Arts & Entertainmen
Left: Ricki Berlin: "The Gathering."
"These are abstracted people,
some fading in and out."
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News
ow big is big, artistically
speaking?
For Beverly Neumann,
big is the size of refrigera-
--- tor doors.
4:Ai For Harriet Gelfond,
big is the measure of a dressmaker's form.
For Susan Beiner, big has to do with the
pedestals that hold her ceramic teapots.
More than 20 artists will be showing their
ideas of big as they become part of "A Really
Big Show: Large Works by Michigan Artists,"
which runs through March 16 at the Janice
2/4
2000
76
Charach Epstein Museum/Gallery in West
Bloomfield.
"This gallery has wonderful space to give
large works a wonderful setting, says Sylvia
Nelson, gallery director, who came up with
the idea for the exhibit after viewing a show
dedicated to very small works.
"There are so many artists who work on a
big scale, and I thought of the artists that we
have used in the past. They're all well known in
the community, and they don't often have the
opportunity to showcase their larger pieces."
Neumann originally thought she would do
a painting on a huge refrigerator but soon
realized that the door alone would provide
the right background. The Oakland County
dump offered 14, and she is offering
four finished doors for the show.
"The ideas really have to do with
then versus now," explains Neumann,
who has done portraiture on commis-
sion, benches and architectural illustra-
tions. " The Way to a Man's Heart Is
Through His Stomach, for example, fea-
tures women, from Eve to Betty
Crocker, who have seduced men with
food."
Harriet Gelfond builds her work,
Mama Was a Gypsy, around a personal
memory.
"My mother used to dress in cos-
tume, sometimes a gypsy costume,"
explains Gelfond, who has been teach-
ing art at the Jewish Community
Center for 30 years. "I have pictures of
my mother and her friends in Europe
in the '20s, either at a party or a gath-
ering, and when I saw the form, the
memory clicked.
"I took a dress form and created my
own idea of a gypsy using found mate-
rials and applying papers. The form, a
torso, is approximately life size."
Sandra Levin, who also teaches at the
JCC, is showing a landscape, tided Summit-,
the acrylic on canvas measures 3x4 feet.
"My art is neither identical to reality nor
isolated from it, but a realm tied to the world
by acts of interpretation," says Levin, whose
paintings hang at corporate offices around
Michigan.
"This piece shows my interest in the struc-
ture of rocky terrain and in the variety of
earth colors. I grew up in Canada, and I
think people are just more aware of the out-
doors and wilderness there. Even my abstract
paintings are derived from my association
with nature."
Susan Beiner teaches at the Center for