Gust of Wind Creates New Art in Plastic Decor
Written By: Marcia Strousse
An "accident" in the laboratory, the kitchen or the art studio has often been responsible for opening new horizons of experimentations. Just a slip of the hand, a shift in the weather or a simple mistake — and something brand new is born!
It is this very kind of fluke that launched artist Zahara Schatz into a new field of art... provocative plastic creations. Daughter of Professor Boris Schatz, founder of Bezalel Art School and Museum in Jerusalem, Zahara studied art in the Holy Land, in Paris and in New York. Having painted and worked in various art media all her life, she became interested in plastic as a transparent medium in 1943.
"The vast possibilities of this ‘young’ material intrigued me,” the lively artist told us, "and soon I became completely involved with its problems and wonderful results which have since become my main work.”
It was while Miss Schatz was at work in her studio one day that the "accident” occurred. She was experimenting with laminated plastic when some dust particles were blown between the two plastic pieces. Studying the haphazard formation of the particles under the sheaths of glass, she realized the infinite range of possibilities that could be created, and from a freak shift in winds a new art was born.
Wins Award
Five one-man shows, a series of group exhibitions and an award from the American Institute of Decorators followed close on the heels of the introduction of this new medium. Collaboration with architects and decorators, as well as the introduction of a new line of jewelry, keeps new pieces coming from the studio work board at a rapid rate.
Bits of iron filings, scraps of copper chips and numerous assortments of odds and ends are the "fillings” which Miss Schatz sandwiches between two pieces of free-form plexiglass designed to accommodate the use of the piece.
Lamps seem to be a real challenge because there is the added incentive of finding some new way to conceal the copper wiring that must extend from base to tip of the lamp. As far as we’re concerned it’s sheer wizardry, because we've not been able to see the wire in any of them.
Unusual Jewelry
The jewelry has a certain feeling to it that is difficult to describe—yet handsome to view. Chunks of plexiglass assume unconventional forms for necklaces, bracelets and pendants. They, too, have the same assortment of fillings.
Miss Schatz is sending a representative collection of her plastic creations to the Art Alliance for the opening exhibition that begins next Monday, Sept. 12, and will continue through the entire month. The medium to be exhibited will be plexiglass in pure art and decorative art—although the two seem to be combined in all the pieces emanating from Zahara Schatz’s studio.
Gust of Wind Creates New Art in Plastic Decor
Written By: Marcia Strousse
An "accident" in the laboratory, the kitchen or the art studio has often been responsible for opening new horizons of experimentations. Just a slip of the hand, a shift in the weather or a simple mistake — and something brand new is born!
It is this very kind of fluke that launched artist Zahara Schatz into a new field of art... provocative plastic creations. Daughter of Professor Boris Schatz, founder of Bezalel Art School and Museum in Jerusalem, Zahara studied art in the Holy Land, in Paris and in New York. Having painted and worked in various art media all her life, she became interested in plastic as a transparent medium in 1943.
"The vast possibilities of this ‘young’ material intrigued me,” the lively artist told us, "and soon I became completely involved with its problems and wonderful results which have since become my main work.”
It was while Miss Schatz was at work in her studio one day that the "accident” occurred. She was experimenting with laminated plastic when some dust particles were blown between the two plastic pieces. Studying the haphazard formation of the particles under the sheaths of glass, she realized the infinite range of possibilities that could be created, and from a freak shift in winds a new art was born.
Wins Award
Five one-man shows, a series of group exhibitions and an award from the American Institute of Decorators followed close on the heels of the introduction of this new medium. Collaboration with architects and decorators, as well as the introduction of a new line of jewelry, keeps new pieces coming from the studio work board at a rapid rate.
Bits of iron filings, scraps of copper chips and numerous assortments of odds and ends are the "fillings” which Miss Schatz sandwiches between two pieces of free-form plexiglass designed to accommodate the use of the piece.
Lamps seem to be a real challenge because there is the added incentive of finding some new way to conceal the copper wiring that must extend from base to tip of the lamp. As far as we’re concerned it’s sheer wizardry, because we've not been able to see the wire in any of them.
Unusual Jewelry
The jewelry has a certain feeling to it that is difficult to describe—yet handsome to view. Chunks of plexiglass assume unconventional forms for necklaces, bracelets and pendants. They, too, have the same assortment of fillings.
Miss Schatz is sending a representative collection of her plastic creations to the Art Alliance for the opening exhibition that begins next Monday, Sept. 12, and will continue through the entire month. The medium to be exhibited will be plexiglass in pure art and decorative art—although the two seem to be combined in all the pieces emanating from Zahara Schatz’s studio.