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<\/a>Clay\u2019s figure floats in the center of the work, sleeping in a sky filled with triangular stars of many colors. Marc Chagall\u2019s \u201cOver Vitebsk\u201d (1913) comes immediately to mind. In Chagall\u2019s painting an elderly beggar hovers in the sky, a heavy sack slung over his shoulder, a cane in his hand. When that painting was completed, Vitebsk was home to a Jewish community that constituted over half the city\u2019s inhabitants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is hard to feel the gut punch of loss when looking at Chagall\u2019s work; that world was destroyed in the Shoah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here, Clay\u2019s sleeping figure is peaceful, safe. They dream while surrounded by allusions and reference to the Jewish art of centuries \u2013 art made new and original (all over again). It is a kind of tikkun, this commentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moritz Daniel Oppenheim\u2019s (1897) work, \u201cPashal Eve\u201d has contributed the delicate chandelier that Clay Adamah Mil holds over the earth below. In Oppenheim\u2019s painting, the original hangs over a seder table and those gathered around it. It is muted and hard to make out, even though the human faces at the table are so brightly lit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Clay\u2019s work, the chandelier lights the dark sky, casting light on the beach that undulates gently to the sea. For Oppenheim, the chandelier illuminates people<\/em> gathered together; for Clay, the chandelier illuminates the earth<\/em> \u2013 an earth without humans walking, resting, or working in its folds and shadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, their resting figure floats above the feathery grass. Only a stone hamsa lying on the beach seems to betray a human presence. But perhaps not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This too \u2013 an earth drawn both at peace and safe from harm, is a tikkun. The human presence above protects, holds, cares for its quiet beauty. No flight from danger or painful labor is evoked; there is no heavy burden on the back of the human figure in this work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Designs from the works of David Bomberg, El Lissitzky, and Sonia Delaunay, abstract or intricate; bright and fine, are part of the work\u2019s backgrounds, frames, and tender references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Artists whose names we do not know appear in this work, too. There are those who created zodiac mosaics in ancient synagogues. A gracious commentary on the traditional Jewish art of paper cutting appears; on one side of the picture we see a papercut as it would look facing forward; on the other side, the paper cut is drawn reversed. The design is evocative: the papercut border features the seven species twining along the frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is a Jew whose art is an extension, an expansion, a new beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is Jewish renewal at its very best, and it is the kind of thing that offers hope to those who hope to see what renewal looks like when it is deep, expert, and, above all, honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A nineteenth-century haggadah by Charlotte von Rothschild shows up in this work. Leviticus 19:34 appears, too, reminding us of the central commandment to remember that we were strangers and therefore, must love those who are strangers among us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are all the regions of the world that were home to Clay\u2019s ancestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Who is Clay Adamah Mil?<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Jewish artist in a rich and beautiful line of Jewish artists. A human being whose ancestors lived on many parts of the planet. A human being whose life story inhabits the corners of this work as well as its center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For those of us who seek the beauty of our inheritance, Clay\u2019s work is both tikkun and hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It gives us ourselves, our inheritance, and our future.**<\/p>\n\n\n\n *I ask readers to please pay attention to pronouns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ** To see more of Clay’s work, go here<\/a> and\/or here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I asked Clay Adamah Mil, Jewish artist, how they felt their own artwork fit into the lineage and history of Jewish art.* I received a work of art, one that referenced multiple Jewish artists of the last two millennia. The piece presents the viewer with a midrash on, at the very least, a minyan of … <\/p>\n