Creative Process Revealed – Art Exhibit

Exhibition Dates:
* October 25, 2021 – January 5, 2022

The first act in the most sacred Jewish text (the Torah) is creation. The beginning of the Torah has not one, but two distinct creation stories.

Just as the Jewish tradition has retained multiple stories in an effort to elucidate the creation process, the Osher Marin JCC presents Process, a group exhibit that explores this unpredictable and engaging creation process. Art is among the most inclusive of all languages—images have the power to connect people regardless of common background, language or belief system.

The process behind artistic creation however, is not a traditionally shared language. Our society places disproportionate value on a finished product, yet often neglects the importance of the process in between the start and the grand finale.

And yet, it is often the process itself—filled with surprise, mistakes, bursts of inspiration, failures, experimentation, doubt, and hesitant new directions — that is the most instructive and important component of creation.

The three artists exhibited, Nancy Bardach, Lauren Bartone, and Cindy Ostroff, are all local, and employ processes that are simultaneously simple and complex (quilting, painting, printmaking).

The exhibit celebrates this progression with a selection of completed works that are paired with elements of the process itself (mistakes, text descriptions, and alternate endings for the finished work). The exhibit’s purpose is to draw the curtain aside and invite the community in, to explore different ways of creating, to ask questions, and to ultimately celebrate that learning is a lifelong endeavor for us all.

This exhibit was scheduled to open just as the pandemic struck. During the last 20 months, all three artists have been challenged in different ways, learning new techniques and adapting their processes to the world we currently live in.