPoint presentation of her work.

For carpools and RSVP, contact: jewishartsalon@hotmail.com.

Bios after the jump.


Jill Nathanson

Jill Nathanson is an abstract painter whose work continues to explore and update the traditions of color based abstraction, while experimenting with the abstract elements within Jewish thought through painting.

The Judaic work has been in the form of three projects: The Shivitis, Seeing Sinai and New Translation: Genesis. Seeing Sinai (200-2004) was a collaboration with JTS Chancellor Arnold Eisen, and was a close reading, through abstract painting and original midrash (Eisen), of Shemot 33-34. New Translations (2006-10) was a mixed media installation based on the implications of the Robert Alter translation of Genesis 1.

The projects use the “energies of color” and the abstract forces in the paintings rather than symbolism or depiction to connect with the biblical text. Nathanson has been exhibiting since 1981. She has had solo exhibitions of her Judaic work at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, The Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale and the Derfner Judaica Museum in Riverdale, N.Y.

Deborah Ugoretz

Deborah Ugoretz has been creating Ketubot since 1975. A master cut-paper artist and teacher, Ugoretz was included in the monograph, In the Tradition of Our Ancestors - Papercutting, published by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Two of her papercuts are included in the catalogue of the exhibition Slash-Art under the Knife that was held at the Museum of Art and Design.

Ugoretz also designs stained glass windows and synagogue art. She has received commissions from The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Jewish Theological Seminary, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Cathedral of St. John The Divine. Her works were shown at Living in the Moment: Contemporary Ritual Art at the Hebrew Union College in 2000 and at the National Jewish Women’s Artist’s Network Exhibit at Columbia University in 2007, and many shows in New Jersey.

She is developing a multi-media, cut paper installation titled Conversations that explores the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic letterforms using light, negative and positive space, movement and sound. Since 2003, she has been a coordinator and participant in an Artist Beit Midrash, a group of artists who study Jewish texts with a scholar and then create visual interpretations in Teaneck.

Susan Chevlowe

Susan Chevlowe is chief curator and director of the Derfner Judaica Museum and the Art Collection at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale and teaches in the program in Jewish art and visual culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Chevlowe oversaw the completion of the Derfner Judaica Museum in 2009 and organized the inaugural exhibition for its new space, Tradition and Remembrance: Treasures of the Derfner Judaica Museum, which explores the intersections of history and memory through objects interpreted in light of the role memory plays in shaping both individual and communal identities.

A former curator at The Jewish Museum (N.Y.), she organized such exhibitions as Painting a Place in America: Jewish Artists in New York (with Norman Kleeblatt), Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn, 1936-1962 and The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography. Her essay on internationally-acclaimed photographer Adi Nes for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art appeared in 2007. Dr. Chevlowe received her Ph.D. in art history from the Graduate Center, CUNY.