The fifth dimension

The Old City’s Fifth Quarter Gallery showcases collaboration and ritual.

By ARIEL DOMINIQUE HENDELMAN
The Old City’s Fifth Quarter Gallery (photo credit: AVIVA ROZMARYN)
The Old City’s Fifth Quarter Gallery
(photo credit: AVIVA ROZMARYN)
Walking into the Fifth Quarter Gallery in Jerusalem’s Old City, you feel instantly that you are at the intersection of ancient and new. The sloping arches of the 400-square-meter space seem to breathe in all the art around them. From silver to paintings, ceramics and scribal art, the Fifth Quarter Gallery displays an immense array of the Jewish artistic experience. But it is not only a gallery. With several in-house artists using the space daily, it functions as a studio as well. It all began as a response to a stigma.
“About two years ago, a haredi [ultra-Orthodox] guy named Yehuda Kramer [who oversees the gallery] decided he had enough of hearing about how haredi women aren’t creatively talented and don’t do anything outside of the house,” Shaun Nathan, gallery director, says.
“He put on an exhibition of haredi women only and it was a huge success. After that, he decided to open up the Fifth Quarter Gallery to showcase Judaic art and design.
What you see here is 95% original designs from Israeli artists. At any time, we have between one and five artists working here.”
The many faces and stories of the Fifth Quarter Gallery’s artists shape the multifaceted gallery space. Inhouse artists include well-known fine artist Jordana Klein, silversmith Chaya Weisel, and sofer (scribe) Kalman Delmoor, who is currently the only male artist at the Fifth Quarter Gallery. Ceramicist Chaya Esther Ort and painters Sarah Weisman and Chaya Gotlieb, to name just a few, have their work shown and sold, but do not work in-house.
Klein has been with the gallery since the beginning.
“One of the people who worked here saw my art at a fair we had done at the Great Synagogue and he called me up to ask me if I wanted to come paint here,” Klein recalls.
“I come three days a week to use this as my studio space. It’s like a little piece of heaven; it’s exactly what I was ready for. I’ve been painting and selling for the last 30 years. Before this, I was painting in my home studio.
My kids are grown now and the feeling just wasn’t the same. There is something special about the Old City. I love painting here. I’ve been playing with a lot of different styles, and painting here brings out much more spiritual work. It happens automatically.”
Klein grew up modern Orthodox on Long Island, New York, and took art lessons since she was a little girl. She used to get in trouble in class for drawing pictures all over her notebooks. There was a part of her that was always an artist, but there was another part that was very intellectual.
She addressed this duality by double-majoring at Stern College in New York City in fine arts and political science.
“Stern had an excellent art department, but I also took courses at FIT [Fashion Institute of Technology] and Parsons [School of Design] and whatever else was out there,” Klein said. “When I graduated, I worked in a bank and art was my hobby and passion. I didn’t want to work in something art-related because it would have taken the pleasure out of my creating art the way I want to create it. After I moved to Israel, I was painting more and more.
I had taken a painting course at the Israel Museum, this was probably 15 years ago, just to get back into it, and the teacher told me that I should really be selling my stuff. So I started selling my stuff.
“I sell mostly in America. I just had a really big exhibit there at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. I’m always challenging myself. I paint a lot; I’m very prolific. Because of that, I’m always pushing myself to do different things because otherwise, I’m just repeating and there’s no spirit to that.”
Klein’s more recent work focuses on utilizing negative space; the area around the image. She began painting on glass because glass is all negative space to which she can add with paint.
“I think there’s something that comes with aging, where you see the world and life differently,” Klein said.
“It’s more holistic, as well as all of the little parts that make up the whole. In the past, if I was painting Shabbat candles, it was just Shabbat candles. It was alive and it was glowing, but now I’m much more interested in everything that goes around it. So I’m playing with that and having a lot of fun.
“Creating in a space with other artists is very inspiring. It’s actually inspiring from the moment I park the car at Zion Gate and walk through. During my walk from there to here, I absorb the light, the color, and the texture. Everything is texture in the Old City: the ground, the walls.
To me, the texture is alive. Then I come in here and am surrounded by beautiful things. I also love the style of this gallery with the archways and the vaulted ceilings; you really feel like you’re in the Old City. It’s affected everything from the colors I use to the subjects and the ways I approach them. It would be hard to go back to painting in the house.”
Klein also points out that the interaction with people that the gallery enables is something new and exciting for her as a painter. People watch her create and ask questions about her process; where she sees the piece going.
These questions force her to think, clarify, and demand answers of herself while painting, in a way that she may not otherwise have done.
Delmoor, the in-house scribe, brings the only male perspective to the gallery’s landscape. He makes custom pieces from original ideas; taking scribal art and pushing it forward in a relevant and modern way.
“I take someone’s favorite line from the Tanach or from Psalms and then ask them what image it conjures up in their mind,” he explains.
“One thing I’ve realized is that the more simple it is for them, the more complicated it is for me. But I don’t need to have an insane insight with each piece; that’s how you burn out. I draw on the energy of the person who is asking for it. That way they’ve had a part in making it. I might think about a piece for three days and then executing it once I know exactly what I’m doing is the shortest part; a couple of hours. Picasso would make sketches in a minute or two, but when questioned, he would say that it didn’t take him a minute to do it; it took him his whole life. Not to compare myself to Picasso, but my entire journey has led me here.”
Delmoor’s journey to the gallery was a winding path that began in Minnesota. Growing up, he was more of an athlete than an artist, but he would doodle in his notebooks by playing with letters; signs of a burgeoning scribe. He came to Israel in 2007 to attend yeshiva and eventually switched to a religious Zionist program that led him to join the army as a paratrooper for two years.
Upon his release in May 2014, he decided it was time to try his hand at the passion that had been brewing inside of him.
“I’ve been doing this for almost three years now,” Delmoor says. “I decided to follow my passion. In the army, I had time to think and hone my skills as a sofer. This past year, I ran what I called “Alef Bet workshops” in Nahlaot.
They were weekly workshops where we focused on one letter per week. Wanting to express something is really my main draw.”
He also does collaborations with other artists, mostly painters. In his opinion, it is easier for him to collaborate with other artists because his discipline is so different that there is no conflict.
“I’m able to collaborate, thank God,” Delmoor adds.
“Part of why I enjoy having a studio space here in the Fifth Quarter Gallery is this energy of collaboration.
Modern art is more emotional, I think; more colorful. I want to have that element, but also have it be meaningful and full of content. For me personally, painting has no boundaries. Writing letters has boundaries and it’s really a form of meditation; the concentration of it. Every letter you write is a full piece. It’s complete in its own way.”
Delmoor is quick to point out that the hardest part when teaching others or giving a workshop is the aspect of permanence in the ink. Beginners are afraid to go beyond that first line for fear that they will make an uncorrectable mistake. Part of what he tries to disseminate is the confidence for the beginner to go past the initial line; beyond the fear of permanence.
“I recently did a workshop here with two young girls,” he says. “We talked about the letters and designed pieces based on their names. That was really rewarding because I empowered them to go beyond that first line and create something on their own.”
The gallery is home to many workshops, lectures,and tours. There are various corners of the space dedicated to this purpose, such as an area for learning about tzitzit, complete with a fish tank housings two sea snails that produce a turquoise dye. There is another corner dedicated to learning where tefillin come from and how they are made. Yet another displays an array of shofarot in various stages of completion. Tour groups are encouraged to learn where they come from and to try blowing them.
The gallery also boasts an exact replica of the Dead Sea Scrolls; a strong draw for tourists. Until recently, it was even home to the world’s largest mezuza.
“We still have a lot of ultra-Orthodox women’s art that we show and sell because that’s why this whole thing started in the first place,” Nathan said. “But we are getting more and more lectures and tours here because this is an amazing space. We work with the OU Center, as well as a huge list of tour guides. The art is really a vehicle to educate people about Jewish ritual and show the beauty of spirituality.”
Nathan, who began as director of the gallery seven months ago, has seen positive growth in a short period of time, but with the waxing and waning tourism climate of the Old City, nothing is certain. The gallery is currently rated the 16th attraction in Jerusalem on TripAdvisor.
Nathan would like to see that ranking go up.
He has other plans for the future, including hosting more exhibitions in the expansive space. He envisions continuing to foster female artists as well, particularly those coming from the ultra-Orthodox world, who may have no other outlet for their creative work. Given that the gallery functions as a studio, store, lecture hall and workshop space, the future is full of possibilities.
Klein summarizes, “Everything is so alive here with people coming and going; people from all around the world. It’s magical. I’ve done a series of paintings in softer colors. Those are more spiritual to me in a way. I’ve also done a lot of very vibrant pieces that are pure energy because Judaism and Jerusalem represents both sides; physicality and spirituality. Putting on tefillin is a physical thing that creates something spiritual. That’s what happens here in this gallery as well. The air is different. My work now reflects where I am, which is right here in the Fifth Quarter Gallery.”


Related Tags
haredim women