Category: Art

Seeing things Jewishly

personby Gillian Polack
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So many strangers are telling me right now that I’m not Australian and that none of my relatives are Australian and… my mind keeps returning to what this means for the Arts in Australia. Certainly it’s much more difficult for anyone Jewish to earn money in the Arts here: there are some places I won’t even fill in the forms until I see that things have changed. I don’t have much physical capacity and when something is obviously a waste of my time, I do something else with that precious time. However… it struck me that I see the world through my upbringing. I talk about books from non-Jewish Australia a great deal, but my own view of the world is shaped by my family and their friends and the stories I was told as a child.

We all see the world from our own eyes. If someone were to ask me how I see the arts in Jewish Australia, I’d only give a partial answer, because there is so much stuff I forget. The first thing I think of, in fact, is what has impacted me and when and why. I thought, this week, then, I’d give you a little list. The list is little but it contains many words, because I annotated it. Welcome to the Arts in Australia seen Jewishly, through my life.

Let me begin with family and friends.

My mother’s family arrived in Australia before World War II or died in that war (save one person, who is not part of today’s story because he was not an artist, musician or writer). Mum’s immediate family was all here by 1918. It was a big family in Europe and is not the smallest family in Australia. Of all my mother’s cousins there are two who were well-known as writers. Very well-known, in fact.

Morris Lurie was Naomi’s brother. Naomi was so much a forever part of my life that even now she’s gone, I still think of one of Australia’s better known writers of plays through the fact that his sister was Naomi. Every time Naomi was in Melbourne, she’d shout “Sonya,” across the street to my mother, because they were very close. Mum hates loud voices and Naomi thought that Mum hating the noise and the laughter was hilarious.

I know about Morrie, and I collected his plays when I was a teenager. One of the lesser known facts of Gillian’s life is that, for twenty years, she collected plays. I still have my collection, but most of it needs a new home. I never met Morrie. He wasn’t much into meeting our side of the family. Even if we had met, I suspect we wouldn’t have had a lot in common. Naomi, on the other hand, was someone I would spend any amount of time with. She was my bridge to the Yiddish-speaking side of the family, and is the main reason why I don’t use that in my fiction: it’s her culture, not mine. My cultural self is from my father’s family. Loving Naomi, though, sent me to understand klezmer and Sholom Aleichem and so much else. I need to re-read Morrie’s plays. Maybe now I’m no longer a teenager I’ll like them more. Maybe not. I’ll see.

Arnold Zable is, as my mother explains, a family connection. His refugee cousin married Mum’s refugee cousin. Arnold is Victoria’s great storyteller. He also wrote an amazing book about the family left behind: Jewels and Ashes.

My father’s side of the family is so very musical. One of my father’s best friends was an extraordinarily well-known performer… but that’s another story. This is one of the days when stories lead to stories and those stories lead to more stories. Between family and friends, I grew up with music the way I grew up with rocks. Science and music and Doctor Who kept our family together for a very long while.

The most famous musician/composer/music critic in the family (she was never just one thing, nor was she a simple person) influenced me a great deal in my youth. Linda was my father’s first cousin, and spent time with me when I was very uncertain of where I fitted and who I was. She accompanied my sister on the piano when that sister was doing more advanced music. She told me some of the stories of her life, but never the really private ones.

Linda was Linda Phillips She described her own music as “light classics.” We played them on the piano at home… but never well. Her music was a lot more than ‘light classics’ as was Linda herself. Her daughter, Bettine, also wore her talents lightly. I knew that she had acted on stage with Barry Humphreys as an undergraduate, but I had no idea that she was a famous radio actor back when radio was the centre of so many people’s entertainment. They were both quiet about their achievements.

Here I need to explain that, not only were they modest and exceptionally fun to be with, but they were nothing close to my age. Linda was my father’s first cousin, to be sure, but she was born in the nineteenth century: she was sixty years older than me. Linda lived until the twenty-first century, and we lost Bettine to COVID. They were part of an enormous change in the Arts in Australia, beginning with Linda’s early career as a pianist over a century ago. I grew up with this, taking it for granted that there was a life in the Arts and a world and so much enjoyment… but seldom enough money to live on.

There is a third family musician, my own first cousin, Jon Snyder. His life is another story. He was in a very popular band (Captain Matchbox) and became a music teacher. His professional life began in the sixties, so the age differences are still there, but not as great. So many of the friends of my schooldays also became musicians, and three of them play in the same band, in Melbourne. That’s another story, however. I am no musician. I had some talent, but words were always more fun and, to be honest, I used to be tone deaf. I love music and the artists who create and perform it, though, because until I left home, it was part of my everyday. In fact, even when I left home, music crept up on me. I kept running into friends of Linda’s. They would send messages to Linda through me. Stories breed stories…

Also, this stopped being a list almost as early as it began being a list. I’ve only talked about a third of the writing side of the family. But this post is long enough. The rest can wait.

PS I have not at all forgotten the questions I promised to answer. There are only two questions, but the answers require a lot of thought. My everyday is a bit over the top at the moment. When things calm down, I will answer those questions. I promise.

Why is there no Jewish Australian culture or art?

personby Gillian Polack
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I meant to return to answering questions today. Next week. Today I have other things on my mind.

Yesterday, I was caught up in trying to work out why it’s so important to so many people to not let Jews mourn loss. I saw Irish Jews forced to leave a Holocaust Memorial ceremony. I saw people told “What about others who have died?” when they tried to mourn families murdered during the Holocaust. I saw so much more than this that I lost words and avoided writing.

Even political leaders who gave official statements about the Holocaust toned it down this year, left off the dangerous word ‘Jews’ and generally faffed around. Someone on my timeline suggested that we should mourn all lives not focus on specific lives even for one day, and I wondered if it were possible to make all anniversaries about the death of a parent about all parents without hurting those who had lost their parents. We all need time to mourn because we all need to heal when we’re hurt. Each and every one of us at an appropriate time. Not all of us for just one shared minute.

This mood carried over into all kinds of other things. One of them left me incoherent until this morning. Please understand that I am not yet over my incoherence. This may not be the best post I’ve ever done, but my heart is in it.

Someone on social media said, “Think of all the colour, art, theatre, celebration and other cultural value that immigrants and different cultures have brought to Australia. Hmm just remind me what the Jews have brought us, a bit of theatre and film maybe?”

The first Australian opera was written by someone Jewish: Isaac Nathan. The famous story of Fisher’s ghost, the story that led to a Fisher’s ghost festival every single year in the Sydney region… it was written by someone Jewish. The writer who brought English folktales into the international fold and who is still read as the classic purveyor of English folk tales was Jewish and from Australia.

Jewish Australia was such a strong part of Australia’s nineteenth century culture.

We couldn’t stand out and be different very often, because that was not safe. This doesn’t mean that we didn’t contribute. Jews have been part of Australian culture since modern Australia began, just as Jews have lived in Australia since 1788. One of the first free settlers in Australia was a Jewish baby who arrived on the First Fleet, and many of the early arts and early printing in colonial Australia were by Jews or done with Jews.

This particular history shows why some of us create art and celebrate culture that is similar to mainstream culture: religious difference does not imply complete cultural difference.

More than that, though: many Jewish cultural mavens don’t have the same access to the wider community because it’s not safe or because they/we are too Jewish.

Still more, this means is that Jews in Australia are left aside by others who share culture, because of histories past and shameful. Let me give you an example. When I first came to Canberra I met the people in charge at our Polish club and they told me I was welcome to join, since I had ancestors from Bialystock and from around Warsaw and we spoke very similar cultural languages. Then they discovered I was Jewish and they said “We do not accept Jews.” At the cultural festivals in Canberra, there used to be Jewish and Israeli foodstalls and singing and dancing, but these days it’s not safe and very few Jewish culture-bearers from any background are on programs and everyone asks me “Why don’t we have a Jewish food fair any more?” The food fair is a specific thing. It covered many different Jewish food cultures, and was a delight. It was run to make money for children’s education, but the insurance premiums the Jewish community had to pay were so high after the Molotov cocktails 20+ years ago, that the community would not only not raise money with a food fair… it would go into debt.

One of the wonders of modern Australian history is the great change that made us a nation with so many writers and musicians and actors and… an immensely artistic country. This development of the arts into something of international note (including that enviable coffee culture) was spearheaded by Holocaust survivors. And yet there is not Jewish contribution to culture and the arts?

When I was in my teens I asked many Shoah survivors, including writers, “Why Melbourne? What made you choose to come to Melbourne?” I was told they wanted to get as far from Europe as they could. These people were mostly honorary aunties and uncles who went to school, university or shared a social group with one of my parents.

We were the older Australian Jews. They still shared their art with the rest of Australia. Much of Australia simply pretended my branch of Australian Jewish weren’t Jewish at all, or were pretenders, or did not have and specific cultural background they presented. My father’s first cousin, Linda, has had any indication of her Jewishness removed from her Wikipedia page, except for the title of one of her most popular song series.

We are not really permitted to show off the folk culture or the national culture the way other Australians are able.

There is the bigotry, which I’ve mentioned. Add to this the need to be safe, which is related to the bigotry.

There is another related factor. Many non-Jewish Australians pretend we don’t exist. This is why almost no-one in Australia knows who the author is of the first Australian Jewish fantasy novel. How do I know almost no-one knows? Because I am that author.

Another aspect is whether others who share our ancestral cultures are willing to share. The Polish Club fits in here. Just as the Polish club did not want me, few mainstream Australian culture experts see Jewish Australian writers unless we write about the Holocaust, about rebellion against Ultra-Orthodoxy… in other words, unless we create what they feel we ought to create. Our own culture is far less important than their view of it.

Also, for some of us, our culture is Anglo-Australia. My cultural foodways include challah and lamingtons and meat pies. We’re entirely allowed to publicly celebrate the lamingtons and meat pies, but most Australians don’t see how challah fits into the picture.

Add to all this that we can’t appear too different and still be safe. There are days and times I cannot walk in a given place and guarantee my safety. When I’m in Melbourne on a day where pro-Palestinians march, I cannot use the State Library without walking around the long, long way and entering by the back, for instance. I cannot walk that far, so I cannot use the State Library on those days.

Jews in Australia have never been permitted to be too different from majority culture and so we have our own culture, that is similar to that of the majority. This doesn’t mean we bring nothing, because our ancestors were part of that majority culture before we even came to Australia. It means that some people look and don’t see something they think of as distinctive or exotic and so think we have brought nothing. Take Jewish composers out of Australian history and the whole modern development of international level music would be jeopardised. The folk music scene in Melbourne would lose its best violinist.  Dame Edna Everage would not have worn those glasses. Eliot Goblet and John Safran and Elle McFeast would not be part of our world. There is so much culture Australia would not have.

We cannot appear too different in public. I can be publicly Jewish because I have an Anglo-Australian culture, but local bookshops do not stock my books – not even the ones used in universities in the US and Germany – and I am not sufficiently distinctively Jewish  because when anyone assesses Jewish culture in Australia, the whole of the Anglo side of things tends to be ignored. This is why I wrote The Wizardry of Jewish Women – I am trying to redress that balance.

Let me ask that question from social media again:

“Think of all the colour, art, theatre, celebration and other cultural value that immigrants and different cultures have brought to Australia. Hmm just remind me what the Jews have brought us, a bit of theatre and film maybe?”

What does most of Australia bring to understanding and even encouraging Jewish Australian cultures? Not much at all. It’s not a lack of culture. It’s a lack of knowledge and a lack of community.

Update: I always tangle certain writers. There was more than one John Lang. The one who wrote Fisher’s Ghost was Australian-born, and famous for it. He was not the brother of Andrew Lang, of the many-coloured fairy books. The Fisher’s Ghost Lang’s maternal grandfather was one of the Jews who arrived here on the First Fleet, so Lang himself was not actually Jewish.  I always, always get the many Langs confused. I wrote articles to make sure I didn’t, but I still do. John Lang still fits here, but as someone with Jewish heritage, not as a practising Jew.

What Matters

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I just finished taking my second drawing class of the year.

I’ve always wanted to be able to draw, but back when I was a kid I was told I was no good at it, and somehow I took that to heart. After all, I had lousy handwriting (still do) and poor fine motor skills. And the myth that you had to have “talent” to do all kinds of things was overpowering back then.

Maybe it’s still overpowering.

Anyway, I’ve now taken two drawing classes, picked up some technical skills, and lost my fear.

I’m not doing this for any particular purpose. I just want to draw. It seems to me that understanding the basics of drawing – the tools, the techniques, the ways of seeing – is very useful regardless of whether you want to be serious about making art.

The underlying context I picked up as a kid was that if you aren’t naturally good enough something, you shouldn’t waste time on it. Only do things you’re good at.

And of course, if you did have enough talent to be seen as good at something creative, you were told you shouldn’t do it because it wasn’t “practical.” How are you going to make a living with that, everyone said.

Our drawing teacher told us this week that he quit his career in architecture to make art full time and is so much happier. Practicality isn’t everything.

He also told us he really enjoyed teaching us and he was very good at being encouraging about our efforts while still showing us what we missed.

I think part of the reason he liked teaching us was because we were a bunch of grownups taking a class for its own sake and invested enough to do the work. Because the work is the whole point here.

That was one of things I always liked about teaching Aikido: people were serious and were there to learn. People trained because they wanted to train, not with any larger goal in mind.

I trained for those reasons. And, by the way, I was not “naturally good” at Aikido. I just loved it – and karate before it – too much to be discouraged.

Continue reading “What Matters”…

Patreon in 2016

personby Gillian Polack
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In my very first Patreon newsletter, sent in December 2016 (really!) I wrote about a life that feels very strange now. Eight years is a long time in the life of a Gillian, after all. To celebrate the changes that eight years bring, my posts for the next few weeks will focus on what happened in 2016. I was 55, and many things happened. This, then was that very first piece for Patreon:

 

On the Bigness of Hair

Today the air was full of unshed rain. This caused my hair to be big. Since the whole morning was taken up by a visit to the National Portrait Gallery with a group of creative writing students, my hair took on a significance. I was dressed quietly and modestly, as befits a teacher, but my hair was acting big.

I noticed the hair in portraits and I commented on them. We looked at the various stages of Victorian women’s hair in particular. We discussed the technique by which ringlets could be carefully developed and the importance of the sloping shoulder in relation to the hairdo. We talked about the sex factor of Big Hair. And all the time I was aware of having big hair.

I’ve often taught the different values our ancestors have given to various physical traits and dress. Sometimes a waist is important and sometimes a slit in the side of a dress is seen as impossibly heart-breakingly daring. Hair was a constant for a long time. There are still many groups that prefer to not see women’s hair at all than to have symbols of unbridled sex in the eyes of everyone.

Old postcards and the earliest of films show this attitude clearly. The sirens of the screen and the charmers of the cards wore a surprising amount of cloths. Titillation was through showing the possibility of skin rather than actual skin. But the hair! It was padded and it was pulled and it was piled up high. The postcards weren’t decorous at all – they were simply focused on something that far too many modern viewers don’t know to look for.

I kept the depictions of sirens in mind when I was walking my students through the Portrait Gallery. The word ‘sirens’ is in mind because of Norman Lindsay, whose portrait was there, sporting both a satirical look and a satyrical look. He was part of the change in culture that objectified the body of a woman. One day I’ll find out if anyone had counted the number of naked women he drew compared with other artists of his ilk and time. His more formal pictures still focused on the hair and these were of decorous women, but he felt the siren call of bare skin and was notorious in his day for refusing to block his ears against that call.

In the gallery immediately before Lindsay were the Victorian matrons. Unlike the sex symbols of the day, their hair was not so big. It was not small. It was most definitely soignée and often beautifully curled, but the nature of the hair of the dignitaries was quite different to that of the hoi polloi in the theatre.

Big hair isn’t simple. It reflects social stratification and relationships as much as it reflects fashion and hygiene. Except today. My big hair today was perfectly simple. There’s a lesson in that, too.

No Good at It

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I took a drawing class through my local parks and rec department and learned that I can, in fact, draw. What I lacked was an understanding of how to look at something if I wanted to draw it.

I didn’t do this to become a serious artist and certainly not to become a professional one. I just want to be able to draw. I always have, even though I was told as a kid that I wasn’t any good at it.

I don’t know if it’s still the case — though I suspect it is — but back when I was a kid if you weren’t naturally good at something you were often told not to bother. Seems like a lot of teachers can’t be bothered with explaining things so that they make sense to those who don’t have a gift for them.

Plus, of course, art isn’t “important” because the accepted opinion is that it’s hard to make a living as an artist. So only those who are already talented are encouraged to try it and even they are rarely encouraged to take it seriously.

The fact that learning to draw can give you insight and personal satisfaction never gets considered. Just from taking this one short class I have learned so much about how to look at things as well as how to try to render them on paper.

I took up martial arts at 30. I’ve got a fourth degree black belt in Aikido and am a decent teacher. I still do a lot of Tai Chi. I spent years going to the dojo four or five times a week.

I am not a superstar and I never became a professional teacher. But movement matters to me, matters a great deal. It has nothing to do with making a living, though everything to do with who I am.

I spent much of my youth in marching band. I used to sing in church choir. I have a decent voice and can play an instrument. I am not a professional musician and I never had the urge to become one. I like to perform. I’d like to get back into making some music, just because it’s pleasurable to make music.

All these things are important, as are many other things we do in life. You don’t have to make a living from them for them to be important.

And all these things are good for your brain, good for your thinking, good for your health. Continue reading “No Good at It”…

Mad for Beads

personby Madeleine Robins
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I don’t think of myself as a crafter, but I do do a lot of craft-like things. Maybe I should rethink?

I like knowing how to do things, even if I don’t do them brilliantly. I like to sew (big project sewing–mending and quotidian stitchery not so much). I taught myself to knit, and have knit some stuff, but not much–as with sewing, I tend to do a big knitting project that is almost certainly out of my league, and eventually finish it.

And then there was Klutz. I worked at Klutz Press for three years in the production department. One of the things most Klutzniks did routinely was to test instructions. So I learned to make tiny Fimo beads, and to do quilling (it’s curled paper art), and make Star Wars-themed paper planes. And I made things with beads. So. Many. Beads. I wound up organizing the massive bead stash (by size, by style, by finish), and when Klutz’s California offices closed, I was offered the opportunity to take any and all beads when I left.

I was good. I was even thoughtful. I did not just take all the beads (there were a lot of beads–in order to test the beads, both for compliance with US regulations on materials for kids, and for working with projects and designs–we had to get beads by the ounce, and an ounce is a lot of beads). I chose beads I liked, and I mostly chose the really small beads: 11/0s, Delicas, and 15/0s (okay, I took some 8/0s and 6/0s, t0o. I’m not a saint). In the years since I left Klutz I’ve become a fairly competent bead weaver.

I bead at night, while we’re watching after-dinner TV. I don’t string beads, or work with wire (I know some amazing bead jewelers who do both, or either); what I do is the intricate, fiddly stitching of beads in a pattern. Bead weaving. The necklace in the photo above is done with the flat Cellini stitch; it winds up looking complex, but really, the hardest part of finishing the flat Cellini necklace is remembering which bead I’m supposed to be picking up when. I’ve made climate change necklaces (bands of different colors for different temperatures, over a 100 year period… pretty and sobering) and Russian leaf earrings, and, and, and… It keeps me from fidgeting while I track plot and dialogue.

So what do I do with the pieces I make? I’ve sold some pieces here and there–mostly those commissioned by friends. Then, last year, after a friend had a good experience with entering her artwork in the World Fantasy Convention, she persuaded me to try entering my beadwork in this year’s WFC Art Show.

Spoiler: I got into the show. To my surprise and gratification, I sold half of the work I showed. More than that, I got the sense that this is something I’m good at, and something that has the potential to give joy to others. In the words of Ruth Gordon when she was given an Academy Award at age 73, “I can’t tell you how encouragin’ a thing like this is.”

Life, the universe and… buildings

personby Gillian Polack
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Next year’s world science fiction convention is in Glasgow. This is a wonderful thing. I want to be there so much that I already have the t-shirt. So why am I not writing an ecstatic fannish post? Why is my Monday piece a faint and short whimpering?

It’s the dreams. Every time I see the building that is ours for the convention, I have dreams. Not of meeting favourite people or arguing about books, or eating good local food. I dream of … how to explain it? I need a picture.

You know I’m Australian? I lived in Sydney for a few years and visited one building often, and know it from one direction in particular. In that direction, three white helms elegantly overlap each other and look as if they’ve been dumped from an adventure in space. If they grow roots, they will sprout, and we will have Opera House children. This is exactly what happened. Of course it is. You can see those children from most angles.

Sometimes the family imbibes just a bit too much alcohol and dresses up for a night on the town.

Vivid Sydney 2018

Well, the nickname for the Glasgow building is the Armadillo. Imagine the Sydney Opera House changing from party dress to camouflage, its children all in a row and pressed tightly together, ready to tackle alien invaders.

Whenever I see the Armadillo, I dream this dream.