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****************************************************************The Word of the Day for March 2 is:"The universe would just be an empty space without art." -Keariene
didactic \dye-DAK-tik\ adjective
1 a : designed or intended to teach
*b : intended to convey instruction and information as well as
pleasure and entertainment
2 : making moral observations
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For the past eight months I have been wearing a cuff I designed out of cardboard. My cuff is black and bears a sequence written in white oil paint beneath a high gloss polish. A-7713. The number assigned to Elie Wiesel during his imprisonment in Auschwitz..
Art, in my opinion, should provoke dialogue and empower one to ask questions, of themselves and all that exists within their surroundings. This is how I measure the meaning of my work. If the answer is "yes," when the question asked is "Did they take a second look?" Only when others measure their experiences and opinions against the message I convey has the end result of my labor been productive.
Many politely inquire about my cuff. "What is A-7713?" Other times I have had to explain who Elie Wiesel is, which is never a bother. With my upcoming collection, I hope to blend powerful imagery and aesthetics with instructions that the past must be retained in the future, as well as, the present.
And, yes. Before it is asked, oil is still my first love and only medium.
Love Peace.
Keariene
I could not help but think of you as I roamed the tombstones of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery that winter. I was preparing my Sacred Stones Collection at the time, marking the end of my process with grief. You see, I began painting because someone stole the only baby photos I had when I was in high school and I had no way to show my unborn children and grandchildren what I looked like throughout my lifetime so I began documenting my emotional history for them. In telling this to Talia around 2003 she said, in her thick Israeli accent, "I know what you mean. My father survived the Auschwitz death camp. We lost everything in the Holocaust. My family has no pictures from before 1946. I know how much it hurts to not be able to see the past."
Talia and I held hands through what was the most tumultuous times of our lives, and now we walk beside one another with the inner peace and self-certainty that has been won in this newfound era of our existence.
I asked her about your tattoo number. I asked if she knew what it was. "He had one, but I don't remember what it was." I became a little obsessed with your tattoo number when I returned from Paris. We called Israel and asked your wife what your tattoo number was and she too could not recall it though she slept beside you faithfully for over forty years. It was like the horror of what the tattoo represented had been blocked from their minds, ignored, and thus erased from the caverns of time and history.
"My father," Talia declared one evening after we left schul, "has always had more integrity than any human being I have ever encountered in my entire life."
The horror and indignities you experienced and witnessed were not enough to overcome your humanity. And that is how YOU became the spark that has become the inspiration behind my newest collection Secondary Sources: Stone Narratives of the Holocaust. I knew that all around the world Survivors were dying, taking with them the extraordinary narratives of history. And such personal accounts, if left unrepeated, means that the Holocaust itself could also bear the threat of being erased from the archives of the future. The weight of this thought made my heart crumple like a bawled up sheet paper.
One day she told me your story. That you were a young man in Auschwitz and worked doing labor. That you hurt your knee from always kneeling on the ground and that the wear of your wound became so serious that you could barely walk. You could not work and had a fever. You became so sick and you knew the feeble ones were killed. So death became so real. You spoke to another worker, someone higher up. He had been a doctor before coming to the camp. You and this man were from the same country and had lived in nearby villages. Somehow, the doctor convinced the Nazis to let you rest for two days in the barracks. He said you would be valuable again after resting off the fever. And so you laid in bed knowing death was surely at hand if you did not recover. On the second day, as you tried to break the fever that was inside you, bombs were dropped and everyone that worked in the labor camp you were in was killed in the blast, including the man that saved you and the only reason you survived was because of your wounded knee.
You only told the story once to your children. You did not want to ever look back.
I want to thank you for having the strength to tell your story. And I pledge to remember you and tell your story so that your memory and
It is not an easy thing to disallow the darkness of humanity from overthrowing one's spirit.
Thank you too, for creating and nurturing a life that has grown to become one of my best friends.
You are triumphant,
Keariene Muizz
New York has embraced my work. One of the things I cherish about being an artist is seeing and hearing the way others reinterpret my work. This fact even goes out to the journalist who title the articles and retell my story. When I saw the headline given in the issue of NY Arts Magazine, "Standing the Test of Time," I thought to myself that there was no better description for what I achieved with the Sacred Stones Collection.
When I returned from Paris, I lived a house away from an artist. When Derek and I would discuss paintings or techniques I would often say, "I need to execute the colors in a way that they will be visible one hundred years from now with the same vibrancy of today." His reaction often was "Who cares about one hundred years from now!" (I do.) When I paint, I often think of my work in terms of outliving me. For me, the longevity of my art is something I always take into consideration, from the way the canvas was created all the way down to how it has been framed for viewing. The question of endurance never escapes me. This question had to occupy the minds of the masters that traded in days of their lives and hours of creative focus to produce something that unknown people occupying the unformed empires will someday be able to witness. They all had us in mind.
Each masterwork that I produce is the result of collective days spent in complete solitude and the experience of an inner revival. However, when I look at my collections I see the many weeks past, evaporated by the everlasting tic-tok of history's momentum and the moments I can never get back. It's like a visual diary of my emotional life. The title given by NY Arts was so fitting because I have withstood time and overcome the fluctuations of day to day life in order to consistently deliver a message that I know will be observed by a future that my eyes will not know. I am my own constant.
To thrive as an artist requires a unique strength that is only heard by those called to do it. Painting is a compulsion from a source that transcends me. No one will ever be aware of the costs made to so skillfully reconcile the world of my imagination with the outer world I live and breathe through. My life has been sacrificed for the sake of my passion. And my joyful hands are my willing tools.