Artist Uses Window Screens To Create Novel Jewelry
Written By: Harry Harris
Until six years ago, Jerusalem-born Zahara Schatz created works of art with brushes and oil paints.
Nowadays, in her New York studio, she uses a bunsen burner, a power saw and chunks of ordinary window screen.
With these unorthodox items, plus odd-shaped scraps of sheet metal, wire, powdered colors and plastics, she concocts startlingly original jewelry and home decorations.
Some 50 examples of her work—mainly abstract collages between sheets of transparent plastic—are now on display at the Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th st.
Among them are ornamental door knobs in rectangular, oblong and oval shapes; ultra-modern sculptures which vary in appearance according to adjacent colors and the play upon them of light and shadow; peculiar, yet attractive, ear-rings, brooches and bracelets; and such items as plates, cigarette boxes, paperweights, lamps and tables.
One eye-catching lamp, with a deceptive fiber glass shade which seems as flimsy as tissue paper, uses the uninsulated current-carrying copper wire as part of the design within an odd-shaped plastic base.
Many of the pieces on exhibit bear brow-corrugating tags —“Scheme,” “Pendulum,״ “Conversation,” “Aftermath” — but Miss Schatz, a vivid brown-eyed brunette, blames most of them on her friends.
“You must classify them in some way,״ she explains, “but artists often fail to name their work properly. Words are not an artist's medium.”
Miss Schatz, who has been visiting Philadelphia for the past several days and hopes to return before the closing of her exhibition on October 3, is a member of a distinguished family of Jerusalem artists.
In 1906 her late father, Boris, founded the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts and the Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem—the first art school and museum there since Biblical times, according to Miss Schatz. A classical sculptor of religious subjects, he has been called the founder of art in Israel.
Her mother, Dr. Olga Schatz, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., is an art critic and author of a recent book of art criticism, “Juval Sings.” A brother, Bezalel (named for the first artist in the Bible and for the Jerusalem school, as were the first-born of all members of the school's faculty) is a painter of abstractions.
Miss Schatz studied painting at the Bezalel school and later in Paris.
“About six years ago, in California,” she recalls, “I began playing with plastic, and it occurred to me that I might just as well laminate the plastic, inserting designs between the sheets, instead of just molding it as if it were glass."
“It seemed to me that the medium wasn’t being approached properly. Artists frequently try to use old techniques on new media. I tried to discover the possibilities within the medium itself.”
'Evening Bulletin', Philadelphia
Artist Uses Window Screens To Create Novel Jewelry
Written By: Harry Harris
Until six years ago, Jerusalem-born Zahara Schatz created works of art with brushes and oil paints.
Nowadays, in her New York studio, she uses a bunsen burner, a power saw and chunks of ordinary window screen.
With these unorthodox items, plus odd-shaped scraps of sheet metal, wire, powdered colors and plastics, she concocts startlingly original jewelry and home decorations.
Some 50 examples of her work—mainly abstract collages between sheets of transparent plastic—are now on display at the Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th st.
Among them are ornamental door knobs in rectangular, oblong and oval shapes; ultra-modern sculptures which vary in appearance according to adjacent colors and the play upon them of light and shadow; peculiar, yet attractive, ear-rings, brooches and bracelets; and such items as plates, cigarette boxes, paperweights, lamps and tables.
One eye-catching lamp, with a deceptive fiber glass shade which seems as flimsy as tissue paper, uses the uninsulated current-carrying copper wire as part of the design within an odd-shaped plastic base.
Many of the pieces on exhibit bear brow-corrugating tags —“Scheme,” “Pendulum,״ “Conversation,” “Aftermath” — but Miss Schatz, a vivid brown-eyed brunette, blames most of them on her friends.
“You must classify them in some way,״ she explains, “but artists often fail to name their work properly. Words are not an artist's medium.”
Miss Schatz, who has been visiting Philadelphia for the past several days and hopes to return before the closing of her exhibition on October 3, is a member of a distinguished family of Jerusalem artists.
In 1906 her late father, Boris, founded the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts and the Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem—the first art school and museum there since Biblical times, according to Miss Schatz. A classical sculptor of religious subjects, he has been called the founder of art in Israel.
Her mother, Dr. Olga Schatz, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., is an art critic and author of a recent book of art criticism, “Juval Sings.” A brother, Bezalel (named for the first artist in the Bible and for the Jerusalem school, as were the first-born of all members of the school's faculty) is a painter of abstractions.
Miss Schatz studied painting at the Bezalel school and later in Paris.
“About six years ago, in California,” she recalls, “I began playing with plastic, and it occurred to me that I might just as well laminate the plastic, inserting designs between the sheets, instead of just molding it as if it were glass."
“It seemed to me that the medium wasn’t being approached properly. Artists frequently try to use old techniques on new media. I tried to discover the possibilities within the medium itself.”
'Evening Bulletin', Philadelphia