| The myriad possibilities of visual expression
of the Realm Between Realms is microcosmically offered in a handful of works
arrived too late for inclusion in the catalogue binding, but profoundly
worthy of supplementary note. Among these, two mosaic works by Jonathan
Mandell add another medium to the list of those discussed here. Mandell
uses an array of materials, from ceramic tile and turquoise to hematite,
tigereye, and abalone. His Bar Mitzvah and his Wedding present the two interior
transition points within the Jewish life cycle (birth/circumcision and death/funeral
and its aftermath being the exterior points, as it were).
There is a particularly interesting and appropriate symbolism to the
medium and the moments it captures: each wedding and each Bar Mitzvah
is unique, yet each partakes of a greater whole that extends across two
millennia or more in time and encircles the planet. Endlessly unique,
every such celebration is built on the same essential elements and conveys
the same basic ideas of continuity, community, and Covenantal bridging
between heaven and earth. The mosaic format, where myriad tiny irregular
forms combine to shape the entire intelligible image-where the lines of
the composition cut across the lines of the individual fragments, and
the completed work is a satisfying, striking whole-suggests in its very
material the content beneath the subjects which Mandell portrays.
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