The Jewish Transcript December 4, 1998, Chanukah issue.
Artist shares his inspiration for cover drawing (and a funny family story)
by K.A. Segan
Special to the Transcript
The artwork was reproduced in color on the cover of section B.
This drawing of a Seattle-themed menorah ("A Drawing for a Seattle Chanukah Lamp," copyright 1998, ink and goauche on paper) illustrates something about art that I believe to be true: Most artists derive inspiration from the world around. I am no exception.
A so-called "traditionalist" among you might say: "How can you have a menorah made out of such images as a propellor airplane and the Seattle Space Needle?" And I'd say: "Ahhhhhhhhh-hah!"
If you look at Hanukah menorahs and other ceremonial-religious objects made in every country that Jews have lived over centuries, you'll see that form follows function. The outside culture has synthesized itself time and time again into Jewish religious life.
For example, see the designs of synagogue architecture, interior and exterior; Torah arks, finials, holders and breastplates; wedding rings and ketubahs; candelabras; prayer book illuminations; wine goblets; Pesach plates and much more. Each were influenced by local and prevailing artistic styles, methods and materials. The clothes people wore, native plants, flowers, animals and birds appear in manuscript and prayer book illustration, and on gravestones. Why should Seattle in 1998 be any different than from the last 3,000 years elsewhere?
My "Seattle Chanukah Lamp" drawing offers a perfect example. We live in Seattle and the Space Needle is our most famous landmark. Why not a Space Needle Menorah? Let's say I find a sculptor to collaborate with and we actually construct a three-dimensional working menorah. It contains just what's needed to meet the function of a Hanukkah menorah: Holders for nine candles, including the shamash.
Everything else is design fun! And there isn't a rabbi or learned Jewish man or woman in the entire world who will say that such a Hannukia couldn't be used at Hannukah! Everything in the drawing was derived from things and tchotchkes lying around my apartment, with the exception of the Space Needle, which it too big to fit inside, even if I could afford it: the two fish (upper left) and the two fanciful bird critters (upper left and right). Other objects include a metal airplane inside two coiled metal spheres; two silver Stars of David on chains; an Israeli coin; an ongepotchket wood, plastic, brass nail and metal stand (at bottom foreground center) I got at a yardsale somewhere, who remembers when?; and dreidels: wood (upper left) and big plastic ones that open up (upper right).
The chicken at the very top? I'm so glad you asked! Truth be told, I can't pass up a good story.
It was around 1925. My mom and her sister Rosa and her brother Al were growing up in Englewood, N.J., right across from upper Manhattan. My grandpa Harry, an immigrant from a village outside of Bialystok, Poland, and my grandma Sarah, who came from Bobroisk-Gydinia, Ukraine,* had chickens in the backyard.
Uncle Al had a pet chicken, a hen named "Toddle," may her memory be blessed. Uncle Al was around 12 years old at the time. I don't know how old Toddle was. I don't even know how long chickens can live. If you're still a kid, you can call the Seattle Public Library Quick Info Line at 206-386-4636 to find out, but whatever you do don't tell 'em that I put you up to it.
My mom had a pet chicken too, but I'll save that for the book to follow. Grandma, being an immigrant and mom of three, was, naturally, very frugal when it came to food and everything else. "Waste not, want not" was probably coined with her in mind. Once a week the family ate meat, so it was chicken on Friday nights. Of course this meant one less chicken running around the backyard coop.
There's no way to break this news to you gently: One day grandma accidentally chopped off Toddle's head. She realized it immediately afterwards, but darned if she was gonna let a perfectly good chicken go to waste.
Those of you who are pet owners know how attached we become to our pets. When Uncle Al returned home from school that day, Toddle wasn't to be found, and grandma concocted some cockamamie story or another . And yes, grab onto your seat belts now, the entire family ate Toddle that evening. No one, including Al, missed a beat. I can imagine grandma thinking to herself as she slurps down a big spoonful over the kitchen stove, "Such a tasty chicken, this Toddle!"
A footnote: Around 1955, and I'm a boy growing up in Queens, N.Y., and I've already heard the Toddle story. Uncle Al and his family live in Miami and grandma and grandpa still live in Englewood. Al's around 42 years old now, and grandma decides he is finally old enough and mature enough to handle this emotionally distressing and devastating news. Hoo hah! How did Uncle Al react? When I interviewed him on audiocassette tape 10 years ago, all he said was "At that time, who cared?" So it is with love and fond remembrance of grandma Sarah, who passed on in 1981 at the ripe age of 101**, that I dedicate this drawing to Toddle, a fine and delicious bird if there ever was one.
Another footnote: Uncle Al has been carving birds, in wood, that is, since he retired 15 years ago. He's now 85. When I visit mom in Florida, mom and I always get together with Al and Aunt Nathalie and we eat chicken, what else? One more footnote (the last, I promise): If Toddle was a leghorn, why is she red in the drawing? I mistakenly recollected she was a Rhode Island Red for some reason, but mom set me straight on the phone last week: "You're calling all the way from Seattle to ask me if Toddle was a rooster or a hen? And no, she was a White Leghorn, not a Rhode Island Red!" And if you, my dear reader, are a chicken eater, may every bite be tasty and memorable.
~ * note, October 11, 2020, while typing this from a copy of the 1998 issue: Bobroisk is in Belorussia.
~ ** second note, Oct. 11, 2020 and my late grandma's age: After grandpa Harry passed on in Englewood, summer '67, my mom and aunt Rosa and spouses moved grandma, who was probably in her mid 80's of age then, from her home in Englewood to the (Jewish) Workmen's Circle Home for the Aged in the Bronx, New York. She lived there for thirteen years and passed on at either age 98 or 99 in April 1981. So grandma Sarah and grandpa Harry were probably born in 1882 or 1883.
My aunt Rosa (sister of Al and my mom), born in New York, 1907, left this world young, alas, from cancer, 1970. Uncle Al, born 1913, passed on in 2012, just a few months shy of his 100th birthday. Aunt Nat passed on a few years later. My mom, born 1919, left his world in May 2019, age 100.
"No doubtski aboutski," (a wordage used by a character in the book "The Power of One," by Bryce Courtenay), I bet my mom, her sibs and parents are in the spirit world right now (that is - the spirit world of the sort penned by the late Polish Jewish American immigrant, Nobel Prize for Literature laureate and Yiddish language novelist, short story writer and children's story writer Isaac Bashevis Singer) enjoying chicken din-din in a great dining room in-the sky, while Toddle is out and about in the lush grassy fields-on-high, with other chickens, looking for tasty bits to eat such as seeds, dried grasses and dee-lish worms.