CALIFORNIA, USA 

 

BIO

Judith Serebrin has been making limited-edition and unique books from etchings, monotypes and drawings since 1989, and combining them with porcelain figures since 1991. She has an MFA degree from the University of Utah. Her work explores connections to family and liberation, to animals, science and literature, to Judaism and Jewish culture, to feminism & male domination, capitalism, the planet, “The American Dream,” racism and anti-Semitism. Her work has been exhibited widely and has been collected by libraries, museums and individuals in the United States and abroad.  Her work has been featured in many books about Artist’s Books and contemporary ceramics. Judith currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is a Book Arts instructor at the San Francisco Center for the Book, and a long-time participant in a Jewish/Palestinian Living Room dialogue. 

 

STATEMENT

Every place has a culture with pressures to conform to certain standards, ideas, and rhetoric. Within each culture there is space to think and act on certain things, but it may take leaving a place to have space to think and act on certain other things. In Jerusalem, my sister has had space to explore being 

a Jew in a Jewish culture; whereas I, in the diaspora (U.S.), have struggled with this in a Christian culture. I have however, outside the holy land, had the space and opportunity to meet, learn about and make friends with Palestinians. While she, so near the conflict and harshness of the situation, has not had that space or place to meet her neighbors.

 

This is one of several figures embodying the shifting places that we inhabit in relation to culture, conflict and to intellectual and spiritual pursuits as a people with a heritage of shifting landscapes and expulsions. We may feel safe in a particular way in one place and safe in another way in a different place. Can we be our whole selves in all places? How would we conduct ourselves if we knew we were safe everywhere? What would it take to make that a reality? This is part of a series of porcelain figures called “Soul Books.” Figures with books in them that represent a symbolic and tactile way of being able to reach into someone’s soul without embarrassment, censorship, or fear. Both human and animal-like figures—all represent the importance of every creature to the world. “Sing II” represents an open heart with the space and presence to sing! A figure to represent thoughtful intention in every action taken.

 

Neither Here Nor There I

24cm x 5.5cm x 5.5cm

Mixed: unglazed porcelain, 

monotypes on paper, thread 

 

Soul Book, Sing II

24cm x 5.2cm x 7cm

Mixed: unglazed porcelain, ink & 

watercolor on paper, thread 

 

Soul Book, Kavanah

16.5cm x 4cm x 5cm

Mixed: unglazed porcelain, ink & 

watercolor on paper, thread