arts & entertainment

Short Men, Tall Women ...

The JCC's Janice Charach Gallery hosts
Deborah Kashdan, who turns awkward social
situations into brilliant paintings.

Elizabeth Applebaum

Special to the Jewish News

A

woman sits down in a bar and
along comes a man with a drink
in his hand, his shirt halfway
open to reveal a large gold necklace that
reads: "Houle." He winks, leans over and
says: "You must be a parking ticket because
you've got 'fine' written all over you!"
"Please say this isn't happening; she's
thinking. "Please don't tell me he actually
said that:'
How to respond? Silence? Rolling the
eyes? Running away as far as possible, pref-
erably to another country?
Perhaps — unless you're Southfield artist
Deborah Marlowe Kashdan.
Then you grab a pen and a napkin, and
you write it down. A few weeks later, it
becomes art.
Kashdan has worked in sculpture, stone,
steel, casting, printmaking and acrylics,
and these days she is painting, often on the
theme of social situations, like things men
say when they're trying to pick up women.
Her paintings will be on exhibit at the
Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan
Detroit's Janice Charach Gallery Jan.
11-Feb. 19.
Also on exhibit will be "Terry Lee Dill:
Mind in Transition:' a 30-year retrospective

of his drawings, photographs, sculpture
and new series in blown glass (view his
artwork at www.terryleedill.com ).
"Deborah Kashdan is an artist who
truly represents Detroit art:' said Gallery
Director Kelly Kaatz.
"She has exhibited in hundreds of local
exhibitions in her 30-plus-year career and
is most well known for her portraits of
other famous Detroit artists:'
Kashdan was born in Detroit and raised
in Pontiac, where she was the first girl
ever to observe her bat mitzvah ceremony
at B'nai Israel Synagogue. Her family was
active in the city's small Jewish community,
and it was, all in all, a great place to grow up.
But immediately after high school,
Kashdan headed off for Michigan State
University and announced, "I'm never
coming back:'
She majored in art, got a job as a legal
secretary, married and moved to Franklin,
and then divorced.
With profits from the sale of the house,
Kashdan set out to make a dream come
true: She moved to Paris.
It was crazy expensive. A chance encoun-
ter at Katz's Deli on Rue Mouffetard brought
her to the more affordable Aix-en-Provence,
once a favorite to some of France's many
Expressionist artists, she said.
It was the area's light that drew those art-

Deborah Marlowe Kashdan and one of her paintings

ists and mesmerized Kashdan.
"The light is so brilliant that it causes
you to use only colors that are brilliant:'
she said. Aix "is located between two
mountain ranges, and when the air crystal-
lizes, it literally makes prisms of light:'
Then she returned to Michigan, where
she has an apartment whose heart is her
studio, filled with "thousands of brushes
and all kinds of art supplies:'
The studio's small size prohibits work on
larger projects, of which Kashdan has com-
pleted many.
Ever seen those fanciful statues of lions,
tigers and bears outside homes and busi-
nesses throughout Metro Detroit? Kashdan
designed quite a few (with proceeds given
to charity), along with an actual car, cov-
ered with musical images, which, in nice
weather, can be seen outside the Detroit
Opera House.
Another project-for-charity involved
painting the entire history of Troy, Mich.,

on a large beaver statue (fortunately,
Kashdan has a sense of humor).
She also recently had a show at Center
Galleries at the College for Creative Studies.
"Art Warriors and Motor City Icons" fea-
tured 135 realistic portraits, none of which
was larger than 5- by 7-inches, of patrons
and artists.
Kashdan's exhibit at the Charach Gallery
is impressionistic and is based on her
observations of social activity, like the bar
scenes where men actually try lines such
as, "You know, short men love tall women!"
which inspired one of her paintings.
Each work includes a brief description of
the incident behind the picture or, Kashdan
says, visitors should feel free to "approach
the painting and have their own story
about it:'

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Elizabeth Applebaum is director of marketing at

the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan

Detroit.

From Jan.11-Feb.19, the Janice Charach Gallery in the Jewish Community
Center in West Bloomfield will host the paintings of Side Gallery Artist Deborah
Marlowe Kashdan and exhibit a 30-year retrospective of the work of Terry Lee
Dill. The opening reception for the exhibits will be noon-4 p.m. Sunday, Jan.
11. Dill will host a tour of his work at 1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25 (RSVP to attend).
Gallery hours are noon-4 p.m. Sundays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Wednesdays,
and 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursdays. (248) 432-5448; www.jccdet.org .

ews

Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

Awards Season Begins
The Golden Globe Awards, decided by
the members of the Hollywood Foreign
Press Association, will be broadcast
live on NBC at 8 p.m. Sunday, Jan.11.
Here are the Jewish nominees:
Film, acting: best actor, drama:
Jake Gyllenhaal, 34, Nightcrawler;
best actor, comedy/musical: Joaquin
Phoenix, 40, Inherent Vice; best sup-
porting actress, drama/comedy/musi-
cal: Patricia Arquette, 46, Boyhood.
TV, acting: best actor, drama: Liev
Schreiber, 47, Ray Donovan; best
actress, drama: Julianne Margulies,
48, The Good Wife; best actor, com-
edy/musical: Jeffrey Tambor, 70,
Transparent (Tambor plays a trans-
sexual Jewish character, Mort/Maura
Pfefferman); best actress, comedy/

44

January 8 • 2015

musical: Lena Dunham, 28, Girls; best
actress, miniseries/TV movie: Maggie
Gyllenhaal, 37, The Honorable Woman
(as the Jewish character Nessa Stein).
Other film awards: best film screen-
play: Graham Moore, 32, The Imitation
Game; best score: Hans Zimmer, 57,
Interstellar (Zimmer, born and raised
in Germany, is the son of a German
Jewish mother who escaped to
England in 1939 and returned after the
war; he declared himself Jewish on
German TV in 1999, but this fact was
not widely known until he talked to the

Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
last May, telling the publication: "The
Jews are my people"); best original
song: "Mercy Is" (Noah), Patti Smith
and Lenny Kaye, 67; and "Opportunity"
(Annie), Greg Kurstin, 45, Sia Furler
and Will Gluck, 42 (Gluck directed
Annie and co-wrote the screenplay).
Best foreign language film: Ida

(Denmark/Poland). Plot: During the
1960s, Anna, a young novice nun, finds
out from a relative that her parents
were Jewish and died in the Holocaust.
She sets out to learn more. Ida was
directed and co-written by Pawel
Pawlikowski, a Pole who learned as an
adult that his paternal grandmother was
Jewish and that she died in the camps.
Also in this category: Gett: The Trial
of Viviane Amsalem (Israel). In the
words of Variety: "This expertly writ-
ten, brilliantly acted film documents
the painful five-year process for one
[Israeli] woman attempting to obtain
a divorce [in Israel]." The film was
co-written and co-directed by Ronit
Elkabetz, 50, and her brother, Shlomi
Elkabetz, 46. They are Israelis of
Moroccan-Jewish ancestry.
The best film and TV series awards
go to the principal producers. Here
are "best of" nominees with a strong

Jewish connection:
Best film, drama: Foxcatcher (about
the murder of Olympic wrestler Dave
Schultz), directed by Bennett Miller
and co-written by Dan Futterman, both
47; and The Imitation Game (screen-
writer Graham Moore); best film, com-
edy/musical: Into the Woods, music by
Stephen Sondheim, 84, and screenplay
by James Lapine, 65.
Best TV series, drama: Affair, co-cre-
ated/written by Hagai Levi, 51; Game
of Thrones, co-created and written by
David Benioff, 44, and D.B. Weiss, 43;
and The Good Wife, co-created/written
by Michelle King, 52; best TV series,
musical/comedy: Girls (Lena Dunham);
and Transparent, created/written by
Jill Soloway, 49.
Best miniseries/TV movie: The
Normal Heart, screenplay by Larry
Kramer, 79; and Olive Kitteridge,
directed by Lisa Cholodenko, 50.

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