CLOSE UP Video Interviews

The tour, conducted by Thomas, took us to the other side of the Vltava River in Holešovice and mostly focused on young Czech artists who do graffiti and engage in expressive political activity; ethical hackers, the “parallel police” and the like. Thomas gave us a good background on what Czech thinking is relating to communism (memories of repression, suspicion of others) We traveled by foot and by tram and saw a boatload of very neat things, artist workspaces. We saw galleries being reclaimed from a massive slaughterhouse compound. Thomas explained that Czechs are not too keen on getting very friendly with strangers, a holdover from the communist era, when even a friend, coworker or family member might be an informant reporting back to the authorities on you. There was some optimism about trust in fellow human beings after liberation from the Nazis; some Czechs were hopeful about communism, but authoritarian rule from Moscow ensued. Lack of free, speech and imposed borders among other factors soured Czechs on communism. Due to these still poignant memories, they are very supportive of refugees from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He pointed out a large mural on a building by Ukrainian artist entitled something like Red Demon. The Czech Republic has taken in about 1 million Ukrainian refugees a considerable number considering that the population is only 12 million. He said every seventh person you encounter in the city of Prague is Ukrainian.

The short version https://youtube.com/shorts/d2XIRoxhqB8

The medium version https://youtu.be/H-b4yD6SXdE

The longer version  https://youtu.be/9FRWovgloMA

Zuzana Slámová’s grandparents founded the G & B Beads factory that she runs today in the Czech town of Jablonec nad Nisou which has a tradition of glass bead making. There are actually two sites; the first is where they fabricate the beads, a little distance away. In the facility we visited they finish off the beads. It also boasts an art museum on an upper floor and on the first floor a retail store and a little museum with historical machinery.

Slámová ’took us through the building. In one room there were a couple dozen big tumblers that get filled with sand and water and spun to finish the beads. Workers had already left for the day. But not all the barrels are still in use. Production is only one fifth as much as it was at peak due to increasing competition from China. Most of the business is wholesale for export to 34 countries with the biggest demand from Japan, the U.S. and European Union.

Active production was in progress in another room. A couple workers there repeatedly inserted a string of beads into a machine; they applied a lever to bring the beads in contact with a large grinding wheel to create the facets.

Slámová showed us beads designed by her grandmother and of course, we had to buy several strands of the “babička” design. We also bought decades old original "dice" beads designed by babička. New designs come out every year. (Thank you Zuzana!)

See photo album here: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBydVE

Cara Graver built a cob house. An artist who has worked in many materials, she had attended a six week workshop in Oregon on natural building and came back to build what is now “The Cob Studio.” A cob house is built out of clay, sand, straw, and water. Graver says cob building has been done on almost every continent, and in every age. “Cob” comes from the old English word for loaf. About her house: Most of the clay she got from a neighbor who was building a house. There was a big hole with a pile of dirt beside it and that dirt was full of clay. More clay she retrieved by the roadside where there was exposed land. Graver led a nine day workshop with 25 participants to build the cob house. Your correspondent asked her to demonstrate the process: First you put clay and sand on a tarp and add water. You stamp and mix it with your feet . Next with your arm full of straw, grab a chunk of the clay mixture, combine it all together and shape it into a ball. Once you’ve formed the ball you shout “Cob toss” and toss it down the line of people to the person at the wall. That person puts it into place and tamps it down with their fingers. The wall is just built up from there! (Gravers was interviewed at the High Point Cafe craft market at the Allen Lane train station in Mount Airy, Philadelphia,  in 2023.)

Watch video interview here

3-d paper crafts adorn a reference desk in

the Springfield Township, Montgomery County, Pa Library.

Teen librarian Kris DeLabio leads workshops for children in making these colorful eye-catching sculptures.

The figures are made by printing onto card stock individual patterns that she purchases or finds on websites like Pinterest. The stiff paper is then scored along the lines and the pieces are cut out then glued together to form the three dimensional shapes. DeLabio gave a peek inside a half-finished blue pumpkin to reveal the numbers printed inside each piece and on tab, attached. The number indicates when, in the sequence, the piece goes and the tab, where the subsequent piece gets attached.

In addition, DeLabio makes folded book art using old library books that have lived out their useful lives as reading material. She recycles them into fanned art through simple folds along many pages. A paper mouse book was keeping company with a hedgehog book at the time of your correspondent’s visit. DeLabio has also made more challenging ones such as a celtic knot and a birdhouse. And a vase she fashioned out of one such old book serves as a pen-holder in the library.

Watch video interview of librarian describing book and paper art projects here.

Eliza Callard (left) draws portraits with colored pencil. Many of these are based on photos people have posted of themselves for others to draw on an app named "SKTCHY" She then uploads her artwork for her subjects to see. Some people post multiple photos of themselves on #SKTCHY, she says, and some people are drawn by many artists. Callard looks for something in the eyes, in the expression. This method yields a very diverse range of subjects whose facial expressions are emotive and often curious. “Every time I paint somebody from there. even if at the beginning I’m like ‘I don’t like this’, I always fall in love with the people. Every time. Just drawing them makes me fall in love with them.” Watch video interview of artist who uses SKTCHY app here.

This is the story of the brick men. Twenty-five years ago a brick side addition of the big old house in West Mount Airy that Adam Shuman, a retired Philadelphia firefighter lives in, had collapsed, One of his tenants, whom he suspects harbored unrealized architectural ambitions, decided to use some of the bricks to construct a simple human form from the bricks to see if he could get it to balance.

When Shuman needed access to his ladders through the basement cellar door, he moved the brick man to the front. That’s when, he says, it got out of hand. He just wanted to build brick men, more and more of them. So he began to actively collect bricks from burnt out brick-strewn lots in North Philadelphia on his drive to classes at Temple University.

For years now, dozens of brick men have lined the front of the property and also along a side property line with a neighbor. They provide kind of a visual frame for Shuman’s numerous rusted iron and wood sculptures that adorn the yard.

The brick men are very popular, he says, especially with twelve year-old boys who can’t resist toppling them. Every couple of years he finds two or three brick men knocked over.He purposely doesn’t cement them lest they get knocked over and seriously hurt someone. And he has a constant stream of people stopping to take photographs, chat and ask questions. Years ago, TV’s Captain Noah and his wife numbered among the regulars.

If Shuman sees bricks, a brick man may be likely to follow. He made one traveling with family in Namibia in 2007. Near land they have in Mexico, he made one out of adobe but rain washed it away.

Shuman demonstrated his technique for making a brick man; to start, 7 bricks are laid side by side and the middle three removed and then the bricks are layered upwards until the final 16th layer.

In his art studio he has fashioned a brick man out of wood cut into brick-size pieces. He entertains a plans to build a giant brick man made of 500 bricks and standing at 6 feet tall. Now that would seal Shuman’s reputation as the brick man.

Watch the video tour of the brick men with the brick man here.

A shorter version can be viewed here.

Your correspondent joined U.S. military veterans, Iraqi refugees and other volunteers from the community to break ground on Memorial Day and start work on a traditional Iraqi structure dating back thousands of years called a “mudhif“ on the grounds of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Roxborough, Philadelphia. More photos here. Watch a video about the first day ceremony and building start of an Iraqi mudhif.

“Al-Mudhif” is the brainchild of Seattle-based artist Sarah Kavage and Mount Airy based designer Yaroub Al-Obaidi who, after attending a lecture Kavage delivered a year ago at Moore College of Art during which she displayed a photo of a mudhif, suggested they build one! It is, perhaps, the first in the United States. The project, sponsored by the Alliance for Watershed Education of the Delaware River, is one of fifteen site-specific installations, six already completed, extending as far north as the Delaware Water Gap and as far south as Wilmington, west to Reading and east to Trenton, all within the Lenapehoking watershed, the home of the native Lenape people.

Building a mudhif, which your correspondent can attest to firsthand, is overlaying and binding together reeds into long columns. These columns are then placed in 32-inch deep, 2-foot wide holes to provide the vertical supports. They are then bent toward one another to form an arched roof. In upcoming days, mats will be woven and set in place to form a thatched roof. Air and sunlight will come through lattice panels to be constructed and attached. Adjacent to the structure, Kavage’s husband, Rob has been busy installing the structure for a large bench for seating and a view from just outside the mudhif.

On day one, we divided into two large teams- the first tasked with digging 10 large holes, 5 opposite 5 to form the length of the rectangular structure. I opted to work with volunteers assembling the columns. We used phragmites, reed grasses, harvested previously. (A non-native form of phragmites is considered invasive and it is likely a plus-side of the project was some invasive control)

From the sidelines, an older man from Iraq who went by “Kam” vividly recalled his father’s large mudhif in Nasriyah near the Euphrates River. His family would welcome guests and travelers to rest, stay, eat and drink coffee or tea in the mudhif, set apart from the main home. At that time, Kam said, people traveled distances by horse and would go from mudhif to mudhif to rest along the way.

A younger man, Hadi al-Karfawi, who left Iraq at the age of nine spoke of his strong emotional connection with the mudhif his grandfather, a tribal leader, had built . As a boy, he was tasked with preparing and serving the strong coffee to guests. He absorbed that the mudhif was community place where people would come to resolve disputes. Everyone was given a chance to speak without interruption. The disputes might be inter-tribal or among families  of one's own tribe.

As your correspondent spoke with al-Karfawi, Mohaned Al-Obaidi, the lead builder and Yaroub’s brother, was having some trouble bending the first two columns of reeds to form the arch at the entrance. Traditionally, al-Karfawi said, the reeds, of a different variety in use here, might be more moisture-filled, perhaps more freshly cut, which would make the bending easier. (The arch is not going to be the traditional rounded one; Yaroub has designed it to be more angular  so winter snow will more easily slide off and not weigh down the roof.) al-Karfawi spoke of helpers being divided into groups, just like us, with specific tasks and he demonstrated how he and others would stomp on mud mixed with hay to form the “cement” to applied inside the roof. He had brought along two of his young children and, as the project was about to get underway, they stood by with child-sized shovels at the ready.

In his opening remarks, Al-Obaidi spoke of how emotional this undertaking has been- recreating a traditional community structure from his homeland. He suspected many of us have only associated Iraq until now with war and suffering. He hopes this welcoming mudhif will bring about a better understanding of Iraq’s ancient and rich culture.

The grand opening of the mudhif is planned for June 24th and according to a Schuylkill Center blog many activities are planned. “We will activate the installation Al-Mudhif with extended programming around exchange of war experience, healing and intercultural encounters from June to October 2021.”

Your correspondent asks, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the dispute resolution aspect of a mudhif could be "activated”? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if representative native Lenape could settle ongoing claims in this mudhif with representatives of the long dominant immigrant community? Descendants of former slaves with descendants of former slaveholders? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Israeli and Palestinian representatives could forge a just and lasting peace in this mudhif? And isn’t it fitting that this peace and justice-making take place on land taken from the Lenape, now in the safekeeping of environmental non-profit, in a traditional structure of a people who themselves experienced recent devastation to their own culture- the swamp Arabs of Iraq? A structure built for community, hospitality and peace-making. Inshallah.

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More videos here

Building Al Mudhif - short version

Mudhif groundbreaking ceremony

Docent tells about Iraqi mudhifs and ancient Sumer

Schuylkill Center Director acknowledges land belonging to Lenape people at mudhif groundbreaking

The “orchid mantis” is an erect praying mantis, wearing a raspberry-colored dress with folds that look like orchid petals. For this hand-embroidered piece, Richie Lopez started to hand-stitch a dress from images he saw in an old Vogue magazine and then decided to put a bug in it. Another, showing poet Sylvia Plath knelt next to the oven was inspired by the Lana Del Ray lyrics I've been tearing around in my fucking nightgown / 24/7 Sylvia Plath” from the song “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have.” Explains Lopez, “There’s a subversiveness about embroidery that people don’t really know about. That’s what I was doing here.” Life, death, sexuality and mysticism are subjects that intrigue Lopez and feature prominently in his work. His art also reflect his Latin heritage such as the one of a monstera plant emerging from a man’s torso, part of his “botanical boys” series and another of the “Handsomest drowned man in the world," from a short story by Gabriel García Márquez. “Oftentimes the entire medium is relegated to the domestic but there have been many people that have used embroidery as a way of expressing something that isn’t necessarily what people think embroidery is." That's what Lopez aspires to do. Watch a video interview of Richie Lopez who  finds inspiration in dark-themed literature and song for his subversive embroidery mixing fashion and biology

Shawnee Street resident Beth Eames was very sad to see the grand, 100-some year old sugar maple tree in her front yard succumb to disease and have to be cut down last year. So, to honor the tree, she commissioned noted local ice and wood carver Roger Wing to convert the 12 foot high remaining trunk into a work of art, only giving him the high vision prompt of "flowers." After working two straight weeks in the heat, Wing just completed carving what appear to oversize sunflowers, using a special wood-burning tool to set the flowers and stalks off against a dark background. He will return twice a year to apply a natural oil to preserve the work. Eames also had Wing carve an alcove with a seat in the trunk so that people can come by, sit and take selfies. (Why not take a selfie and post it here: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/chtreetrunkcarving/ ) The current times were added motivation for Eames to do something nice for the neighborhood and give an artist good, paying work. Watch video of tree trunk sculpture and interview here.

At the Germantown Jewish Center, outside the "Little Shop" selling Judaica and gifts,  Yona Diamond Dansky and Susan Weiss sat a table with their newly published picture books, inspired by their grandchildren.

While her daughter was going through treatment for cancer, illustrator Yona Dansky got the idea to write a children's book for her grandson, then 3 years old, who was affected by the household distress brought about by his Mom's serious illness. Dansky's daughter has recovered and Dansky, since retired, now tells the story of Mooshu the family beagle who was sad because he was getting less attention and had to speak up to be taken out for a walk. Finally, Mooshu cuddles in bed with her daughter, realizing it seems, that he has done nothing wrong and enters the "circle of compassion, comfort and closeness." Dansky hopes this picture book, "Mooshu Worries" will be helpful to families of young children dealing with a serious illness. Watch video interview of grandmother describing picture book about grandson and the family dog during her daughter's serious illness.

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Susan Weiss' twin grandchildren have very messy hair and don't like it touched. With their grand-mom the girls like to bake challah, a Jewish bread characterized by large braids. So Weiss convinces them to let her make challahs on their heads. Becky's Braids, illustrated by Deborah Gross-Zuchman, tells the story. Watch  video interview of  grandmother's challah story about braiding granddaughter's messy hair.