3.8 Generation to Generation by Barbara Gelman

The connector between the world and the individual, mediated by the various communities of which we are each part, is articulated in what is at once a three-dimensional, smooth-edged antipode to the sharp edges of Weinstein’s work and a three-dimensional as well as personal and familial echo of sorts of Josh Stein’s “Still Here After All Those Years.” “Generation to Generation,” by Barbara Gelman, from Silver Spring, MD, is a carved alabaster work that offers a lyrical reflection on what is simultaneously a broad human focus on the question of immortality achieved through generational continuity; and a specifically Jewish articulation of that principle by way not only of the issue of generational transmission—of covenant, beginning with Genesis 22 and the story of Abraham and Isaac—but of memory itself. This work also suggests a personal, familial efflorescence, the figures rising from a common base like a flower beginning to open and spread its petals, the striations of pigment deriving from the inherent patterns of the stone offering an interior symbol of family: sometimes ebullient with disagreement yet peacefully unified.