Tikkun Daily seeks to bring you provocative, innovative, moving, and beautiful photo essays and art exhibits. Please read more about our vision for the gallery and comment on the art! Click on each image or title below to go the page for that exhibit.

Featured Art of the Week:

Tactile Legends, Global Ideas in Sculpture: Pamela Blotner is an artist based in Berkeley whose sculptures use mixed media to tangibly retell specific myths and legends from diverse cultures. Blotner has traveled as an illustrator for numerous human rights groups, including Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, and has taught at many colleges and universities across the country. To learn more, read Jaclyn Tobia’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.

Past Features:

Exploring the Perpetrator: In her sculpture series,Lorraine Bonner confronts the forces from her abusive past that threaten her spirit and health. With her sculptures, the Oakland resident explores domination both in her personal life and in the political realm. She explains that with careful attention, we can remove domination from the deepest parts of our selves and our communities. To learn more, read Zena Andreani’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.

“A Purely Spiritual Experience”: the Art of Yoram Raanan: Through surreal depictions of humans and nature, Yoram Raanan uses paint to explore spirituality and to connect to the life-force that exists in all humans. His paintings express the sacred in all of God’s creations while also trying to reach through the canvas to connect with the viewer on a personal level. To learn more, read Sarah Stafford’s post or visit the artist’s website.

America’s Seven Daily Sins: Through natural and surreal imagery, Norm Magnusson uses paintings and photographs to both provoke and inspire. Bridging the gap between art and political activism, his works frequently engage observers with social commentary in creative and original ways. To learn more, read Laura Beckman’s blog post or visit the author’s website.

A Star is Born: Metaphorical Portraits of America: Questioning our consciousnes, Carl Gopalkrishnan uses a style of prophetic surrealism to explore our waking dreams as reflected in our public and private myths. To learn more, read Laura Beckman’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.

Teetering on the Edge of Creation: Painting the Zohar: In a series of over one hundred paintings, artist Michael Hafftka has created a visual exegesis of the Zohar — an exploration of this Kabbalistic text that is at once spiritual and personal. To learn more, read Laura Beckman’s blog post and visit the artist’s website.

Assembling Stories — The Rubble Art of Dominique Moody: Well before the national recycling movement began, black artists in Los Angeles turned street rubble into beautiful art with a powerful message. Dominique Moody follows in their footsteps with her evocative assemblages. To learn more, read Paul Von Blum’s blog post and visit the artist’s website.

The Medium is the Matzo: Like a three-dimensional Haggadah, this ambitious art installation seeks to bring some of Passover’s central themes into the context of contemporary social action. To learn more, read artist Melissa Shiff’s article and visit her website.

Between Heaven and Earth — An Illuminated Torah Commentary: Ilene Winn-Lederer spent five years researching the history, images, and commentaries (both classic and modern) of the narratives of the Torah before creating the 120 phantasmagorical, full-color drawings that make up Between Heaven and Earth – An Illuminated Torah Commentary. We are excited to share a small sampling of these drawings on Tikkun Daily. To learn more about Winn-Lederer’s artwork, read Nina Beth Cardin’s article in Tikkun and visit the artist’s website.

Peoplescapes and Travelscapes: Through her exceedingly detailed paintings of people and places, Nancy Calef aims to illuminate the distinctiveness of individuals, the connectedness of humanity, and the challenges facing American society. To learn more, read Mia Sullivan’s blog post and visit the artist’s website.

Connecting the Dots of History: Massachusetts-based artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy sees godliness made manifest in the Civil Rights Movement’s struggle for justice. She has devoted the last seven years to a project called “Icons of the Civil Rights Movement … Connecting the Dots,” that venerates the movement’s heroes – both the known and unknown. To learn more about her work, read Lorenzo Estebanez’s blog post and visit the artist’s website.

From Fleeting to Permanent: With paint and persistence, Marcie Paper layers the details of her daily life over periods of time to produce art that represents a conglomeration of isolated moments. To learn more read Mia Sullivan’s blog post and visit Marcie Paper’s website.

Communing with Allah in nature: Bay Area artist Davi Barker blends fine art and digital mediums to create fantastical compositions of landscapes, Islamic sites and calligraphy. To learn more read Akile Kabir’s blog post and visit the artist’s website.

Rocks as Canvas: Many centuries ago, the indigenous San of South Africa used the Cederberg Mountains as canvas for paintings that depicted animals, spiritual dances and shamanistic trances. To learn more, read the article by Irene Shaland, which describes the history and significance of these ancient rock paintings.

What Cannot Be Taken Away: Artist Evan Bissell worked with Bay Area fathers and youth to produce portraits documenting how incarceration has impacted their lives. To learn more, visit Evan’s website and read Alana’s blog post.

The World Is Your Oracle: Mother-daughter team Linnea and Nancy Vedder-Shults have collaboratively created a divination deck intended not to forecast the future but rather to put us in touch with our own perceptions and intuitions in the present. To learn more, read Nancy’s blog post and her article in Matrifocus, which includes links to instructions for how to use the cards.

Art and Remembrance: Holocaust survivor Esther Nisenthal Krinitz created beautiful narrative quilts to illustrate her amazing story of survival. Now her daughters are sharing her story. To learn more, read Natalie Wendt’s blog post and explore the Art & Remembrance website.

Finding Soul in the Street Art of C215: Street Art gets a refreshing new face with the work of French Artist, C215. His brightly colored graffiti works can be seen in cities all over the world. Healing the streets and dedicating his work to his daughter, C215 stands out among our notion of what graffiti can do. To learn more read Alex Chaves’ blog post and visit C215′s website.

All Faiths Beautiful: This selection of pieces from the American Visionary Art Museum exhibit in honor of Persian poet Jelaluddin Rumi celebrates the diversity of faiths and showcases works by self-taught artists who were moved by the power of their beliefs to pick up a paintbrush or pencil. To learn more, explore the American Visionary Art Museum’s website.

Divine Connection: Peter Lewis seeks to inspire feelings of unity and divine connection through his paintings, which he describes as “artwork brought forth through meditation unto the Most High.” To learn more, read Phil Barcio’s profile of his work and visit the artist’s website.

Natural Activism: David Bygott uses Photoshop montages to express a sharp critique of militarism and materialism. To learn more, read Phil Barcio’s profile of his work.

√Other: Beverly Naidus’s work uses traditional ad copy to examine “fear of difference” through media images. To see more, check out our gallery, read Phil Barcio’s blog post, and visit the artist’s blog.

One City’s Trash: Nothing is wasted, buried, or burned at San Francisco’s “Recology” dump. Artists work alongside the recycling and compost facilities to transform scavenged materials from the city’s waste stream into beautiful works. Read Phil Barcio’s blog post and visit the Recology website.

Positive Art: One artist paints with his own infected blood, transforming his disease into moving artwork. Others use watercolors, monoprints, acrylic, wood, x-rays, or photographs. Together, they express the hope, pain, joy, and heartbreak of living with AIDS. Read Phil Barcio’s blog post and visit the Queer Arts website.

Face to Face: Robert Bergman’s photographic portraits “bring us face to face with other human beings,” writes Tikkun associate editor Peter Gabel. “The encounters made possible by Bergman’s photos provide sudden moments of the discovery of mutual Presence.” Visit Bergman’s exhibit and read about his work.

Love Actualized: In his post about Evelyn Williams‘ work, Phil Barcio writes: “So often we dwell on the calamities of our world without imagining a better way forward. The purpose of this Tikkun Daily art gallery is to seek out artwork that presents a hopeful and positive vision of this life while still conveying a sense of intellect and awareness of the ways our world and our nature cause suffering and grief.” Evelyn’s work fits in particularly well with this vision.

The Art of School Lunch: Kai Klaassen’s portraits depict school district cafeteria workers. Klaassen says, “My hopes were that the viewer would just take a minute or two to find out who these people were.” Read Phil Barcio’s blog post about Klaassen and her work.

Emergent Submersion: Kim Keever’s landscape photographs are created by meticulously constructing miniature topographies in a 200-gallon tank, which is then filled with water. These dioramas of fictitious environments are brought to life with colored lights and the dispersal of pigment, producing ephemeral atmospheres that are a combination of the real and the imaginary. They document places that somehow we know, but never were. Check out Phil Barcio’s blog post and see more of the artist’s work in our gallery or on his website.

Art for Earth’s Sake: Jackie Brookner’s work integrates ecological revitalization with the concepts and aesthetics of sculpture. Her projects raise community awareness of the urgency of restoring health to aquatic ecosystems. Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work and visit the artist’s website.

Nothing Is Wasted: Aurora Robson’s work focuses on transforming “the negative or downward trajectory of motion” inherent to materials like junk mail or plastic bottles. She creates beauty out of waste, “a meditative practice in alchemy, enantiodromia, positive spin, acceptance, and balance.” To see more of this stunning work, visit her exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.

Tender Brutalities: Ran Ortner uses art to explore the fragile, unrelenting forces of nature. To see his massive, powerful paintings of the sea, visit his exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.

Beast’s Burden: Wild animals are the first to suffer from human-made ecological disaster. Painter Christopher Reiger seeks to ‘re-enchant’ humans and remind us of our community with the anguished world around us. To learn more about Christopher Reiger’s work, visit his exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post, and explore the artist’s website, as well as his blog, Hungry Hyaena.

Material Androgyny: Alison Wilder’s playful, massive sculptures – made of reclaimed fabric, metal, and wood – invite laughter and experimentation. To experience this joy-filled art and read about Wilder’s views on communion, pain, toys, and androgyny, visit her exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.

Between Heaven and Earth: Barbara Bash uses mop-sized brushes to create intuitive, gestural expressions in paint. To learn more about her giant canvases and their connection to Zen Buddhism, visit her exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post and explore the artist’s visual blog, True Nature.

Survivors: “At a time when human life on earth is in danger and needs protection, we all need to know more about the nature of survival.” Check out Andrée Singer Thompson’s Survivors exhibit in our gallery.

Buddha Park: Buddha Park is just outside of Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It’s one of two concrete scupture theme parks created by Bunleua, an apostate Buddhist monk who created his own synthesis of Buddhism and Hinduism. Read Peter Marmorek’s blog post, and visit the Buddha Park page in our gallery.

Art from My Kishkes, from My Soul: Nancy Katz creates breathtaking chuppahs, Ark curtains, torah covers, and tallitot. “For the most part, my work is about bringing color and light into the world,” she says. “As an educator, my goal is to empower others to take risks and to embrace their own creativity.” Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work, visit the exhibit of her artwork in our gallery, and visit the artist’s website.

Shadow Series: In Lanell Dike’s beautiful photographs, our shadow form merges with the background, and the illusion of our separateness dissolves: we are one with our surroundings. Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work, visit the Shadow Series in our art gallery, and visit the artist’s website.

Being One: Helena Tiainen evokes the wondrous and radical interconnectedness of all things with her intricate drawings. Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work and visit the artist’s website.

Utopian San Francisco: Muralist Mona Caron envisions “a post-global warming, post-fossil fuel, bioregionalist San Francisco, thriving within a different socio-economic system.” Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work and visit the artist’s website.

What Kinda Name Is That: Beverly Naidus engages in culture jamming by manipulating mid-twentieth-century advertising imagery and adding text about her own experience as the child of immigrants. Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work and visit the artist’s blog.

The Catholic Church: Julia Dean offers another sensitive portrayal of religious life on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. According to A. Jay Adler, who writes prose to accompany Dean’s photo essays on their blog, The Sad Red Earth, “A major effort has been in reenvisioning Jesus through Apache eyes.” Read more about Julia Dean’s work.

Finding Home: Siona Benjamin’s paintings beautifully combine ancient and modern symbolism to create a visually stunning mythology that challenges our notions of identity and home. Check out the art, read our blog post about it, and visit her website.

The Dancing Saints: Black Elk, Cesar Chavez, John Coltrane, Charles Darwin, Fyodor Dostoevski, Albert Einstein, Ella Fitzgerald, Anne Frank, Martha Graham, Malcolm X, and eighty others dance hand in hand across the walls of the St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, thanks to muralist Mark Dukes. Read more about The Dancing Saints.

Painting Past Borders: Painter Salma Arastu offers a behind-the-scenes tour of her studio and a glimpse of her “Blue God” series, which was inspired by stories about the Hindu god Krishna, who danced his way back into her work years after her conversion to Islam. Read more about the “Blue God” series.

Shmah — a Hope for Harmony: Erik Slutsky reflects on his connection to Judaism and stands witness to the violence and suffering of war and genocide. Here’s our blog post describing his relationship to religion and art.

Sacred Celebration: Janet McKenzie’s paintings of women and people of color draw on sacred Christian imagery in an attempt to transcend stereotypes and convey a yearning for equality and radical wonder. Read her story here.

The Native American Church: Julia Dean documents worship in the Native American Church. Read about Julia Dean and her connection with Native American life here.

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