AUGUST 27 • 2020 | 48
ing private tuition and classes
at Farber Hebrew Day School,
Frankel Jewish Academy, the
Birmingham Bloomfield Art
Center and various community
centers. She gave up teaching
four years ago to concentrate on
her own art.
In 2017, Sider and Rabbi
Joseph Krakoff published a
book, Never Enough Time, to help
people grieving the loss of a
loved one, and a companion col-
oring book for children.
Sider spends many hours
working in her first-floor home
studio.
“I must create,
” she said. “It is
the essence of my being. I am
continually thinking about how
I can translate my experience
into art.
”
An entire closet at the
entrance to her studio is filled
with large sheets of glass in doz-
ens of colors. Some are thick and
opaque, resembling marble; oth-
ers are extremely thin and nearly
transparent.
Sider gets her glass, all of it
hand-made, from vendors all
over the world. She particularly
likes Italian smalti, a type of
glass produced in just two places
in Italy.
“Italian smalti is created with
a focus on brilliance, purity of
color, quality and consistency,
”
she said. “The recipes for over
3,000 colors have been handed
down for centuries, often kept
within family groups. The pro-
duction of the glass itself is con-
sidered an art form.
”
She starts the process with
drawings, which she uses as a
guide to create an acrylic paint-
ing. Sometimes she uses her own
hands as models, taking numer-
ous selfies with her cellphone to
get the right angle. She creates
the mosaic by placing glass piec-
es atop the painting.
Sider uses no grout in her
portraits, so each piece of glass
has to be cut precisely to match
the pieces next to it.
Scrupulous about detail, Sider
points to the embroidered edge
of a shirt in one of her portraits
where there is a break in the
“stitching.
” Yemenite Jews often
intentionally included a tiny
flaw in their work, whether a
building or a garment, to show
that nothing man-made could
be perfect.
The mosaics have a fluid look,
as the glass pieces reflect light
differently at different times of
the day.
Sider hopes a museum will
be interested in exhibiting the “I
Am Yemenite” collection when it
is complete.
Sider and her husband, Bill,
an attorney, are members of
Kehillat Etz Chaim in Oak Park.
In addition to Joshua, they
have 22-year-old twins, Ben
and Eli, who live at home, and
a Bernese-poodle mix named
Juneau. When she’
s not in her
studio, Sider spends time in her
garden, which has been certified
as a butterfly habitat.
Michelle Sider at
work in her studio.
continued from page 47
SPACE STUFF; MAYA AS
KAMALA; AND PENN’
S
PHILANTHROPY
Away is an original Netflix series
that premieres Sept. 4. Hilary
Swank stars as an American
astronaut who must leave her
husband and teen daughter
behind to command an inter-
national space crew embarking
upon a treacherous, three-year
mission. There are six more char-
acters in the credits, and I pre-
sume they are crew members.
Two are Jewish: Josh Charles,
48, and Mark Ivanir, 51.
Charles, the co-star of the
hit TV drama The Good Wife,
is the son of a Jewish father
and a non-Jewish mother. He’
s
described himself as Jewish.
In 2013, he wed Sophie Flack,
now 38. Flack, whose mother
is Jewish, is a retired New York
City ballet dancer and a novelist.
The couple have two children.
Avenir’
s family left Ukraine and
settled in Israel when he was 4.
He’
s worked steadily in mostly
smallish film parts since 1988.
It looks like Maya Rudolph,
48, will appear at least a couple
of times on SNL when the series
resumes sometime this fall (no
date set yet). Rudolph played
Sen. Kamala Harris in three SNL
debate skits last season. (She
was recently nominated for a
guest appearance Emmy for
these skits).
Last week, she told the
Hollywood Reporter that SNL cre-
ator/producer Lorne Michaels,
75, all but said she’
d be back:
“He sent me a GIF of myself, as
Kamala, in sunglasses, sipping a
cocktail and saying, ‘
Oh no.’
”
Maya added that she doesn’
t
think of herself as an impres-
sionist, but she has long noticed
that when she quotes anyone, it
somehow just comes out in their
voice. She attributes this to being
a good listener.
After the first skit, Harris sent
out this tweet: “That girl being
played by Maya Rudolph on
SNL? That girl was me.”
Rudolph told the Reporter: “It
[the tweet] was really clever and
great, so I wrote her back. But I
haven’
t had the chance to meet
her. I would love to.”
I have no doubt that Sean
Penn, 60, will win the humani-
tarian award at a future Oscars
ceremony. Almost quietly, he’
s
emerged as a master organizer
of disaster relief. It began in
2005, with help for Hurricane
Katrina victims. Some then said it
was a publicity stunt. But then, in
2010, he founded and oversaw
an organization (CORE) that did
tremendous work to help Haitian
earthquake victims.
In 2012, CORE and Penn did
the same for Pakistanis, following
an earthquake there. Last March,
CORE began free COVID-19
testing in California. Testing sites
have expanded exponentially
across the country (including
Native American reservations).
CORE works with local orga-
nizations, and its reputation is
so high that major foundations
are now funding it. (I have to add
that in 2013 Penn used connec-
tions to facilitate the escape of
a Jewish businessman who was
being held in a Bolivian jail on
dubious charges. Penn then took
him to his LA home and helped
nurse him to health.)
NATE BLOOM
COLUMNIST
CASA ROSADA VIA WIKIPEDIA
Sean Penn
Arts&Life
celebrity jews