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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/29549/full/29549/high-tech-show-takes-viewers-inside-girls-trip-to-israel/ <br /><br /> <b>High-tech show takes viewers inside girls’ trip to Israel</b> <br /> Friday, June 16, 2006 | by dan pine <br /><br /><p>Photographer Patrick Stull prefers the term "experience" to "exhibition" when describing his new multimedia work "Six Jewish Girls." He has good reason. The project includes 100 larger-than-life photos (some of them 12 feet by 12 feet), a 24-minute narration with music and 7,000 square feet of gallery space to fit it all in.<br /><br /> Stull unveils "Six Jewish Girls" at a private viewing at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on June 22.<br /><br /> The Jewish girls in question are Stull's daughter Elizabeth, 19, and her five best friends. They all toured Israel last year as part of the annual Diller Teen trip (a project of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, operated by the Bureau of Jewish Education and funded by the Helen Diller Family Foundation, a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund).<br /><br /> The six returned from Israel closer than ever, each on fire about their Jewish identity. That youthful energy fascinated Stull, a former financial analyst and amateur photographer. The artist in him longed to interpret what he saw, and do it on a grand scale.<br /><br /> "This is about community and investing in our youth," says Stull of the project. "I decided to capture their relationship and the value of Jewish culture."<br /><br /> Stull choreographed "Six Jewish Girls" so that the viewers, each outfitted with a personal mp3 player, follow a set path from photo to photo. In the narration, each girl describes herself, her life and her connection to Judaism, with musical underscoring adding plenty of emotional wallop. The photos, some suspended from the ceiling on trusses, depict the girls — individually and together — exulting in their youth.<br /><br /> Stull added special effects such as reverse negative/double exposure and exaggerated color to some of the images. Others are simple portraits of six girls on the edge of womanhood. Says Stull, "I let the girls speak openly about the Jewish community, Judaism and the friendships that have given them so much. In the process, you discover who they are."<br /><br /> Stull's background in banking and finance came in handy in staging the project. The distances between each photo, the lighting and the timing of the narration all required precision planning and attention to detail. His notebooks resemble motion picture storyboards.<br /><br /> It's hard to believe, given the large scale of "Six Jewish Girls," that this is Stull's maiden effort as a professional artist. "It's probably good I didn't go to art school," he jokes.<br /><br /> Raised Catholic in San Diego, Stull studied economics and philosophy in college. He says marrying a Jewish woman and raising their children as Jews while belonging to San Francisco's Congregation Sherith Israel provided him more spiritual sustenance than Catholicism ever did (though he adds that he has no plans to convert to Judaism).<br /><br /> "There's a cultural value system," he says of Judaism, "that holds the family together. It's an exciting, enriching culture and environment."<br /><br /> After many lucrative years in the business world, the San Francisco resident decided to pull a Gauguin and chuck it all for art. "It was time for me to reinvent myself," he says, "and create something new in the world of exhibitions. You spend half your life in front of a computer, you then want to do something that emotionally stirs you."<br /><br /> Stull now rents studio space on 23rd Street in San Francisco, and has big plans for future projects of similar scope, some with Jewish themes. "I want to go to Israel," he says, "and do projects on a kibbutz and the Knesset. I'm trying to create a library of work and put them online."<br /><br /> Yet as ambitious as his artistic plans may be, Stull remembers it all began simply by watching his own college-bound daughter coming into her own as a woman and a Jew. "Elizabeth told me, 'Going to Israel made me realize I am Jewish and that I know what I believe about Israel.' It makes me want to cry."</p>

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