Issue 3 Gallery

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Freeform beauty by Prudence Mapstone

Freeform beauty by Pirkko Vega

Autumn Garden by Rena Roohipour, from Ireland

Renie Breskin Adams uses crochet among other media for her imaginative work

Finger puppets from www.golfini.com: Aliens with spaceship

Finger puppets from www.golfini.com: Noah's Ark

This exciting large piece is titled Bosmat Tivon, by Israeli artist Mirjam Bruck-Cohen who writes: My first Solo Exhibition was about my childhood as a Holocaust surviver. In my second exhibition I hoped to look at my surroundings. So often people are marked by their country of origin, race, or religion, and one looses an essential openess towards the person." What would happen," I asked myself; "if I turned the tables?” I decided to research places through their most neutral elements, their urban planning maps. The late Dov Chernobroda, an urban planning architect, opened his map collection for me to choose from. As well as a city planner, Dov was a peace activist. He was murdered in a suicide bomb attack. I chose maps that called to me visually. Eventually I made eight maps that showed places that are now Arab, some of which have ancient Jewish/ Roman /Crusader foundations. The image of each map determined for me which textile technique -- weaving, crochet, knitting, applique, or a mix of them -- I would useto create my sculpture. Urban planing maps have official colors to indicate such things as living sites, roads, industrial sites, public services, etc. I hung each map in front of me and looked at it. Of course, having lived in Israel since my sixth year, I am not a tabula rasa about places. While looking, I started to assemble materials. I worked seven years on those maps, never in a hurry. "Bosmat Tivon" is a Bedouin town founded in 1956 as a permanent settlement for three Bedouin tribes on the western side of the valley of Israel. Its urban plan had to combine not only all the neccessary private and public spaces, but also the traditional relationships between the three tribes. The town, is divided into clusters, or neigbourhoods, with several roads, combining and separating them. The layout looks similar to a plant, and indeed, the name Bosmat is the Hebrew name for the Impatiens plant. Tivon is the name of a Biblical town that was close to the site. It seemed entirely natural to create the map of Bosmat Tivon in sections of freeform crochet and knitting. The town is indeed a bloomimg town