The Gallery: Words &
VESSELS OF LIGHT, Cantor Karen Webber and Ellen Zimmerman
A note from the artist: The paired images and words are a collaboration between a photographer and poet from their latest book, "Vessels of Light."
About the artists: Cantor Karen Webber (HUC-JIR, 1990), teaching and performing artist, has been awarded Maryland state arts grants, been a regional judge for Poetry Out Loud, and has had rituals and poems published in Lilith Magazine, a Haftorah commentary, and an anthology for October 7.
Ellen Zimmerman creates photographs that do not exist in the real world, but rely on form, texture, and color to open the imagination to emotion and myth. Her work has been juried into exhibits in the United States, Canada, the UK, and Europe. A first book for both women, "Vessels of Light," is a slim volume of short poems in conversation with otherworldly photographs.
ZEN IS A YIDDISH WORD, Robert G. Margolis
A note from the artist: LITTLE ENSO ‘N SO’S: VOID WHERE EXHIBITED OR, Zen is a Yiddish word Each print is of an enso accompanied by a saying, a jocoserious (often a playfully satiric or punning) presentation of either a Buddhadharma/Zen or Jewish teaching (occasionally both), and sometimes mediated through Yiddish or Hebrew. All prints are conceived and designed by Robert G. Margolis, including the enso for each print, which is hand-produced. Some prints feature Yiddish or Hebrew calligraphy by Izzy Pludwinski (https://www.impwriter.com); some prints feature English calligraphy by Sophie Verbeek (http://sophie-verbeek.com/en/sophie-verbeek/), each commissioned especially for these prints.
About the artist: Binyomin Mendl Menachem, known as Robert G. Margolis (the name given to him by his adoptive Jewish American parents), was born in Warsaw, Poland to unknown parents and was found abandoned as an infant in Warsaw's Jewish Cemetery on Okopowa Street, at the Oyhel Peretz, the memorial to Y. L. Peretz, S. An-ski, and Yankev Dinezon. His has been a shape-shifting life of learning and study; during it, he somehow managed to receive Hasidic transmission from Reb Moyshe Nadir and Dharma transmission from Roshi Shon-da. However, he emphatically refuses to acknowledge or function as either. He does have a thing for making circles, though. Which he does with untutored, uninhibited impercision, and then attempts to read between his own lines. Along with every aspiring contestant in the Miss Amerike Pageant, what matters to him most is "world peace."
