Vayeira | וירא

sooze bloom deLeon grossman, USA        

I focus this work on the mystical concept of beyn hashmashot, the time of the Twilight of the First Shabbat before Creation was completed, the time before time. This Twilight is the in-between time between the sixth Day and the final seventh Day — the day of completion and rest, the Shabbat of Shabbats — when the Spheres of the Universe first sang in chorus with the malachim, the Angels of God, in the Great Making of the Worlds. The twilight place reminds us humans that we are hanging by a thread, teetering between day and night, good choices and bad, selfish desires and the greater good, between the life the Torah gives us and the destruction that follows from ethical abdication.

Professional Background Raised in Japan, Hawaii, and the Mojave Desert in an ethnically, religiously, socially, and politically mixed family, sooze bloom deLeon grossman resides on Vashon Island near Seattle, Washington. A working artist and activist for over 30 years, grossman works in glass, textiles, and mixed-media collage.