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April 5, 2002/Nisan 23, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 29
Expressing Jewish identity through art
LEISAH NAMM
Assistant Editor
For three Hillel students at Arizona State University, Jewish identity is expressed with poetry, a musical composition and a ceramic wall.
Marita Gringaus, Josh Kantor and Laurie Zimmerman - winners of the first Joan Frazer Memorial Award in the Arts at Hillel - presented their award-winning projects March 20 at the home of Lanny and Marlene Lahr, on Phoenix's Camelback Mountain.
The award is designed to connect Jewish students in the arts with Hillel, link artistry and Jewishness, and showcase students' talents to the Jewish community on campus and throughout the Valley.
David Frazer established the award in 2000 in memory of his late wife Joan, who he says would have been "very, very proud and very, very pleased" with the results.
"She was so interested in the arts, and she was very committed to Judaism and very committed to the Hillel board," Frazer says. "All these three things combined (made) this award really appropriate for Joan's honor."
The three winners were selected by a committee in spring 2001 and had until February 2002 to complete their project. A total of $4,500 was distributed among the three artists.
A committee is in the process of selecting this year's winners, Frazer says.
Approximately 75 audience members gathered March 20 in the Lahr's living room for a presentation of the artists' work.
Gringaus, who graduated last spring, read her storytelling poems that focus on the tragedy of European Jewry during the 20th century and the migration of Jews who built new lives in other lands.
Three musicians performed Kantor's project - a musical composition for woodwind trio and electronic tape. According to his proposal, "the work is based on melodic material from a traditional Hasidic nigun" which he discovered in an anthology of Jewish music. A nigun is a song without words.
The project serves "as a symbolic musical representation of the struggle between traditional religious values (the trio) upheld in the Jewish tradition and the complexity of modern life (the tape) and its influences."
Zimmerman's artwork, a ceramic wall made of individual blocks, incorporates written text from the kabbalah and spiritual philosophical writings from around the world, cradled in vessels that rest on the wall or in the wall's nooks and crannies. For the March 20 presentation, the ceramic blocks were displayed horizontally on the railing of the Lahr's patio - with a view of the city lights of Phoenix in the distance. Zimmerman gave a flashlight tour of her project to the guests.
One aspect Frazer and the award committee hoped for was that this award would not only stimulate young artists to create new artwork, but also to give them a chance to become more involved with Judaism.
"Just the mere exposure to Hillel made several people last year more active in Hillel," Frazer says. "This is just such a good opportunity for them to get active in the Jewish community at ASU."
Zimmerman, who has a master's degree of fine arts at ASU, describes in her proposal: "Making art first became important to me as an expression of spirituality, and since then has evolved into a form of personal ritual."
She grew up in a predominately Christian city in Michigan as the daughter of a Jewish mother and Episcopalian father and has found that it is through artwork that she finds her "most honest expression."
"While my parents taught me about both of these religions and cultures, I was raised as a hybrid - we plugged in the Christmas tree lights and lit the menorah at the same time. I grew up with a deep curiosity and confusion about rituals and spirituality," she says.
"Making art was an immediate, intuitive process that enabled me to ask questions and grapple with tough issues about my own spiritual beliefs."
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