Jean Edelstein: In Touch with Music and Nature
- ISBN-10
- 0996372385
- ISBN-13
- 9780996372381
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-04
- Author
- David S. Rubin
Description
For the past fifteen years, Los Angeles based artist Jean Edelstein has been documenting her visits to botanical gardens, natural areas, and music and dance performances in Chinese accordion books. This catalog, published in concert with a pair of exhibitions organized by curator and author by David S. Rubin, took place at Bihl Haus Arts and the Art Gallery at Musical Bridges Around the World in San Antonio, Texas, from April 6 to may 18, 2019. The project celebrates the artist's ongoing engagement with these subjects and her dynamic studio practice.Though intimate and personal in scale, Edelstein's accordion books draw on a series of larger-scale, collaborative painting performances Edelstein began in the 1980s, working on stage with dancers and ensembles to document choreographed performances, typically on wall-sized sheets of paper. Now 92, Edelstein is no longer able to endure the physical demands of making mural size paintings before an audience. On a smaller, portable scale, the expansive format of the books is ideal for capturing the successive movements and various temperaments of music and dance. Similarly, they allow her to make on-site impressions of various landscapes and natural settings, which she can fill in and elaborate in the studio. Whether engaging intimately with nature or joining with others as they bond as a community through dance and music, Edelstein has succeeded in adapting an age-old format to create a unique art practice that reaffirms her ongoing belief in the spiritual unity of all humankind.
