Tel Aviv’s Gan HaChashmal: From Warehouses to Fashion Houses

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Helena Blaunstein of Frau Blau helps a fashionable client. Photo by and © Vision Studio

Like other vibrant cities, Tel Aviv is in a constant state of change, but as of this writing, perhaps the single coolest fashion district is Gan HaChashmal (the “Electric Garden,” so named because it was the first neighborhood in Israel to have its own power plant, back in the 1920s). In the early 2000s, intriguing independent design studios began to dot streets primarily devoted to hardware stores and dusty warehouses: Kisim, Idit Barak’s Delicatessen, Frau Blau, and more. Together they formed a consortium that came to be called Collective Gan Hahashmal: while retaining their independence, they support one another in marketing and business survival—a very Israeli model of cooperation.

“Creative, interesting people live and work here.”

— Maya Bash

Today some of the shops have changed location, and the Gan HaHashmal scene is still transforming, with new bars and restaurants and dance clubs taking up more of the once-languishing real estate. Designer Maya Bash was one of the neighborhood’s pioneers—and her shop on Barzilay Street is still going strong. “You now have a cool customized-bicycle place, coffee bars, great hamburgers, great music,” says Bash. “Creative, interesting people live and work here." 

Frau Blau Facebook >

Frau Blau Instagram >

Kisim >

Maya Bash >

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Frau Brau Instagram

Shopping Jaffa: From Shuk to Chic

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Designs by Sharon Brushner, on Instagram

At flea markets, of course, another person’s throwaway can become your exotic treasure. If your tastes run toward the offbeat and you’re ready for some haggling, you’ll want to stroll Jaffa’s Shuk HaPishpeshim, a flea market that offers vintage finds as well as a number of glamorous but tiny showcases for adventurous designers. You might stop in at Zielinski & Rozen Perfumerie, a customized-perfume maker with wares made from local herbs and flowers. Sharon Brunsher offers comfy minimalist fashions in blacks, grays, and whites. Visit Eyal and Roni Shpilman’s vintage store Galerie Parisienne, where you might just find an exquisite Vuitton bag from 1975 if you’re lucky. At Ruby Star, the jewelry (designed by Shirley Itzik) tends toward the chunky: necklaces with big stones and hammered gold bases, rope-inspired gold bracelets, chainmail.

“At the flea market, another person’s throwaway can become your exotic treasure.”

The Vida shoe shop is tucked into a Jaffa side street called HaHalfanim. In the window is a croquembouche of homemade footwear in wild colors and shapes and in materials that range from leather to silk to burlap to fur: prim low heels and massive platforms, minimalist unconventional or audaciously spiky and flirtatious. Venture in—just for fun—and you may emerge with unquestionably unique new shoes, tailored precisely to your taste and style.

Zielinski & Rozen >

Sharon Brunsher >

Sharon Brunsher Instagram >

Galerie Parisienne >

Ruby Star >  

Shuk HaPishpeshim > 

Israeli Fashion Week: A Showcase for Elegance and Experimentation

Designs by threeASFOUR on Instagram

One reason fashion is interesting in Israel is the vibrancy and variety of styles. The Israeli Fashion Week showcases work by well-established Israeli couturiers such as Karen Oberson and Dorin Frankfurt, and emerging names such as Liora Taragan and the sister duo Einav Zini and Nophar Machluf, Yoav Rish, Maoz Dahan, Natalie Dadon, and Nastya Lisansky. Although the 2012 Fashion Week was interrupted by rockets launched over Tel Aviv (an incursion known as Operation Pillar of Defense), the Israelis continued undaunted with the event in 2013, 2014, and 2015. Amir Hayek, director general of the National Manufacturers Association of Israel, says, “We see local designers as a means to breathe new life into the design industry in Israel,” he says.

“We see local designers as a means to breathe new life into the design industry in Israel.”

— Amir Hayek

Can fashion serve a social function? At the 2015 Fashion Week, Israeli designer Yaron Minkowsi draped models in keffiyehs (traditional Arab headdress) that were fashioned into evening gowns and daywear. He was just one of dozens of couturiers featured at the four-day event, including a selection of emerging designers and a show of work by students from Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art.

From renowned names like Ronen Chen and Elie Tahari to, the avant-garde design collective threeASFOUR —if you are interested in clothes, whether classic elegance or offbeat experimentalism, you’ll find what you’re looking for in Israel.

threeASFOUR >

threeASFOUR Instagram >

Dorin Frankfurt >

Yaron Minkowski >

Elie Tahari >

Einav Zini and Nophar Machluf >

Karen Oberson >

Ronen Chen >

Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art >

Designs by threeASFOUR on Instagram

Israel: A Test Kitchen for Design

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Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Graduate Exhibition poster

There are countless institutions fostering design, innovation, and the entrepreneurial spirit in Israel. Vital–The Tel Aviv Center for Design Studies, in the city’s Florentine neighborhood, focuses on graphics, illustration, and product design. The NB Haifa School of Design and the Holon Institute of Technology both have robust design programs. The august Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem (Israel’s oldest arts school) offers, along with its courses in fine arts, photography, and film, degrees in architecture, industrial design, ceramics, and jewelry design as well as graduate-level programs in urban design.

“Design plays a central role in defining local culture and contributes to the nation’s economic development”

David Grossman (no relation to the author of the same name) heads the Israel Community of Designers (ICD), a consortium founded in 2004 and representing a spectrum of design professionals around the country. Grossman is primarily a graphic designer: his work often addresses the challenge of constructing a fresh and edgy look with an ancient alphabet. As the only country whose official language is Hebrew, Israel also offers an ideal laboratory for certain aspects of graphic design. The use of spoken and written Hebrew is more or less contained within the borders of the nation, so it is easy to measure audience response to branding and visual concepts

In Israel, as elsewhere, design plays a central role in defining local culture and contributes to the nation’s economic development. It is also an important part of what makes life delightful here.

Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design >

Holon Institute of Technology >

Israel Community of Designers >

NB Haifa School of Design >

Vital–The Tel Aviv Center for Design Studies
12 Vital Street, Tel Aviv-Yafo

Bezalel College of Arts and Design Graduate Exhibition Posters

Shenkar College: Training Tomorrow’s Creatives

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Shenkar College's Instagram feed

Israel is a land of pragmatic innovation. It comes at you from all sides, and a fundamental understanding of design plays an important role in that fact. Yuli Tamir, the president of Israel’s Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, understands this well.

“Shenkar challenges young people to think and create, and that is what education is all about. ”

— Yuli Tamir

Tamir has a regal bearing and somewhat stern features that light up when she is interested, amused, or delighted. A former politician—among several governmental posts, she was Israel’s Minister of Education from 2006 to 2009 and served as a longtime member of the Knesset—she is an outspoken peace activist. Today, Tamir brings her knowledge of education to bear in a new way at Shenkar. As she said in a speech early on in her post as head of the school:

In many ways, Shenkar is what Israel should be about: a center of culture and creativity that relies on cutting-edge technological know-how in order to produce and reproduce a new way of life: whether in fashion, art, textile, chemistry, technology, or design, Shenkar challenges young people to think and create, and that is what education is all about.

Founded in 1970, Shenkar’s main campus is located in two buildings in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv. Hallways buzz with the mechanical sounds of 3-D knitting machines and printing presses; in classrooms students give presentations to one another and bear up to critiques. Vitrines showcase recent experimental designs by student.  Everything at Shenkar is about new ideas, moving things forward. As Tamir says:

You think, “Okay, innovation in Israel, that’s the Weizmann Institute, the Technion”—and those places certainly do have a high level of innovation. But when you look at where unusual industry starts, it’s usually here rather than there. . . . We are hands-on. [Here at Shenkar], we are strengthening the entrepreneurial spirit among students, to give them a platform to develop and initiate their own ideas.

Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art > 

Shenkar College Instagram >

Artist Ayala Serfaty’s Organic Forms

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Ayala Serfaty’s Entudia. Courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin 

The border between fine arts and applied arts is not always distinct. Designer/artist Ayala Serfaty’s work lives on that frontier. She has long been known for her organically inspired shapes in light known as Soma, works that have been exhibited at museums and galleries from Tel Aviv to New York to Milan. These delicate pieces, made of glass and silk, recall the strange wonders of undersea life—graceful jellyfish, proliferating corals—all lit from within, ethereal, seeming almost to breathe. Serfaty’s light works have become so popular that they are now produced in a steady stream, with her oversight, by a team of fabricators at her Tel Aviv workshop, and sold in high-end design stores around the world.

“I really like the parameters of design.”

— Ayala Serfaty

One body of work (and body is the operative word) called Rapa is driven by the same organic impetus but yields a very different outcome: massive pieces of furniture. Instead of gossamer strands of glass, with silk and light, the material here is thick, chunky felt: soft as moss, earthbound, comforting as an animal’s warm hide.

  Serfatystudied art at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem and started out as a fine artist, but moved into design: “I really like the parameters of design. A chair—okay, it can be anything, but it does have to be comfortable to sit on. With a sculpture, there is no such requirement.” After years of producing and selling the Soma work, what led her to shift gears so radically into the felt furniture? The curse of success:  Serfaty found herself directing a fabrication business, instead of making things with her hands. “To run something is different from creating art. I had to figure how to make the split.” And furthermore, she was very ready to try out a new sensibility: “With the Soma work, I can’t let anybody touch it. With the felt pieces—you can put your feet on them, you can do whatever you want. You can jump on them! They are so solid, nothing will happen to them in two hundred years.”

Ayala Serfaty >

Ayala Serfaty’s "Adaptation II" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Ayala Serfaty’s "Adaptation II" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Ayala Serfaty’s Adaptation I.

Photo courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin. 

Ayala Serfaty’s "Memory II" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Ayala Serfaty’s "Clouds Chandelier" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Ayala Serfaty’s "Entudia" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Ayala Serfaty’s "Lottah Leh III" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Ayala Serfaty’s "Shastool" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Ayala Serfaty’s "Kuramura Armchair" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Ayala Serfaty’s "Clear December" courtesy of Maison Gerard, Robert Levin

Architects Paritski & Liani: Collaborating with the Elements

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Photo courtesy Paritzki & Liani Architects

Architects Itai Paritzki and Paola Liani’s offices are in a small, handsome building on Lapin Street in Neve Tzedek. Nestled in these modest headquarters, the two of them are busy sorting out some of the problems of the future. 

“Why not break every architectural rule about stasis and stability?”

Liani describes their approach: “We work a lot with the site and with nature: wind, light, sun, and water. So the site, in a way, is the spirit of the project all the time.” In 2011 this notion was made manifest in their magnificent Barud House in Jerusalem, which they describe as “subdivided into three main themes: Jerusalem, a city of rock and stone; wide aerial views; and the sacred architecture of multiple religions intersecting in the skyline.” In Neve Tzedek, they designed a building that fits into its location so discreetly that it has been nicknamed “the Invisible House.” “The idea,” says Liani, was “to keep the Tel Aviv soul, in a way—between sky and sand. Nothing more than that. Very quiet.” For these architects, site provides all the inspiration they need. In 2015 their Marc Chagall School opened in Neve Tzedek: built around a quiet courtyard, it features façades enough to showcase the work of the painter for whom the school is named.  

Paritzki/Liani are forward thinkers: like many in their country, they are thinking outside the usual parameters in a quest for new solutions. Why not break every architectural rule about stasis and stability? How about a structure with moving and interchangeable parts? Could they design a building that breathes—that is not only sustainable and ecologically sound, but that provides sustenance? These architects don’t think these ideas are in the realm of science fiction: they are allowing creative innovation, combined with know-how and the willingness to take a risk, to guide them to solutions.  

Paritzki & Liani Architects >

The Israel Museum: A Collection that Spans the Ages

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Model of Ancient Jerusalem at the Israel Museum. Photo by Matthew Shugart, courtesy Creative Commons

“[The Israel Museum is an] experiential journey that is universal in nature and embracing of all time.”

— James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum

Museum buildings are often showpieces for great architects (consider the Guggenheim’s monumental buildings in New York and Bilbao—proud examples by Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry respectively). The Israel Museum in Jerusalem undertook a three-year overhaul, nearly doubling the exhibition spaces and providing welcome new perspectives on its massive collection. Undaunted by the millennia of history on display here, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to works commissioned for the space by contemporary artists Anish Kapoor and Olafur Eliasson, the museum’s director, James Snyder, describes it as providing an “experiential journey that is universal in nature and embracing of all time.”

Israel Museum >

Older than Tel Aviv, Sarona Discovers a New Life

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Tel Aviv's Sarona neighborhood. Photo by George Dement,  courtesy Creative Commons

Tel Aviv’s Sarona neighborhood is discovering a new life. Originally a colony of the German Templers (a messianic offshoot of Lutheranism), Sarona’s distinctly European-looking stucco buildings, with their tiled roofs and wooden shutters, actually predate the founding of Tel Aviv, which has grown up around them.

“The so-called White City of Tel Aviv was deemed a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2003.”

The quarter’s centerpiece is the Beit Hava’ad—the Committee House—which, after a checkered history (including seven years as Nazi headquarters) is seeing a new life. The restaurant Claro is one of many new businesses that have recently opened in this busy area, which includes toney boutiques (from young designers to established couturiers), bars (from home brews to fine vintage wines), eateries (from sushi to pizza to falafel), and a huge, bustling indoor Sarona Market, where produce and products from all over the world can be purchased.

Beit Hava’ad >

Claro >

Sarona >

Sarona Facebook page >

Tel Aviv Museum of Art > 

The Open Museums: Filling a Cultural Need of the First Order

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Exhibition space at the Tefen Industrial Park's Open Museum. Photo by and © Vision Studio

One observes in Israel a sincere respect given to creative thinking, which extends beyond the arts and into the sciences, industries, cuisine, agriculture, education, and beyond. It is a famously entrepreneurial nation, and it seems clear that this drive stems partly from the essential need to draw life from a challenging terrain, and from life to draw civilization, and from civilization to draw culture: a basic human requirement.

“A museum, to me, is one factor that makes a place worthy of becoming a home.”

— Stef Wertheimer

There is a pervasive understanding in Israel that none of this is possible without creative thinking and the inspiration that art can provide. Even some of the country’s industrial parks—hugely successful manufacturing plants—strategically include art museums at their complexes.   

The Open Museums at the Tefen Industrial Park in the Galilee, manifest the “Tefen Model” founded by business magnate Stef Wertheimer. The central museum is as sleek and impressive as any art space in any major city.  It features an art gallery, sculpture garden, industrial museum, car collection, and more—as well as educational and events departments.

While Wertheimer is not an artist or an art collector himself, he is deeply proud of this element of his working community. As Wertheimer says:

A museum, to me, is one factor that makes a place worthy of becoming a home. Schools, education, and security come first, of course, but a place without culture is not worth living in. A museum is a cultural need of the first order.

Art, in other words, benefits both the community and the morale of employees.

Open Museums at Tefen >  

Akko: The Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre

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Crowds near a Crusader-period fortress during Akko’s Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre 

Every fall during the holiday of Sukkot, a remarkable gathering takes place in the seaside city of Akko: the Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre.

“Audiences flock in the thousands to see open-air theatrical shows as well as concerts, street performances, crafts workshops, acrobatics, and dance.”

The old city of Akko is one of Israel’s more heterogeneously populated urban areas, a 70–30 percent mix of Jews to Arabs (coexisting for the most part harmoniously but sometimes—perhaps it goes without saying—in friction). It is a fascinating architectural and cultural hodgepodge, and its long history offers a humbling lesson in the transitory nature of power and dominion. The city provides a stunning physical setting for a gathering of artists.

Akko’s performing-arts festival, founded in 1980, every year features a competition for original plays, along with local and foreign theater productions and open-air theatrical shows as well as concerts, street performances, crafts workshops, acrobatics, and dance. Audiences flock in the thousands from all parts of Israel. The going, of course, is not always easy: funding is scarce, and in 2008 the festival was postponed by two months due to the threat of violent clashes. In general, though, the gathering has become a symbol of coexistence between the city’s Jewish and Arab inhabitants. Each year’s program showcases works by Arab playwrights and troupes, along with performances by music ensembles. Projects led by theater professionals provide training for local Arab and Jewish teens, including immigrant youth.

The Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre has served as an eye-opener to many about the provocative world of edgy performance and the potentials of collaboration.

Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre >

Peace through Music

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Itzhak Perlman conducts "Can Can" and Haydn's Toy Symphony with the Perlman Music Program Orchestra and 40 young Israeli String Players at the Israel Conservatory Tel Aviv. Photo courtesy The Perlman Music Program

“Peace through Music,” says a popular bumper sticker. Well, who knows—it certainly can’t hurt. Music is of course an art of collaboration: an art that requires, above all, the ability to listen deeply and to respond with empathy and sensitivity, with the goal of achieving an end product filled with positive meaning: a viable formula for any kind of cooperation. A number of groups have been formed specifically with a view to bringing musicians together from diverse backgrounds in cultures at serious odds with one another. Among them are the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (under the baton of maestro Daniel Barenboim) and Heartbeat: The Israeli-Palestinian Youth Music Movement. The Jewish-Arab Youth Orchestra is a project of the Jerusalem Foundation, under the auspices of the Louis and Tillie Alpert Youth Music Center. And Polyphony, headquartered in Nazareth, is another common ground for Arab and Jewish classical musicians. 

“Music is an art of collaboration: an art that requires, above all, the ability to listen deeply and to respond with empathy and sensitivity.”

Things are opening up in Israel among artists: people are listening closely to one another. When Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in recent years, he said that he was excited to encounter so many new young musicians in the orchestra. Their performance of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 was fluid and powerful, the musicians sharply attuned to their conductor. The mutual respect was obvious, and thrilling for the audience to see and hear.

Adding to the artistic culture of Israel is the venerable Perlman Music Program—a U.S.-based mentoring project for talented young classical musicians, under the direction of violinist Itzhak Perlman. Since 2014 the PMP has been hosting residencies and offering master classes in Tel Aviv for talented young musicians.

Heartbeat: The Israeli-Palestinian Youth Music Movement >

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra >

Louis and Tillie Alpert Youth Music Center >

Perlman Music Program >

Polyphony >

West-Eastern Divan >

From Hip-hop to Rap to Electronica to Trap and Beyond

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Balkan Beat Box's Instagram feed

Hip-hop and rap are other musical realms that are at least in part being shaped by the Israeli presence, and here the country’s cross section of cultures is very much in evidence. Hip-hop is largely about borrowing and repurposing, as heard for example in Produx’s “Ichiban,” a hilarious remix from Fiddler on the Roof, and in Nechi Nech’s “Godzilla,” in which “Hava Nagila” is made to rhyme with “Thriller” (as in Michael Jackson). Shadia Mansour (known as the “first lady of Arabic hip-hop”) takes on both Middle East politics and gender stereotyping.

“Hip-hop and rap are other new musical realms are being shaped by the Israeli presence—and here the country’s cross section of cultures is very much in evidence.”

The band Hadag Nahash (“Snake-Fish”) mashes up funk, jazz, world music, and Western pop, while the very popular Israeli-American band Balkan Beat Box fuses traditional Middle Eastern and Balkan sounds, “gypsy punk,” and electronica—really anything from the most ancient folk rhythms to the edgiest trap music—to create an irresistibly percussive and hard-hitting music. (Full disclosure: This author is not an aficionado of hip-hop or other contemporary sounds, but discovered Balkan Beat Box while eating dinner at Jerusalem’s Machneyuda restaurant. There, it isn’t uncommon, late some evenings, for the chefs to exit the kitchen, still in their aprons, and to dance among—and sometimes on—the tables. Balkan Beat Box’s music provides just the right propulsive rhythms for their insanity.)

Israeli Jazz on the World Scene

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Poster for Israeli Jazz & World Music Festival.

The Israeli jazz scene has received much international notice recently, with such stars as bassist Omer Avital, trombonist Avi Lebovich, pianist Omer Klein, and the three brilliant Cohen siblings Anat (clarinet), Avishai (trumpet), and Yuval (saxophone)—all graduates of Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts.

“Israel has produced and exported so many serious young musicians that the jazz landscape is hard to picture without their influence.”

— Nate Chinen, New York Times

Ramat HaSharon is home to the influential Rimon School of  Music (which partners with Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music), and Tel Aviv’s Israel Conservatory of Music has a thriving Center for Jazz Studies. Jazz can be heard in nightclubs and concert halls in every major Israeli city, and at annual gatherings such as the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eilat, which has been drawing crowds of music lovers to this southernmost point in the country since 1987. 

In recent years, the United States has been catching on to the potential of jazz from this region: Chicago hosts the annual Israeli Jazz and World Music Festival, and New York was the site of the Jazzrael festival in 2012, as well as of 2016’s Israeli Jazz Spotlight Festival. As New York Times jazz critic Nate Chinen has observed: “Over the last fifteen years, Israel has produced and exported so many serious young musicians that the jazz landscape is hard to picture without their influence.”

Israel Conservatory of Music >

Israeli Jazz and World Music Festival (in Chicago) >

Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music >

The Elstein Music and Arts Center and the Extraordinary Woman Behind It

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Elstein Music and Arts Center Instagram

Today, a new institution, the Elstein Music and Arts Center, is a nucleus for both visual and performing arts—the brainchild of Lily Elstein, one of Israel’s most important arts patrons. The enter is part of the Elma Arts Complex, in the historic town of Zichron Ya’acov, on a ridge of Mount Carmel overlooking the Mediterranean. The main headquarters are in a beautiful building designed by architect Yaakov Rechter, originally as the Mivtachim Sanatorium/Hotel. (Built in 1968, it earned Rechter the prestigious Israel Prize for architecture.) Long, white, and gently curved, it rests horizontally on the hillside—as Lily Elstein herself describes it, “like an instrument: like the keys of a piano or an organ.” The renovated complex, set on nearly thirty acres, includes performance spaces and halls, art galleries and studios, villas to house artists in residence, and a luxurious hotel and spa for visiting audiences.

“I really belong to this place. I belong to the art and the life of art in Israel.”

— Lily Elstein

Elstein is an elegant and gracious woman, with a tenacious streak. Her connection to Zichron Ya’acov is long:standing she was born there, and her late husband, Yoel Moshe Elstein, and she both descended from the town’s fathers.  When Elstein expressed an interest in buying the old Mivtachim Hotel, she encountered a number of obstacles, from developers attempting to outbid her to objections against marring the local forest areas with construction. Ultimately, Israel’s High Court of Justice was called in to decide the fate of the land and building. Elstein says: “I explained to them: ‘I am third-generation Zichron Ya’acov. My grandparents were founders, and my parents were born there. I really belong to this place. I belong to the art and the life of art in Israel.’” Ultimately, she overcame them all, and today the Zichron Ya’acov community is well aware that her project is a boon to the area—and to the arts in general in Israel.

Elstein Music and Arts Center, Elma Arts Complex >

Haifa’s Kartel: A Posse of Renegade Street Artists

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Kartel collective poster

Haifa has a population that is notably mixed, ethnically and socially, as well as a growing youth culture (sometimes nicknamed “Haifsters”). Recently, the city has seen the emergence of a vibrant new “posse” of artists known as Kartel, who initially used an abandoned boathouse in the city as part-club, part-gallery, part-blank slate for street art: its tall exterior walls painted from bottom to top with wild hallucinatory images. Their venues feature live performances and pop-up exhibitions. The creative energy behind this endeavor comes from two local groups of underground street artists: GhosTown and Broken Fingaz (whose individual members, as of this writing, prefer to go unnamed).

“Kartel initially used an abandoned boathouse in Haifa as part-club, part-gallery, part-blank slate for street art”

The posse recently made a foray into Tel Aviv, setting up shop temporarily in a former slaughterhouse at the Carmel shuk. There the renegade artists and their associates painted the walls with acid-bright cartoons—stylized nude women, skeletons, and men in fedoras figure prominently—and hosted an international roster of musicians, including Adrian Younge, Free the Robots, and Kutmah.

If you can find a Kartel flash event, it may well be worth your while to lace up your boots and get to it.

Kartel Facebook page > 

Artists’ Collectives: Inspiration in Numbers

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Hila Vugman, "Amira", 2016, courtesy Indie Photography Group 

It is well known that Israel was founded with a spirit of collectivity and cooperation: people joining forces to find a way to entice life from a land that presented countless obstacles. A century ago, the first kibbutzim were established with a utopian plan of shared responsibility and shared benefits—a deep-seated mandate of teamwork.

“When artists get together, their thinking and ideas percolate in new and unexpected ways.”

While collective strategies may be simply pragmatic on a farm or in an office workplace, they provide a different kind of advantage in a creative environment: when artists get together, their thinking and ideas can percolate in new and unexpected ways.  Israel is home to a number of collaborative organizations devoted to the arts, including Artspace Tel Aviv, Indie Photography Group, Hanina, and the Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center in Tel Aviv, and the venerable Hutzot HaYotzer artists’ colony in Jerusalem.

Founded in 1968, Hutzot HaYotzer (which translates to “Potter’s Lane”) has nurtured many Israeli artists and craftspeople over the decades. Since 1978 it has been a hub of the Jerusalem Arts and Crafts Festival—which includes fine works by painters, sculptors, leatherworkers, fiber-artist, and silversmiths, and also hosts wonderful outdoor concerts.

ArtSpace Tel Aviv >

Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center >

Hanina >

Hutzot HaYotzer Artists’ Colony >

Indie Photography Group Gallery >

Barry Frydlender: Exploring Time Through Photographs

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Photographer Barry Frydlender in a still from the film Out in the World.

As anyone in Israel can attest, time is a preoccupation in this nation and the surrounding region. There are few topics that do not hearken back to ancient eras, and while the future is on everyone’s minds, history seems remarkably flexible, open to any number of perfectly viable versions of truth.

“There’s a hidden history in every image.”

— Barry Frydlender

Photographer Barry Frydlender has chosen to disregard the constraints of immediacy and the burden of history and instead engages time by practicing what might be called a “durational” form of photography. His images—composites made up of dozens, sometimes hundreds of individual visual facets—may evolve over a period of months in the making and the editing. The results are hyper-detailed vistas printed on a vast scale, often bringing us into the streets and social circumstances of Israel. “There’s a hidden history in every image,” says Frydlender.

It might be said that to photograph anything in Israel is to take a political position, so charged is the terrain with controversy. But Frydlender seems to maintain an observer’s detachment, even when his work is dealing with a topic as volatile as territory: his Israeli panoramas include Muslims and Jews, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, secular and religious, young and old. In this sense, his photographs testify to a land of many peoples and faiths and types, interconnected by the situation of this country.

Frydlender is meticulous in constructing his visual assemblages, which are stitched together with the help of his computer. He finds meaning in each of the many pieces of his “mosaics”—shaking up traditional ideas of centrality and focus. In the film Out in the World, he explains to a group of young photographers that each piece in his iconic 2003 photograph The Flood has its own center point: the viewer’s eye can land anywhere and find fulfillment.

These stills are from the film Out in the World, available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel. 

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 Photographer Barry Frydlender and his work in a still from the film Out in the World.

The Film: "Out in the World"

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A still of artist Sigalit Landau welding in the film Out in the World

Out in the World is a film about four artists making an impact on the international scene: Sigalit Landau, Barry Frydlender, Micha Ullman, and Michal Rovner. These artists embrace what seems to be an ongoing theme among Israeli artists: finding inspiration even in the dark and troubling aspects of life, forging from them works of art that help us, if not to reconcile, then to begin to understand.

“Four artists making an impact on the international scene.”

Sigalit Landau  explores her own body and the body politic in myriad media from sculpture to striking performances captured on video. Barry Frydlender is a photographic artist who assembles painstakingly crafted image “mosaics” that comment on time and place. Micha Ullman’s multi-faceted, minimalist sculptures often make use of the orange-red sand of the Sharon area north of Tel Aviv. And Michal Rovner’s monumental stone structures are at the center of her thinking and her art.

The stills are from the film Out in the World, available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel. 

The Remarkable Wire Sculptures of Nihad Dabeet

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Nihad Dabeet’s Healer (2011), iron wire. Photo courtesy Avital Moses

Sculptor Nihad Dabeet keeps a studio in Ramle, where he spent most of his childhood before being accepted, as a young teen, to the prestigious Thelma Yellin School of the Arts, and subsequently moving to Bulgaria, with a scholarship to study sculpture at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia. Dabeet has remained devoted to his work through easy times as well as rough ones, always staying circumspect. His work plays a crucial role in all this; for an artist, he says, “it’s very easy to go from bad place to good place. It’s more difficult to go from good place to bad place.”

“Dabeet’s fascinating forms are hybrids of figuration and abstraction, the hand-wrought and the organic.”

Over the years, Dabeet has experimented with various media, including discarded building materials (“rubbish” is his technical term for it), eventually honing a distinctive style of working with thick strands of wire, which he describes as “weaving.” The fascinating forms he renders seem to be hybrids of figuration and abstraction, the hand-wrought and the organic. For the Korin Maman Museum in Ashdod he created a extraordinary life-size sculpture of a horse for a show called Horses and Bulls. Though made of steel wires, it looks almost like a magnificent armature made of fine bentwood twigs.      

For Dabeet, beauty is only a beginning in art: it is “the first link,” he says. “But you must also have persuasion.” He says he believes in finding what is good and useful in even the most trying circumstances. 

Thelma Yellin School of the Arts >

Korin Maman Museum
16 Hashayatim Street, Ashdod