Let Down Your Guard
"Let Down Your Guard" is about the conscious decision we make to allow another person to get close. When we come into contact with other people, especially those who may look or act differently, it can be difficult to peel back…
Quilting Psalms
Back in December, I worked with a wonderful group of people at Temple Emanu-El of West Essex as they completed their semester of studying Psalms with an art project. Each person created a piece of fiber art which represented their…
Completing Creation
In October and November, the students and parents at Temple Israel Center's Nursery School made fiber art representations of the days of Creation. Earlier blog posts show the creation of those pieces. Once their work was complete, mine was just…
Sewing Psalms
This semester, a group of congregants at Temple Emanu-El of West Essex in Livingston, NJ studied Psalms together with Susan Cosden, Director of Congregational Learning. During their last class earlier this week, I had the opportunity to join them to help them…
Creation Continued
In my last post, I talked about the beginning of a project with the nursery school students at Temple Israel Center. Each class in the school was assigned one day of Creation to interpret in fabric art. The first week,…
Honoring Jaime Wynn
On June 13, Jaime Wynn passed away after a battle with cancer. She was an artist, scholar, teacher, friend, and all around incredible human being. I met Jaime through the Drisha Arts Fellowship. At the time, I had a full-time…
Kol Ami’s 3’s Make Challah Covers
I had a wonderful time today working with three of the three-year-old classes at Congregation Kol Ami's Early Childhood Program. Each student made a challah cover using their favorite colors. After talking a little bit about Shabbat as a group,…
Torah Cover Almost Complete!
The Torah Cover I've been working on is complete (except for a label)! Picking up the process where I left off my last post, I trimmed the edges, serged them, folded them over to the back, and hand stitched them…
Shattered Childhood
My nephew is a first grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School. On December 14, 2012, his carefree childhood came to an abrupt end as a murderer came into his school and killed 20 of his classmates and 6 school employees. …
Muslims and Jews Make Art Part 2
Last week, third and fourth grade students from Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester and the Upper Westchester Muslim Society (UWMS) came back together to create fiber art based on the sketches they made after studying stories found in both the Quran and Jewish texts.…