The Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture is proud to share this new video on the creation of the beautiful community mural at the Peninsula Jewish Community Center. Below the link, please find a description of the remarkable process.
Making Art, Growing Food, Nourishing Community: The PJCC Mural
"Art is the expression of the human soul. This mural and its artistic elements are an expression of the Jewish soul, and that's what we celebrate." Tad Taube, Chairman, Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture.
"All of a sudden, everyone became an artist,” remarked cultural arts director Kimberly Gordon, speaking about the 745 members of the PJCC community, ages 3 to 90, who helped create the vibrant "Grow Justice" wall mural in the center’s Hamlin garden during July-October 2013. The mural is part of a larger initiative, Grow Justice: Fight Hunger, centered on delivering organic produce from the PJCC’s Justice Garden to homeless residents of San Mateo County. The Justice Garden has provided 627 pounds of food to the InnVision Shelter Network since its inception in April 2013. It has also provided the basis for year-round programming for children and families centered around Jewish values of social responsibility.
According to the PJCC’s Rabbi Lavey Derby, the garden sparked the idea for the mural: “We decided to build a garden in our courtyard out of a desire to grown organic produce that would feed the hungry of our community. The idea of the mural came as a secondary thought, as a way of beautifying the space, and not only beautifying the space, but sanctifying the space. We wanted the mural to address the issue of justice, which was at the very heart of our garden project.”
Before the mural, recalled Gordon, the enormous cement wall was blank and the potential community use of the space was not yet realized. “We really wanted to add a new vitality and to repurpose this space in an active way. For eight years the wall had nothing, and people didn’t spend time in this courtyard. With the Grow Justice Mural and Garden we’ve revitalized a central point on our campus with an active, participatory mission driven initiative. The garden and the mural go hand in hand as we develop curriculum for tours, school groups and other programs.”
As their Artist-in-Residence for the mural project, the PJCC engaged Baltimore-based Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen to bring to the project his 40 years of experience working with cut-out images in layered glass, paper, and canvas. Schlossberg-Cohen, whose work has touched the world from China to the White House, also collaborated with PJCC preschoolers to create a mural for the preschool. A valued addition to the team was E. Blaise DePaolo, also of Baltimore, a respected university professor and artist for more than 30 years, who served as the project’s lead ceramicist. Both Jay and Blaise are part of Rebuilding thru Art Project, Inc. (RAP) that ignites community engagement, empowerment, and action through art.
“Part of what makes this project so special is working with Jay,” said Gordon, noting the artist’s background in community-driven projects for Jewish day schools, synagogues, and inner-city organizations in Baltimore. “He has the same ease and charisma with 3-year-olds as he has with 90-year-olds.”
Last July, Schlossberg-Cohen spent a week in sessions with PJCC community members, including kids at summer camp, preschoolers, families, and staff. Working with Gordon and Rabbi Lavey Derby, the artist guided the over 400 participants through a series of seven text-centered workshops. They were asked to contribute words, stories, and images to which everyone, Jewish and non-Jewish, could feel personally connected.
With an overall focus on “Justice, justice, shall you pursue” from Deuteronomy, the participants zeroed in on four sub-themes: food justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, and economic justice. “We realized we had a real learning opportunity,” said Gordon. “So many d’varim Torah [Bible lessons] are informed and reflected in this work of art.”
The workshops, noted Schlossberg-Cohen, “allowed the message to come from the community itself.” He added, “If I held these workshops at a different place, or at a different time, the message would be completely different. The project is unique, because team-building and promoting understanding are as important as the end-product. I have never seen as diverse a JCC community as at the PJCC. The message of the mural is an accessible social justice statement, examining how we treat the earth and how we treat each other through a Jewish lens. We have made a positive difference using the skills that we’ve been given and strengthening them to strengthen others; there is nothing greater in Judaism than that.”
The groups cut their concepts into collage pieces for Schlossberg-Cohen to use in sketching and designing the mural back in Baltimore, while E. Blaise DePaolo worked on complementary ceramic sections with a team of assistants at Morgan State University. Schlossberg-Cohen says he motivates people by encouraging them to reject the feeling that they can't do it. “So many people have been told at some point that they can’t draw, that they are not artists. Not everyone is an artist, but everyone has creativity and can contribute. I held a talk at the JCC for a group of elderly people, and before the talk, the staff told me that they wouldn’t be doing any painting. After my talk, all of a sudden, they said, ‘Let’s go, we’re ready to paint.’”
In October, the stunning work of art, 127 feet long and 12 feet tall and covering 1,560 square feet, was installed and painted over a two-week period by hundreds of amateur muralists of all ages. Participants related the social justice topics to themes in their own lives and produced vignettes depicting “what that memory was for them, or their hope for the future.” The PJCC held approximately 20 scheduled painting sessions for 28 groups, including groups from the Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School, the PJCC Treehouse after-school program, two groups of older adults, and volunteers from Oracle. Several drop-in painting sessions enabled community members to pick up a brush and add their personal touches to the special creation.
More than 125 people celebrated the mural’s grand unveiling on October 20, 2013, at the PJCC's Fall Harvest Festival and Community Mural Celebration. Among them were Tad Taube and Shana Penn, Chairman and Executive Director respectively of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, whose opening remarks praised the mural's reflection of the power of Jewish peoplehood. According to Taube, "Art is the expression of the human soul. This mural and its artistic elements are an expression of the Jewish soul, and that's what we celebrate."
In January 2014, the PJCC received the JCC Association Zahav Award for excellence and Jewish impact for the “Grow Justice” mural and garden project. The mural has received widespread media attention in addition to an influx of visitors (including Sen. Jerry Jill). It has been the subject of two articles in the JWeekly and was featured in the San Jose Mercury News. It will also be the focus of an upcoming feature in the JCC Circle this spring.
###
For images of the mural, from start to completion, please contact Vera Hannush at the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, vhannush@taubephilanthropies.org.
