AUGUST 27 • 2020 | 47
Arts&Life
art
Portraits in
Glass
Artist Michele Sider has
created a series focused
on the Jews of Yemen.
BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER
M
ichelle Sider has combined her love of
artisanal glass and her interest in the
Jews of Yemen to create a stunning col-
lection of glass mosaic portraits. She calls it “paint-
ing with glass.
”
Sider has completed four portraits in a collec-
tion, “I Am Yemenite,
” that will eventually number
12. Each piece is 14 x 18 inches, and each takes
about 100 hours to complete.
Sider was inspired by glass mosaics at the
Detroit Institute of Arts. Originally a painter, she
studied glass art locally and with artists in Boston,
Costa Rica, Belgium and Israel. Her first glass
mosaic effort was a triptych,
nearly 4-feet-by-5-feet, of a
modernized Queen Esther.
Sider became interested in the
Jews of Yemen when her oldest
son Joshua, 26, who lives in
Israel, got engaged to a woman
of Yemenite heritage. “I started
learning about their history and
I was hooked!” she said.
She listened to her future
daughter-in-law’
s family stories
and examined their old photos.
She used some pieces of her
daughter-in-law’
s mother’
s jew-
elry as models for jewelry in her portraits.
Sider has read numerous books about Yemenite
Jews, from scholarly tomes to reports from explor-
ers, including one published in 1792. She turned to
a translator to help her read a replica of a book of
essays in German, Von Den Juden Des Yemen, pub-
lished in 1913.
Sider, 60, grew up in Detroit and graduated
from Birmingham Groves High School. At the
University of Michigan, she majored in fine arts,
joking that she did her “junior year abroad” at
Detroit’
s College for Creative Studies. With a mas-
ter’
s and doctorate in clinical psychology from the
University of Detroit, she worked for many years
as a counselor. She taught art for 41 years, offer-
MICHELLE SIDER
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