Advance Notice

“Advance Notice” is a fragmentary conceptual garment, a mixed media textile including airbrush, painting, phototransfer and embellishment, on the theme of what we have learned, and perhaps what we have not learned, from our shared global Covid-19 experience. A dress rehearsal, if you will, for a Shmita year in this age. We have polluted the Earth God has entrusted to us – land, sea and air. Then came this worldwide pandemic with its lockdown restrictions. Factories closed, shipping slowed, roads were cleared of traffic and air travel and deliveries almost ceased. To our amazement, we saw the land refreshed, the waters clear, skies unbelievable, night and day. Animals wandered unmolested in the streets. To me, the ideal concept of Shmita is a year of rest and renewal, of preserving our resources and sharing them…but have we done? We indeed started opening our hearts and our treasury to those more in need than ever. We are promised in Torah three years grace if we observe Shmita, but it is our responsibility to implement that promise. And again I ask…have we done? Our streams are once again fouled and our people not fed enough. This fiber arts piece, “Advance Notice”, is the first in a planned trilogy of this hoped-for progression of caring for our earth and each other.