BEARING WITNESS
Every year at Oakland Hebrew Day School, a dedicated group of middle-school students comes together to study the
Holocaust through art. This study
culminates in an installation piece
to be displayed at community commemorative events. The art curriculum at OHDS is choice-based,
requiring students
to assume responsibility for their art
decisions, process,
outcome, and evaluation. Working within
a collaborative group
adds significant complexity and reward to this art experience. The following is a description
of this year’s work as developed by
students.
Laurie Bellet
The Responsibility of the Artist
As artists, we bear a different burden
than typical historians. When we
work, we bring our creativity and
emotional being to the endeavor. We
bring human perspectives to the raw
facts. Through our art, we each reveal
an individual perspective and focus
while, at the same time, allowing
onlookers to layer
our work with their
viewpoints.
Art carries perpet-
ual value. Years from
now, spectators will
be able to interpret
the emotional con-
tent of our work as well as the factual
data of the history it represents. We
have used enduring symbols that have
universal meaning. To understand
our work does not require lengthy
study. It does, however, implore us to
return to it, to view its many aspects,
to focus on its different regions, to
re-examine the potential of what we
have expressed.
ing each of us to connect
personally and profoundly
with the task.
To truly “bear
witness” involves
making an experience
visible, tangible and
emotionally compelling.
The Responsibility
of Bearing Witness
We recognize that we are a unique
generation. We are the last generation
to have the opportunity to learn about
the Shoah directly from individuals
who experienced it. We feel it is our
responsibility now, and in the future,
to “bear witness” for those who can
no longer do so for themselves. To
truly “bear witness” involves making
an experience visible, tangible, and
emotionally compelling.
The Art Problem
We were given the task of creating artwork that describes the Shoah through
the vision of a witness, as if we too,
were survivors. Early on, we recognized that bearing witness requires
our eyes, mouths, hands, souls, and
hearts. The scope of this realization
carried great significance for us, caus-
The Process
Our research took us
through historical
accounts and photographs,
art of post-Shoah American artists, and the art created in the Theresienstadt
Ghetto.
Printmaking was
selected as the medium
we would use because it
demands bold symbolism
and a lot of physical interaction with the materials
and the creation itself. Some of us
traced our own hands into the work,
imprinting ourselves even further into
the subject. We were surprised to see
at the end that we had all included
eyes in our work.
After our preliminary sketches
were completed, we drew our images
onto printing linoleum and carved the
designs. We printed with black and
metallic inks and had a wide color
selection of paper. We each completed
six prints and were responsible for personally selecting the print to be incorporated into the final piece. These
final choices were made on the basis
of ink quality and contrast with the
background paper.
