arts & life

cover story

A Soul In
Sculpture

Julie Edgar | Special to the
th Jewish News

Jerry Zolynsky | Photographer

Over th
the course of
five y years, a local
Jew refugee
Soviet Jewish
poured his life, his
memor
memories, his faith
— and his soul —
into an in
intricate and
exquisit 7-foot-tall
exquisite
sculpture.

A

fte arriving in
fter
De
Detroit in 1978 as
a r refugee from his
native Azer
Azerbaijan, Lev Davidov
cobbled tog
together 80-hour
workweeks to support his wife
and three young
y
daughters.
He worked his way up from
stockroom to showroom at
New York C
Carpet World, using
his days off for other jobs like
delivering pizza
p
and measur-
ing rooms f for carpet. When
NYCW was sold, Davidov
bought a fu
furniture store,
financed a Russian restaurant
that his wif
wife Galina ran, and
opened a sa
salon for his daugh-
ter Yanna.
Through the decades
Throughout
of hard work,
wor something was
simmering in his soul, a very
personal project
pr
that he would
tackle once he could fully
devote himself.
him
Davidov, 75,
had created whimsical metal
sculptures t that he sold through
a local art gallery,
g
but this proj-
ect would r represent his truth
as an artist
artist.
Five year
years ago, Davidov
finally got s started on that proj-

Davidov cut and fit thousands of
pieces of wood, each measuring less
than 1 inch in length, to create the
7-foot-tall Inner Sanctum.

ect, throwing himself into con-
structing a dazzling 7-foot egg-
shaped sculpture that opens
onto intricate and illuminated
worlds that depict the captivity
and redemption of the Jewish
people.
“Remembering about
myself ” is how Davidov of
West Bloomfield describes his
vision when he began work on
what became Inner Sanctum.
When the Soviet Jew and
his family arrived in Michigan,
they were aided in establishing
a home within a predomi-
nantly Jewish community by
the Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society (HIAS). The commu-
nity support Davidov received
helped strengthen his faith and
his roots, “the true inspiration
for Inner Sanctum,” he says. He
wanted to leave his children a
piece that would remind them
of his — and by extension,
their — history as Jews.
The sculpture is 32 inches
at its widest point — mea-
sured so it will fit through the
door connecting the house to
Davidov’s studio in the garage.
It is comprised of thousands
of pieces of recycled wood —
mahogany, maple, rosewood
and walnut among them — cut
to lengths of ¼ and ¾ inches
and meant to resemble the
color variations of Jerusalem
stone. Embedded throughout
are stones of various shapes
and colors, Swarovski crystals,
glass, copper, tile and tiny
lights. Faberge egg-like, his
staggering creation holds sur-
prises at every turn. “A little bit
old, a little bit future” is how
Davidov describes it.
All the more amazing is the
few tools at Davidov’s disposal.
His studio is neat and basic: It
consists of a workbench against
a wall that is mounted with an
electric saw and vise, a sander,
continued on page 76

details
detai

To further e explore Inner Sanctum, visit levdavidov.com.

January 28 • 2016

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