As the walls of flame approached her Santa Rosa home, Melanie Carlston frantically grabbed her mother’s paintings off the walls. She tossed a couple of dozen of them into a box she took with her as she fled, hopeful the artwork left behind would survive. It didn’t. More than a year after the Sonoma County…
Read More
Art
Culture
How immigrants' 'Memory Objects' survived
Refugees persecuted for their religion often carry with them, from country to country, continent to continent, those cherished possessions that have…
Art
Spanish artist Samanta Tello left her ‘heart’ in San Francisco
Like many immigrants — maybe all — Samanta Tello can feel her heart beat, metaphorically, in two places at once. The artist born in Spain came to San…
Art
Lola Fraknoi retrospective shows a life devoted to art and elders
Lola Fraknoi is a professional artist who wants everyone to try it. Making art, that is. Especially older adults, whom she instructs at multiple venues…
Art
The many selves of gender-bending artist and Nazi resister Claude Cahun
Who was Claude Cahun? If the French avant-garde artist and writer of the first half of the 20th century were still around, she might reply to that…
Art
Healing the soul with artistic altars in nature
Six years ago, Day Schildkret was mourning the end of a relationship that left him devastated and heartbroken. But his dog still needed walking. It was on…
Art
‘Art from the Holy Land’ at Beth Israel Judea
Congregation Beth Israel Judea in San Francisco will be transformed into an art gallery for one long weekend, Jan. 17-20, to promote Israeli art and…
Photography
‘When Government Worked’: photographing the New Deal
Arthur Rothstein knew how to find the heart of a story. The son of Jewish immigrants, the late, great photographer used his lens to focus on the human…
Hanukkah
Pop Art Rabbi’s take on Pittsburgh
Check out the stunning, evocative art on the cover of this week’s Hanukkah issue of J. The Jewish News of Northern California by Yitzchok Moully. It…