JUNE 23 • 2022 | 45

A

pril is the cruelest 
month,” T.S. Eliot 
famously wrote. 
The line came to me on a 
cold, rainy Friday when I 
walked the site where Ariel 
Schlesinger’s sculpture, 
Ways to Say Goodbye, is to be 
situated. The achingly slow 
Michigan spring presented 
a landscape that was muddy 
and colorless, which seemed 
appropriate to the disaster 
Ways to Say Goodbye would 
commemorate. 
These morose thoughts, 
however, soon yielded to 
others fueled by the still-
lingering warmth of my 
encounter with the artist. 
Clad in a bright crimson 
coat — far too thin, I thought, 
for tromping the site at Meijer 
Gardens in Grand Rapids — 
Ariel Schlesinger seemed, at 
first glance, the typical New 
York artist. He had even 
just moved to Brooklyn to 
live among other artists and 
writers, which I told him 
seemed like requiring new 
college students to live on 
campus. 
These surface impressions 
soon gave way, revealing 
a man both engaging and 
gentle, interested in talking 
about his work, but not in a 

way that sucks all the oxygen 
out of the room. 
I so enjoyed our conver-
sation it seemed worthwhile 
to continue it. We started 
with a back-and-forth email 
exchange, but finally settled 
on a Zoom discussion. What 
follows draws on the two 
exchanges and, I hope, offers 
an interesting prelude to the 
upcoming dedication of Ways 
to Say Goodbye on June 30.

 RF: Your work for Meijer 
Gardens evokes your trees 
at the entrance to the 
Frankfurt Jewish Museum. 
Why trees? And why trees 
without leaves?
AS: Trees are people, and 
people are trees. We all live 
in a forest and socialize; it’s 
part of our nature. It was 
only obvious to me that a 
natural element like a tree 
will be a center that draws 
people together and starts a 
discussion around our past 
and future, together.
The reason not to sculpt 
the leaves is a choice both 
visual and practical, keeping 
the overall elements in the 
object as minimal as possible.
RF: What kinds of 
discussion do you envision 
Ways to Say Goodbye 

ARTS&LIFE
SCULPTURE

Artist of Ways to Say Goodbye 
shares his creative ideas and 
processes for Holocaust memorial.

A Conversation 
with Ariel 
Schlesinger

ROB FRANCIOSI SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

Sculptures by 
Ariel Schlesinger 
at the entrance 
to the Frankfurt 
Jewish Museum

DVIR GALLERY

continued on page 46

