Zena Zipporah
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She moved to Cleveland in 1976.[3] There, she wrote poems and did freelance work for local magazines;[3] at first she was a writer and poet rather than a visual artist.[2] Later, however, she transitioned into visual arts, although she continued to use words prominently in her work.[2] She describes the shift being inspired by a papermaking class she took as an evening course, where she began putting her writing on handmade substrates.[2]
In 1989, her work was included in the Center for Book Arts 15th anniversary show.[4] In 2013 Zipporah was the recipient of a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Cuyahoga County Community Partnership for Arts and Culture.[5][6] In 2015, her work was included in the Ohio Craft Museums exhibition On the Page: The Book as Art.[7] Her mixed media assemblages were accepted for the May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art; in 1985 and 1993.[8]
Work
Asked in a 2016 interview to periodize her art, she divided it into five periods, listed below:
- "College and After - first poems"
- "The Craft Period - weaving/ crochet/ and paper"
- "New Forms - hybrid books, collage/ painting/ and assemblage"
- "More Conceptual Pieces - about language, creation and destruction"
- "New Poetry and Art- more surreal and mature"
Her book Recall of the Soul is in The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry.[9] Her book Breast tea is in the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA).[10]
Her work "Notes from Other Worlds" is a collage made from things taken from a 1930s scrapbook, including receipts, photographs and postcards, as well as Zipporah's own drawings and found objects.[3] Tiny words, phrases, and excerpts are scripted on the objects and in page margins.[3]
She also handmade an "autobiography", full of completely embellished pages covered in drawings with tiny words featuring in the designs.[3]
Her work "My Autobiography on Eggs" consists of a square grid of eggshells, on each of which is written her life story in tiny font, surrounded by two rows of plain eggshells.[3]
Her work "Madonna" is a montage of Madonnas.[11]
Other works recorded in the Ohio Online Visual Artist Registry include Bed I: Hair & Eggs (1993), Hopi Creation Dress (1995), Bed of Sorrows (1996), Creation/Destruction (1997), Iroquois Creation Bonnet (1997), L'Espirit Du Monde (1997), Wahungul Akuni Creation Dress (1997), and Kabbalah Dress (1998).[12]
