Sooze DeLeon Bloom-Grossman, Japan/USA

Parshat Va'era

Parshat Va'era

Artist Statement

This or that, either/or, Dark/Light — so many distinctions, a story of Havdalah. Bein Hashmashot is one of the primary visual references in this piece — the time of Cosmic Twilight on the Sixth Day, when miracles were created by Hashem prior to their need — waiting in the whirling chaos to be called upon. Bilams, donkey, Noah's Rainbow... and in this parsha: what will be Miriam's Well is now Hagar's Well. Mayyim chayyim: Water of Life. Two babies born in a flush of breaking waters, Two children growing in desert lands made green and growing only through the grace of Oasis and their waters and a miraculous Well which transcends time and place and person: allowing Ishmael to reach his destiny as surely as Isaac will reach his, allowing Hagar's weeping torrents to stop, even as Sarai's had stopped with her conception and the knowledge of life within, life continuing.

Bio

Raised in Japan, Hawaii and the Mojave Desert in an ethnically, religiously, socially, & politically mixed family, I reside now on Vashon Island near Seattle, WA. A working artist and activist for over 30 years, I have also spent 15 plus years teaching in the Kadima Community in Seattle.

Reflections on Being a Jewish Woman Artist

My art being Jewish is as inescapable as my being an artist. As inescapable as my X chromosomes make me a woman, as my being at the Mount with Miriam and Moses and all the generations of all our peoples witnessing the covenant that holds us still today and throughout time - makes me Jewish, makes my art, makes me: me.

Though I grew up in the tropical lushness of Hawaii with my laughing, singing Hawaiian cousins, soft waters, fragrant trade winds, green, green, green valleys, and wise aunties of that land of warm alohas is in me, with me, part of me always — my art always calls back to sere winds over desert sands rather than coral beach sands.

Though my father's father's father has lived in the gentle rains of the Pacific Northwest, where I live now. Living rough among the leaping red salmon and lumbering bear, mists hanging low over always green mountains, plying rivers, oceans, lakes — water, water, water everywhere — and here I am surrounded an all sides: seal, sea lion, orca, otter! Still— my art is alive with camel and donkey, goat and sheep lit by a hard sun in a pitiless light and I rejoice with the seraphim in the glories of a golden land.

So
I am
From many wheres
Many peoples
From now and from before
I come from man and from woman

Here I am today. Jewish. Woman. Artist.

In love with the Torah. Angry with the Torah. Confused by the Torah. It’s a family thing you know.