Hello Travelers! During the trip we’d all talked about a gift to Rabbi Amy, Cantor Mike, and Administrator Beth. Nicole and I will make sure this happens. To that end, here’s some preliminary information:

1. The artist is someone Rabbi Amy has been following for a long time. His name is Avi Ben Simhon.
   1. His method painting is to start with a blank canvas, and overlay magazine pages, local newsprint and photos onto it, then whitewash over all that. He then uses a special paint (which he invented) to paint the scene onto the canvas. Wherever he paints, the images from behind the whitewash show through.
2. His dealer is: Meir Knafo, who owns the gallery Sarah’s tent in Zefat
   1. meir@sarahs-tent.com, (972)4-6923378, Cell (972)-5252441180, 86 Alkabets St., Zefat Israel, www.udaica.com (which doesn’t work, but you can read about the gallery at http://www.safed.co.il/sarahs-tent.html)
3. The project plan is: For us to commission a painting by the artist that will hang somewhere at TRS, preferably so that anyone viewing it will be facing east towards Jerusalem. The painting will be approximately 6 1/2 feet wide by 3 1/2 feet tall, mounted on wood and coated with a varnish that will make it water and fade resistant.
   1. The scene to be painted will be determined by Rabbi Amy, probably a scene of Jerusalem.
   2. I will collect images from travelers’ digital cameras and select some to be used as part of the underlaid images, I’m thinking primarily of faces and groups of travelers. I’ll get that to the artist in whatever form he needs to be able to use.
4. We will work with the TRS Fine Arts Committee to find an appropriate space at TRS for the artwork.
5. We will work with Beth Silver to get a donation button so that travelers can donate towards the cost of this (we are roughly estimating up to $8k total). Donation towards this project is completely up to each traveler, both in terms of whether or not, and in terms of the amount of donation. Nicole and I will ensure that the project is fully funded.

Here are some photos that we took which are from the artist:

9/9/2012 Update: We met at TRS with Barbara Moss to discuss locations for the artwork. It looks like the best eastward-facing (for the viewer) point are the windows at the end of the Grand Hall, towards Westmoreland St. So we are looking at possibly hanging the picture inside the centermost large window panel. Above, I’ve added a picture of the rough location.

• The window frame is about 81 1/2″ wide by 81 3/4″ tall, and starts about 36″ above the floor. We think that there should be at least 4″ space on either side, which makes the finished picture no larger than 73″ wide.
• Given that the picture is in front of a window, we believe that the artist should include something on the reverse side of the painting. We’re thinking that the painting will be mounted on a 2-sided board frame, and that the artist will need to provide some kind of over-coat to the art surface for UV and fade protection. The scene you see when looking eastward from in front of the entrance to the synagogue will be of the Old City in Jerusalem. We will likely leave it up to the artist to decide what should go on the back-side, which will be viewable from outside (except possibly when  it’s dark and there are no lights on, or in the afternoon when glare makes the window reflective.

11/18/2012 Update: We have spoken and traded several emails with Meir (the dealer). He is going to talk to the artist about our project. We are going to make samples of the paper that will have some of the pictures we’ll submit – they have to be on “magazine paper”, so Chris will go to a printing company and see what they can do for us. Chris will send the paper samples to Meir who will test them to make sure they’ll work for the artist.

For the pictures, we’re thinking of using the one group photo (of all of us in front of the south wall of Jerusalem), and perhaps asking each family if they’d like to submit a photo or choose a photo from the existing photo albums. We would then have the selected photos printed on magazine paper and then send them to the artist.

Meir suggested that we could use a different artist for the backside who might paint something simpler, perhaps with our temple name/logo. He also suggested painting the picture on muslin over thin wood, with a box frame (a muslin/thin wood piece on each side of the 2″ or so thick box frame) so the finished product is light-weight. He would also cover the painting with plexiglass, both for protection during shipping and potentially for protection while hanging.

Chris will also get Paypal donate buttons from the Temple to place here and in emails we send out to the families, so that families can make their donation to this project easily.