Sunday, July 10, 2011

Teaching Papercutting at URJ Camp Newman:
The Big Shin

The final project my papercutting campers worked on this summer at Camp Newman was a group project -- a giant letter "shin" in which they each cut out various designs and pictures (taking turns, of course -- it's bad luck to have too many people cutting the same piece of paper at the same time). Many of the students incorporated elements from their mizrach and paper midrash projects -- and I"m very proud of how it turned out.

We started with a big sheet of poster paper colored with a red/yellow gradient, and cut through it -- the black you see in the image is what we cut out. (Click it to see it bigger.)

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Teaching Papercutting at URJ Camp Newman:
Final Mizrach Projects, 2011

This summer the campers' final mizrach projects came out great, and I'm pleased to post them here for you to enjoy.

In Judaism, mizrach (מזרח means "east") is the direction that most Jews outside of Israel face during prayer -- Jewish law prescribes that Jews face the site of the Temple in Jerusalem during prayer, and most Jews in the diaspora live west of Jerusalem, so they face eastward during prayer. Mizrach also refers to an ornamental wall plaque used to indicate the direction of prayer in Jewish homes -- and that's what the students made, after some group brainstorming about what imagery might work in such an artwork.

Many of the students made additional projects as well -- I'll be sharing those soon on this blog as well.