Spirited Sculptor Builds a Sanctuary for Dreams

Sculptor Judith Reifman believes that art should transport us for a time beyond our daily lives. She sees “Cathedral,” her installation of 26 carved wood figures at the Sherry Frumkin Gallery, as a sanctuary for dreaming.

The figures--male, female and hermaphrodite, some of them 12 feet tall--provide “a moment . . . to be transformed and to see something differently,” Reifman said. “I put the emphasis on the human being, yet within natural materials. At the end of the century, we need moments to re-evaluate who we are, and what we want to bring into the next century.”

Part of Reifman’s motivation to contemplate the future comes from her 20-year fascination with humankind’s earliest known art. Animal figures and sculptures of the human figure dating from the Ice Age, 12,000 to 40,000 years ago, were discovered in caves in Spain and France within the past 150 years. They represent the first record of art by humans.

Figurines in Siberia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria illustrate the same Venus figure with variations. “All over the world, you find handprints,” she added, which “validate the experience of being alive.”

Her travels have taken her to the Ice Age caves of Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. For her, they are sanctuaries that confirm humankind’s eternal “need to create beyond daily life,” she said. The art symbolizes “more than survival.”

In between her job and raising her children in the early 1980s, Reifman, 50, was a self-described “secret sculptor,” working in clay and bronze. In 1986, she chose to learn woodcarving from furniture craftsmen in Steamboat Springs, Colo. “They were perfectionists with the sense of reverence for wood that I wanted to learn,” she said. “Wood is such a warm and soft material, very inviting. The smell, the feel, the grains keep me with it. It’s a total sensual experience.”

While learning the basic techniques of hand carving, she knew if she wanted to work in large scale, she would have to use a chain saw. “I was terrified at first, working with a chain saw,” she said. Starting with electric models that quickly burned out, she had to go to a gas-powered one.

She began to transform wooden beams, acquired from old buildings slated for demolition, into the graceful figures of her installation. They are made to be touched. The roughness one might expect in a sculpture formed with a chain saw has been smoothed away in her “endless” finishing process. “It’s a meditative experience,” she said.

It took her six months to complete the first figure, a female, from a beam that had been part of the pool house on the property where “The Beverly Hillbillies” was shot. The wood is native to northern Borneo. “That beam is what challenged me,” she said. “I was able to get these other pieces, and I’ve been obsessed for three years. I grew into what I was doing.”

One must bow slightly beneath a natural birch archway to enter the installation. Almost 50 prints of cave-painting images (made from blocks carved by Reifman) surround the figures. In the intriguing, grotto-like environment, two of her elegant benches offer a chance to reflect.

She chooses to make a figure male, female or hermaphrodite “based on what’s going on in the wood,” she said. “It’s between the wood and myself. Each one is unique. Like human beings, they are not perfect. Character and beauty has to do with imperfection. I know that the best of me is in this work.”

SCULPTURE AND DRAWING: In 1947, Italian sculptor and draftsman Giacomo Manzu (1908-1991) was commissioned by the Vatican to create a set of doors for St. Peter’s Basilica. The original subject matter--the triumph of the saints and martyrs of the church--was rejected in favor of a presentation of events relating to the deaths of the Virgin and Christ. The project was finally dedicated in 1964, 17 years after Manzu began his work.

Perhaps it took so long to complete because the Vatican was not amused by some of his designs. Although known at the time for his respectful religious sculptures, particularly his depictions of cardinals, Manzu had an irreverent side that showed up in his drawings and sculptures of dancers, ice skaters, children and young women, and occasionally in a religious narrative.

The two engaging sides of this artist--whose commissions included a relief sculpture for Rockefeller Center in New York and two fountains in Detroit--are on view at the Remba Gallery in the sculpture-and-drawing show, “Giacomo Manzu: Sacred and Profane.”

There is the three-foot bronze, “Cardinale Seduto” (1959-90), and the four-foot ebony, “Cardinale Seduto” (1981-82). These refined figures quietly convey the power, mystery and secrecy of the Catholic Church.

But there is also the drawing “Crucifixion With Centurion,” and the bronze relief, “Cristo con Generale,” both 1942 works that depict Christ hanging from the cross by one hand. He is observed by a general, who is naked except for a helmet and a belt for his sword.

Those rather otherworldly works mingle with a tender, very human watercolor of a playful “Mother and Child” (1979); a pensive ink on paper portrait of his wife in “Seated Inge” (1975), and two roughly textured chair still-life sculptures. These petite bronze chairs, holding three-dimensional bronze still-lifes, were inspired by a small chair he kept since childhood.

JAMAICAN ART: Galerie Malraux, which specializes in art from the Caribbean, is spotlighting the work of Jamaican women artists, with a special emphasis on Hope Brooks, director of the Jamaica School of Art since 1983.

Brooks works with gouache, modeling paste and wax on canvas to create warmly textured, colorful images, as exemplified in “Church Window I” and “Rose Window III.” Through this mix of materials, these paintings resemble stained glass.

Among her other works are two non-representational, multi-panel paintings that almost seem like a series composed of ceramic tiles. The 12-panel “Garden Series--Trees” conveys the sense of a forest, with its vibrant shades of green. The 24-panel “Garden Series--Mountain Sky” conjures a storm moving in, with its billowy gray and brown tones.

Seven other artists from various ethnic backgrounds who work in diverse styles and media are represented here. Heather Sutherland-Wade uses acrylic on canvas to present hotly colored landscapes. Feea’s untitled pencil drawing illustrates a sea of women, perhaps members of some community.

Petrona Morrison created her cross-like “Totem I” in mixed media on wood. Margaret Chen’s abstract acrylic and collage on paper, “Shadow Series I,” suggests birds in flight.

Other artists in the show are Carol Crichton, Annie Paul and Seya Parboosingh.