for over ten years.

I started by focusing on

consumerism within still-life

but lately it's been all about mortality

and also about

these objects

as portraiture of individuals or society.

The Jewish Museum approached me

about creating a work

that would be responding to different objects from their permanent collection.

I primarily work in clear, colorless glass

and all of the objects on my compositions are hand sculpted

or blown.

It's an expressive

interpretation of objects essentially.

My overreaching goals were to represent

every holiday throughout

the Jewish calendar year

with objects on this particular table.

I didn't want

everything that had to do with Hanukkah on the table so i was a

little democratic.

Well, we have Purim

pastry molds, matzah for Passover. Rosh Hashana is also the new year and the shofar.

This is the etrog container.

The sabbath is represented with the candlesticks.

This is a spice container.

The tallit

is the flowing glass that

everything sits on.

The tallit is based off of my father's tallit

and then this is a textile

that's referencing textile from the collection.

This handwashing cloth really for me, represents my mother.

The glass is inherently

a fragile material to work with.

It breaks it shatters it has imperfections. It is essentially a parallel

to life cycle in a lot of ways so it's it's very

compelling for me to continue to use this materiel.

It's also very precious

and it's very temporal in some ways even though this is

permanent now.

The actual process of making the glass is very

fleeting and elusive.

Every moment that you're working in the material you're capturing a moment in time

so it does speak

to this vanitas tradition in still-life. and the ideas that I am most

interested in. It's really a portrait of myself