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

continued on page 48