SHIRAH RUBIN
SHIRAH RUBIN (SHE/HER) is a sculptor who works in mixed media most often incorporating ceramics. She utilizes a visual language with materials appropriate to the metaphorical, historical, and social elements of a project. As a teaching artist, she develops art workshops for audiences ranging from young children through adults in museums, universities, schools, camps, and synagogues. Shirah worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Israel Museum and the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem; the Jewish Museum in New York City; the Fresh Air Fund at Camp Hidden Valley, NY; Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design Hillel and Gallery; and Camp Yavneh in New Hampshire.
How did your relationship with art and artistic expression begin?
As a child I loved riding magical carousels, which were my earliest experience of an “art installation” with the lights, mirrors, music, and moving horses. Through riding carousels I was transported into an imaginary new world. I knew from the time I was ten that I wanted to make art.
What kind of process went into organizing “Wisdom Exchange”? What were some of your biggest considerations with this project?
I love this question! What does it mean to shepherd a multi-faceted art process with 400 artifacts including ceramic vessels, handwritten letters, and audio files to create an art installation, a documentary film with Olivia Hunang, and a website in collaboration with Kris Tronski? This project has involved multi-layered processes.
There was the creative process of making the clay vessels from slabs that I prepared in my studio and participants used heirlooms to impress into the clay. After the clay Wisdom Vessels were fired, I then took them to the studio and glazed them using the Raku firing technique. Raku is a Japanese inspired firing technique that involves taking the clay pieces out of the kiln with metal tongs while they are still glowing red hot. I then placed the pieces in a metal can with organic material that would be able to catch fire to starve the clay pieces of oxygen, which results in a variety of radiant glaze colors. The participants and I were in for a surprise with the results of this firing process since there are many factors of nature at play.
Another process of this project was the writing of the Wisdom Letter or ethical will which involved reflecting upon values of importance and advice to loved ones and the next generation. In my workshop we looked at historical examples of ethical wills and I used prompts to guide the letter writing.
In addition, with filmmaker Olivia Huang, we created a film of participants' documentation of these processes including the exchanging of the letters and reading each other’s letters aloud. These audio letters are included in the installation and are stored on a website which is the repository for all the letters and vessels created. I also developed a classification system to organize and archive the letters and jars for the online archive. Visit wisdomexchangeart.com to experience the audio letters and to see the vessels created.
What has led you to become a teaching artist, among other things?
Teaching art to me is a gift. My mother was an art educator also and she taught me the value of each human being’s inherent creative potential. Teaching for me involves creating invitations for conversations about experience, curiosity, ideas, and feelings through a visual language that sparks the imagination. I appreciate teaching art with groups because I enjoy the challenge of simultaneously guiding individual artistic development while building a supportive community of makers who I often invite to stretch the scale of an art project through social cooperation and collaboration.
How does your degree in Studio Art & Psychology reflect through your art?
The act of chasing beauty for me is one that provides healing. Art and psychology both ask me to consider questions of existence, personal growth, and social change.. They connect in my art, especially when I conceptualize socially engaged art and I create frameworks for teaching people of different ages..
Where do you look for inspiration? How have your inspirations evolved over time?
I find inspiration in intersections, especially visual patterns found in nature, Jewish culture, Japanese aesthetics, and Southwestern United States crafts created by Indigenous tribes. Judaism provides me a rhythm for living that anchors me in reflecting upon life’s existential questions and working towards repairing our broken world.
What is “ART” to you?
The creative process to me is the holistic integration of mind, body, heart, and hand expressing feelings, ideas, and meanings both particular and universal. Art revealed from this process is the affirmation of life beyond differences. Art is humanity’s kaleidoscope that cultivates empathy and positive change in the world.
What has been the most challenging part of your journey as an artist? And what has been the most rewarding?
Sometimes there’s a lot of external and internal noise that distracts me from listening to what I need to be making and expressing. It has been an incredibly liberating process to learn how to truly listen to my voice and to accept the beauty of imperfection - embracing the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi.
What is one piece of advice you would give to an emerging artist?
Question and persist, persist, persist.
What’s next for you?
The Wisdom Exchange Project will continue in a new form. I am collaborating with a journalist on a book about Jewish ethical wills and we will be leading joint workshops in person and online for groups to continue the writing of wisdom letters and the making of ceramic wisdom vessels. In addition, I am seeking artists from different cultures to further develop their own version of the Wisdom Exchange Project in Boston. This summer I am excited to be launching a new ceramic habitat for monarch butterfly conservation. This socially engaged community art project is inspired by the real possibility of the monarch butterflies’ extinction and my desire to prevent this by engaging the community in artistic expression that would help the butterflies. Stay tuned for details at shirahrubin.com.
Contact Shirah at shirahtova@gmail.com
