The Gwoździec Synagogue Replication Project - my summer in Poland

My three summers (and a grand total of six months) of working on this project in Poland (plus four years in the US working on the half-scale model and helping teach some workshops) and it's finally complete!  This is the core exhibition of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews,  a new museum in what was once the Warsaw Ghetto in Warsaw, Poland.  This past summer we worked only on painting the bimah (constructed only using hand tools at Massachusetts College of Art several years ago), which will sit slightly off-center under the ceiling.  This was my first time seeing the ceiling installed (which I didn't help with) and it was absolutely breathtaking!  We always painted flat and not overhead on an actual ceiling, so it was a completely different experience to see it installed and slightly curved. A couple people cried and I couldn't blame them.  After investing so much time and energy into this, it was amazing to be standing under it and looking up.  And to think this is a replica - so something like this actually existed at some time and services were held in it.  I almost had a religious experience being under this thing and I'm not even religious!

 

This last photo was taken at the opening and isn't mine. Credit goes to Magdalena Starowieyska/Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich.  It shows the top/ second floor of the exhibit.  The timber framed structure of the roof is showing through a cut out.  It is partially shingled.

 

 The architecture of the museum is absolutely insane!:

 

 The interior is just as beautiful:

More info here: www.handshousestudio.org 

or at the projects facebook page: www.facebook.com/gwozdziec 

A great short video of a profile of the project by CNN with lots of awesome footage: http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2013/11/21/spc-on-the-road-poland-jewish-museum-warsaw.cnn.html

The installation of the roof structure and painted ceiling synagogue replica in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw

I'm a little late (...probably more like a month late..), but the painted panels I worked on in Poland for the past two summers just got installed in their final resting place, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland!  It's completely amazing to see them displayed how they ought to be - curved - when I have only worked on them flat.

There's been a lot of press about it recently (as it should be!):

• http://www.sacbee.com/2013/03/12/5255810/jewish-museum-in-poland-unveils.html
• http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/jewish-museum-poland-unveils-synagogue-roof-18709050
• http://news.yahoo.com/jewish-museum-poland-unveils-synagogue-roof-151838980.html
• http://bigstory.ap.org/article/jewish-museum-poland-unveils-synagogue-roof

Here are some pictures taken by my good friend Krista, who helped install it this past February in the museum:

More photos of the installation, and all the work done in the past two summers, can be found on the project's facebook page and at HandshouseStudio.org.

Back from 3 months in Poland!

For three months this summer, and two and a half months last summer, I was working as a part of a team in nine cities across Poland to recreate the polychrome painted ceiling of a 17th century wooden synagogue for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews' core exhibition.  My job was to teach various groups of American and International travel students (some who had never painted before) how to replicate these paintings, using a limited number of black and white photos taken before the synagogue's destruction, and a couple of surviving color study resources.  We used only painting techniques of the time - we painted with hand-ground natural pigments mixed into rabbit skin glue.
This summer we were in five cities: Gdansk, Sejny, Kazimeirz Dolny, Szczebrzeszyn (notice there are only two vowels in that whole word!!), and Wroclaw.  For more info: http://www.handshousestudio.org

A gift a few of us made for Hands House after we completed the project.

All of our signatures in the lantern.  This board was going to be covered up by the flames boarder, so no one will actually see them.