City Sights: Street Art
A
new Jerusalem Municipality project has harnessed the talents of some of
the city’s artists to add aesthetic appeal to the grubby market milieu.
Mahaneh Yehuda market in Jerusalem has, for some time now, been much more than
just a place to get fresh veg and fruit and various other vittles and goods at
decent prices. There is an increasing number of handsomely appointed cafés and
bars dotted along the shuk’s various arteries and, particularly during the
summer, a wide variety of cultural and entertainment events take place in the
evening.
That rich aesthetic has started to spill out across the
geographical boundaries of the market and has begun pervading the
character-filled but grungy urban environs of Agrippas Street and some of the
nearby narrow thoroughfares.
The local creative endeavor is currently
receiving an incremental boost as part of the Jerusalem Municipality’s Tabula
Rasa (“clean slate”) project, which has harnessed the seasoned talents of some
of the city’s leading artists to add some visually pleasing and spiritually
uplifting ornamentation to the grubby milieu.
Tabula Rasa also involves
the market stall owners’ New Spirit NPO and the Lev Ha’ir community
administration.
Yehudit Eisenberg is happy to be involved, with her contribution comprising a delightful mural on Hadekel
Street of a flock of sheep seemingly grazing in a pasture. The wall that
provides her “canvas” has very little in the way of appealing aesthetic virtues
and is made of soulless gray blocks overlaid with a thin layer of
cement.
As Eisenberg toiled away in the morning sun, her evolving work
evinced a smile or two from passersby on their way to the shuk to get their
Shabbat food, and some of the older locals were happy to share their memories of
the spot with the artist. “I remember sheep grazing near here,” said one
silverhaired gent. “Don’t those sheep look alive?” he added with undisguised
admiration.
“I checked out some old pictures of the area,” says
Eisenberg, “and where King George Avenue is now, there were just rocks and grass
with sheep and goats grazing. Everything was just nature there. So I think my
painting sort of revives some of that atmosphere.”
The artist was
encouraged by most of the responses she got from the public. “You know, artists
often try to do big things to get noticed by people. They want the public to
notice their work. But making things outdoors means that people see them all the
time, and you don’t have to try to make your work too prominent. And I think we
all need nature, and we want to see greenery and rustic scenes, like grazing
sheep.”
Mind you, not all was sweetness and light, she admits. “One man
suggested I paint in a women in a bikini,” laughs Eisenberg. “That isn’t exactly
what I have in mind. Then someone else said there aren’t any brown sheep. As you
can see, there are a few in my painting, but I believe in some degree of
artistic license.”
Around 20 veteran and recently graduated artists are
involved in the project, such as Einat Steckler, Itamar Mends-Flor, Shlomit
Sagur and the celebrated Americanborn Israeli post-graffiti artist who goes by
the name of Know Hope. Steckler’s contribution to the project is a large
portrait of late legendary Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek made of hundreds of
plastic bottle tops that the 47 year old Jerusalem-born, Eilat-resident artist
collected. Steckler classifies herself as a recycling and trash
artist.
Clearly, what the artists and Tabula Rasa organizers have in mind
is adding some light, color and extraneous visuals to the otherwise lively area
which plainly could do with some sprucing up. Unsightly blocks of cement, trash
cans and roadside walls on Hadekel, Hashikma and Beit Ya’acov streets are all
getting a pleasing makeover. The team includes painters, sculptors,
photographers and graphic designers who, as the project name suggests, have been
given free rein to produce works of art that evoke the unique ambiance of
Jerusalem and, in particular, the shuk, its environs and some of the characters
that people them.
Meanwhile, 32-year-old Ein Kerem resident Mends-Flor
drew the inspiration for his wall painting from the heart of the market. His
two-figure creation, featuring a veteran stall owner named Haim and a passerby,
was made using a peeling and relief technique applied to a somewhat dilapidated
wall.
The 27-year-old Sagur, who studied in the Visual Communication
Department of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, chose a work by an icon from
the Tel Aviv cultural world as the substratum for her piece, opting for Hanoch
Levin’s poem “There’s No Room for Two on an Electricity Pole.” Sagur’s painting
depicts a large woman sitting next to a bird on an electricity cable. The artist
says that for her the poem symbolizes urban solitude.
After years of
enduring a city turned into a virtual building site as the light rail slowly
evolved, the municipality’s efforts to beautify the urban environment are to be
applauded, and one hopes for more where Tabula Rasa is concerned. The works of
art are due to be completed by September 18.