My Time at JewCamp
I spent last July at a Jewish summer camp in Southern California, learning with some very amazing and talented teachers about Judaism and arts and identity and spirituality and a lot of other stuff. It was a life-altering experience, and my recent artistic pursuits are owed entirely to that experience. I did a lot of writing and performing and dancing and photographing, so I wanted to share that with all of you.
First up, were two performances I did at our Saturday night gatherings. Saturday night is the end of Jewish Shabbat, and so they would announce a theme on Wednesday or Thursday and we would have a couple of days to try to prepare something.
The first video was based on the theme "Wresting with..." and it's called, "Wrestling with Myself". Have of the conversation I pre-recorded and played on a ipod while I spoke the other half. I wasn't confident that I had the whole thing memorized and I was fantastically afraid that I would get up their and forget my lines and just stand there looking like an idiot while the ipod played. I can't remember ever being that nervous about something so trivial, but I got this tremendous adrenaline rush at the end when I realized I hadn't badly messed things up. Anyway, here is the piece on one part of my Jewish identity.
The second video is based on the theme "Roots" and I didn't really script it, I just knew what objects I wants to work with and went from there:
I also did two Saturday night presentations with some photography. One theme was "Home" so I took some pictures around the camp, and skewed the colors a little, to try to depict that magical home we were temporairily inhabiting. I'll throw in some photos below, and you can click on them to view them larger, or click here to see all the pictures I took at camp for that photo presentation.
I also did a photo slideshow for the "Westling with..." theme that you can view here. If you want to watch that, be sure to click the options button in the lower right hand corner and turn on the Titles and Captions, because the captions tell the stories behing all the pictures that relate to the theme.
I took a couple thousand pictures while I was there, and you can see all of them here, or just skip directly to my favorites.
As part of the camp, we were placed in arts groups, and encouraged to pick an area that we had the least experience with and were least comfortable doing. I chose dance, and learned some amazing things from the teacher there, Josefa, who used to work with Alvin Ailey. The performance is around 20 minutes long, and you can watch the whole thing here on Google video. [No, I don't think any of you are interested enough in me to watch me dance for 20 minutes, but if you need help falling asleep, give it a shot.]
Like I mentioned, that experience at camp changed my life, and this overly long blog post is only a small fraction of what I experienced there. Since returning to St. Louis, I have become committed to creating art, in all different forms, and I'm currently working on a series of menorahs. You can see the first once I finished below, and I hope to finish a couple more this weekend.
Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom, and I would love to hear if you have any comments or reactions.
Peace.
First up, were two performances I did at our Saturday night gatherings. Saturday night is the end of Jewish Shabbat, and so they would announce a theme on Wednesday or Thursday and we would have a couple of days to try to prepare something.
The first video was based on the theme "Wresting with..." and it's called, "Wrestling with Myself". Have of the conversation I pre-recorded and played on a ipod while I spoke the other half. I wasn't confident that I had the whole thing memorized and I was fantastically afraid that I would get up their and forget my lines and just stand there looking like an idiot while the ipod played. I can't remember ever being that nervous about something so trivial, but I got this tremendous adrenaline rush at the end when I realized I hadn't badly messed things up. Anyway, here is the piece on one part of my Jewish identity.
The second video is based on the theme "Roots" and I didn't really script it, I just knew what objects I wants to work with and went from there:
I also did two Saturday night presentations with some photography. One theme was "Home" so I took some pictures around the camp, and skewed the colors a little, to try to depict that magical home we were temporairily inhabiting. I'll throw in some photos below, and you can click on them to view them larger, or click here to see all the pictures I took at camp for that photo presentation.
I also did a photo slideshow for the "Westling with..." theme that you can view here. If you want to watch that, be sure to click the options button in the lower right hand corner and turn on the Titles and Captions, because the captions tell the stories behing all the pictures that relate to the theme.
I took a couple thousand pictures while I was there, and you can see all of them here, or just skip directly to my favorites.
As part of the camp, we were placed in arts groups, and encouraged to pick an area that we had the least experience with and were least comfortable doing. I chose dance, and learned some amazing things from the teacher there, Josefa, who used to work with Alvin Ailey. The performance is around 20 minutes long, and you can watch the whole thing here on Google video. [No, I don't think any of you are interested enough in me to watch me dance for 20 minutes, but if you need help falling asleep, give it a shot.]
Like I mentioned, that experience at camp changed my life, and this overly long blog post is only a small fraction of what I experienced there. Since returning to St. Louis, I have become committed to creating art, in all different forms, and I'm currently working on a series of menorahs. You can see the first once I finished below, and I hope to finish a couple more this weekend.
Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom, and I would love to hear if you have any comments or reactions.
Peace.