Moral Compass: Artists Respond to Crises

Temple Judea Museum exhibition January – March 2021

Marlene D’Orazio Adler

I Surrender

Medium: Handmade paper with embedded black glass/string and Caran d’Ache Crayons

In the fall of 2019 my car was broken into and two windows were smashed while I was attending an annual Hand Papermaking conference in Philadelphia.  When I shared my distress with papermaker, Winifred Lutz, who was also attending the conference, she suggested that I keep some of the glass and make an art work with it as a way to turn something negative into a positive.  When I had the windows repaired, I remembered Winifred’s suggestion and I gathered up some of the glass in a bag.  Time passed into 2020, and the first week of March I fell down steep steps at my school, suffering some pretty serious injuries. A week later Covid19 hit and everything shut down. My first reaction was that this will only be a little while and it will give me time to heal. I would never in my wildest imagination have believed that it is almost ten months and we are still dealing with Covid19. 

In August, I made handmade paper in my yard as I usually do in the summertime. While making this paper, I remembered the broken glass. I started to form the sheet of paper and then added the small shards of black glass and couched a very thin sheet of paper over the glass and base paper to hold the glass in place. I drew the figure by dipping string into the vat of pulp and then drawing the figure around the paper. After the paper dried I added the crayon drawing and paper collage of a white feather to represent a peace treaty with myself to surrender to challenges, and to the fact that some things are out of my control. I am trying to work with them and not against them with the hope that things will be better for all.                                                                 

Marlene D’Orazio Adler