STATEMENT
All of my current work was created during the past two challenging years. Overcome with grief as the pandemic took hold, I sought consolation in the wisdom of the early Hasidic rabbis. They taught that no heart is so whole as a broken one and that we each need two hearts: broken and whole. My fiber-based, sculptures follow the lines of hearts– broken, mending and whole. I enhanced them with materials I recycled from the woods and from the street. As I worked, my hands found connections not imagined by the rabbis.
My fiber vessels meet the bleak hard-heartedness of our culture’s response to grief with the softness of wool from sheep and alpaca and the blue and green colors of healing. Viewers are invited to write statements of their losses on parchment and place them into a collective container. After the show, the artist will create a new work incorporating these statements and marking the transformation of grief. My figures invoke the loneliness of the outsider and the joy of the insider.
Susan Kaplow
545 West 111th St. #8E
New York, New York 10025
website: www.susankaplow.com
Email: sbkaplow@gmail.com
Profile:
| Susan Kaplow is a visual artist working in fiber, clay and mixed media. Her current artwork, all created during the pandemic, speaks to the losses and grief, the broken and healing hearts, the isolation and inclusion we have all experienced. She has made art related to illness and healing; women’s wisdom; lesbian/gay issues; torah and transformation. She brings to her art practice 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist, ongoing study of Jewish spirituality and deep immersion in nature. |
Recent Exhibitions:
| 2021 | Beyond the Narrow Place, virtual group show, Temple Emanuel Members Showcase, Long Island City Artists, Plaxall Gallery |
| 2020 | Life As It Is Now, Members Show, Ceres Gallery |
| 2019 | Embody, solo show, Ceres Gallery |
| 2017 | Red, group show, Textile Study Group of NY, NOHO Gallery Vulvacular, co-curated group show, Ceres Gallery, New York City |
| 2017 | Out of Bounds, Solo Show, Ceres Gallery, New York City |
| 2016 | Transformations, Bernard Museum of Judaica, New York City |
| 2015 | Summer Seranade, Ceres Gallery, New York City |
| 2015 | Small Works, National Association of Women Artists, New York City |
| 2015 | Art and Healing, Lowy-Winkler Rare Book Center, American Jewish University, Los Angeles |
| 2014 | Pirkei Avot ve Imahot, Ethics of the Fathers and Mothers, Lowy-Winkler Family Rare Book Center, American Jewish University, Los Angeles |
| 2014 | The Jewish Art of Healing, Shomrei Emunah, Montclair, NJ |
| 2013 | The Seventh Day: Revisiting Shabbat, HUC-JIR Museum, NYC |
| 2013 | The Sexuality Spectrum, Sherwin-Miller Museum of Jewish Art, Tulsa, OK |
| 2013 | The Sexuality Spectrum, HUC-JIR Museum, NYC |
| 2012 | The Sexuality Spectrum, HUC-JIR Museum, NYC |
Print:
| 2019 | The Language of Making, tsgny, 2019, book featuring my art |
| “The Blessing of Blessings” and other blog posts, appliedjewishspirituality.org/blog Hard Blessings: Jewish Ways Through Illness. Book of stories of illness and healing enhanced by Kaplow’s artwor | |
| 2013 | An Artists Beit Midrash, CCAR, The Reform Jewish Quarterly |
| 2013 | Sexuality Spectrum Exhibit of Jewish Art Starts Discussion at Sherwin Miller, James D. Watts, Tulsa World |
| 2012 | Hard Blessings: Jewish Ways Through Illness, Susan Kaplow Book of stories of illness and healing enhanced by Kaplow’s artwork |
| 2012 | Pirkei Imahot, Lillith Magazine |
| 2012 | An Unorthodox Guide to Sexuality, Debra Nussbaum Cohen, Jewish Daily Forward |
| 1999 | Coming Out at Auschwitz, in Beginning with a Broken Heart, Dresser and Cunningham |
| 1997 | Oswiecim Means Enlightenment, Turning Whee |