Infinite variety

The home of the artist Ruth Dorrit Yacoby creates a powerful impression even before the visitor enters. Driving from the center of the country to the city of Arad in the south, one enters a different pace of life. The landscape and the climate morph into desert mode, exactly like the terrain around the house, which is flanked on both sides by dry riverbeds. The lane that leads from the iron gate to the house is enveloped by typical desert flora, and everywhere there are piles of objects: doors, dismantled cupboards, books, paintings, wooden stumps and more. For a moment it seems that the house might be abandoned, but something about the way the objects are laid out suggests that there is logic to their presence here.

The moment of entering the house elicits a gasp of astonishment and opens the eyes wide. Thousands of objects lie on top of one another and next to one another, barely leaving room to move. Hundreds of paintings, books, boxes, copper and glass items, documents, pictures, earthenware vessels, decorative objects, souvenirs and more are piled in impossible disorder, in a state of perpetual chaos, in which it's not clear how life can proceed. The only thing that leaves air to breathe is the ceiling, and it too will probably be covered one day - various sentences have already been written in a few of the open spaces on the walls.

The result is that the eye does not know where to focus, has not a moment's rest: The whole house demands its attention. No matter if it's the living room, the bedroom or the kitchen, all of which are located on the ground floor, or the other rooms on the top floor, which in the past were the bedrooms of Yacoby's children.

Yacoby, 59, describes herself as a woman "without age who belongs to the infinite." She lives here with her husband, Giora. Born in Tiberias, she lived in the nearby village of Arbel until the age of 14. She was married during her army service and by the time she was 26 already had four children and an undergraduate degree in psychology. The family lived first in Carmiel, in the Galilee, then moved to Be'er Sheva and finally settled in Arad, because Giora got a job in one of the Dead Sea industries. That was 30 years ago.

"I underwent a transformation when I came to Arad," Yacoby says. "I came here as a psychologist, but the desert affected me. At first I felt terrible, but then an upheaval occurred. I left psychology after my youngest son was born and studied art twice a week at the School for Visual Art in Be'er Sheva and afterward for a year at the Midrasha Art College, which was then in Ramat Hasharon, and I started to paint.

LOOK3 – Ashley Gilbertson

One of the most powerful talks that I attended during the LOOK 3 festival in Charlottesville this year was given by Ashley Gilbertson . Gilbertson presented his latest project titled, “Bedrooms of the Fallen.” The project consists of a series of pictures of the dormant bedrooms left by soldiers who died at war. Gilbertson explained that he had become frustrated by the public’s lack of response to his photographs coming out of Iraq that depicted the violence surrounding him and the soldiers assigned to protect him.

It was moving to hear him talk about the soldiers in his pictures, and in many cases, explain how they were killed. His wife suggested that he photograph their bedrooms as a way for people to relate to their lives. Since then, Gilbertson has photographed dozens of bedrooms across the US and Europe. In many cases, the rooms are arranged in the exact same way as the day the soldier left, except for the occasional folded flag to remind us of why the room is vacant.

Just as Gilbertson was describing how viewers can relate better to loss through these images, a picture of the bedroom belonging to PFC. Richard P. Langenbrunner of Fort Wayne, Indiana appeared. I immediately recognized a poster on the wall from the movie “The Matrix” and realized I have the same poster on my own wall. The room immediately became far more personal to me and I felt like I knew more about this soldier through this photograph than any description in a newspaper article could provide.

Real Math for Young Learners

Real Math for Young Learners

Pictures & tears, a history of people who have cried in front of paintings

Media sense, the folklore-popular culture continuum

2014