Ron Arad
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 6:30 am on July 11th
Ron Arad, one of so many sad stories in the Middle East, is the subject of my column in the Israeli paper Maariv this weekend.
Arad (not to be confused with Ron Arad, Industrial Designer who shares the same name) is an icon in Israel after being 'missing in action' since 1987 (when his airplane was shot down in Lebanon during an attack mission against the PLO) Captured by the Shiite Militia Al Amal in 1986, he was seen in captivity and letters from him arrived in 1987. Nothing is known from him ever since. This week a written report by the Hezbollah was given to Israel in which apparently it is stated that, according to the Hezbollah, Arad is dead. Writer and "all around player" Ofer Shelach wrote a moving piece which accompanied the portrait.
This is one of the few portraits I have ever made in which no color tubes were opened.
Looking for faces in Barcelona
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 5:03 am on July 6th
In the last 5 months I have been very busy working on a TV program that will air next year in TV3, Catalonian TV. It is the basically the same program I wrote about last year, when I was asked to do one chapter.
This year with the great crew of Una Ma de Contes, ("A Handful of Stories"), a program created by Manuel Barrios, and the recipient of the Catalonian National Cultural Prize, we created 20 chapters for next season. Last week I finished my work on them. The last chapter involved a day trip of a girl in Barcelona looking for 'found faces' So we did a little segment where the girl is photographing faces with her camera. Fortunately the city is filled with them, for example this great house designed by a contemporary of Gaudi, Catalan Art Nouveau Architect Salvador Valeri i Pupurull.
Here are Xavi the Editor and this chapters' director, together with his niece Elena ('our girl'), Ricard the camera man and Meritxel, the director's assistant.
Zeroing in..
Hopefully in not too long a time I'll be able to post parts of the finished program.
Sunny Side Up Foolishness
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 1:06 pm on June 27th
That's the type of fan mail sometimes I get.
<< Hanoch Shalom I was making some sunny-side-up eggs a while ago and the result was... suprising. My wife said I'm being childish but I thought you might appriciate the foolishness more than her. The photo is here: >>
Keith
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 2:12 am on May 28th
Recently I received a great assignment to make a portrait of Keith Richards for Spin Magazine. Since at SPIN they work well ahead of time it seems like this was ages ago. Devin Pedzwater the AD took a very active role in suggesting elements to use and I thought he was right on with his suggestions! So 'together' we ended up with this piece. (While I don't really find myself smiling when ADs start telling me the objects they think I SHOULD use for my illustrations in this case it worked just fine!)
Waltz With Bashir
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 3:18 am on May 16th
Waltz With Bashir is an animated Israeli film by Ari Folman recalling his memories from the 1982 War in Lebanon. It premiered yesterday in Cannes Festival and the few scenes that can be seen online, as well as the passion and talent involved, promise very very much. Illustrator David Polonsky is the film's Art Director and main Illustrator and Yoni Goodman is the Animation Director. Asaf and Tomer Hanuka also worked on the film as well as Michael Faust Check it out.
Here Ari the director and the artists talk about their process.
Garbage Mountain
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 7:51 am on May 12th
Hiriya is a famous garbage mountain near Tel Aviv. Since the fifties and up until its closure in 1998, Hiriya served as a landfill. Since then it has been transformed from a waste landfill into the largest environmental center in Israel. There are already several recycling systems functioning there as well as a great Education Center in which visitors learn about thinking green, making compost, recycing, re-using stuff, etc etc...
Here's an article the NY Times recently wrote about Hiriya
a n y w a y
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to conduct workshops there using of course only their garbage. This is probably the most ideal place ever (so far) for me to conduct a workshop. I added a new gallery about it. Here are some pics below.
Here you can see the mountain behind the children gathering stuff.
Football!
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 6:25 am on May 1st
Avram Grant is the nom du jour in European Football today. Being criticized the whole season as being no more than the puppet of Chelsea's Boss, Roman Abramovitch, he managed nonetheless to bring Chelsea to the Champion's League Final and having a real shot at winning the Premier League as well. Grant who is Israeli is the subject of my column in Maariv tomorrow. I have asked Allan Manham who took me last year to Stamford Bridge to write about Grant from his perspective as a Chelsea fan. Here's Allan's text. (written before last night's game) This text wasn't published since the editors managed in the last minute to get Grant himself to write.
<< So there we were, having won back to back league championships, reaching two European cup semi finals and excitedly looking forward to the coming season under our charismatic Portuguese manager and heavily bankrolled by our Russian oligarch owner who had transformed our prospects with his bottomless pockets. But that sort of spending power does also bring the possibility of acting on a whim.
Pity this sad supporter having watched Chelsea for the last 42 years, logging in daily to every possible news source for the latest on his club. “Mourinho leaves Chelsea and is replaced by Avram Grant!” How could that be possible? We had all heard about the personal friendship that allegedly exists between Grant, Roman Abramovich and his football fixer, super agent Pini Zahavi. But… How could a club with aspirations to be the world’s leader, replace the most charismatic manager it has ever had, with a complete nobody? A manager without a record. A man with no identity. A man with no discernible personality. But we are told, a nice man. A son who loves his father. Since when though, does that add up to the job description for one of the most coveted (and highly paid) jobs in football?
I can’t but help but think of that marvellous Hal Ashby movie Being There, based on the Jerzy Kosinski novel and starring Peter Sellers as Chance the gardener who lives his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman and her husband Ben, an influential and wealthy but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider. His raison d’etre is that he actually is very simple minded and has nothing of import to say, but this is interpreted by those around him as deep insight. "In the garden, growth has it seasons," Chance explains. "First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again."
Is Grant the modern day Chauncey Gardner, with his simplistic utterances and inability to communicate being interpreted as coming from someone with real vision and insight?
Die hard Chelsea supporters like me, even though devastated at the loss of our previous idol are like supporters everywhere. We are prepared to forgive all, provided it brings the success that we crave. And when Mourinho was so unceremoniously (and expensively) given the chop a mere few games into the season, we were forced, somewhat reluctantly, to give the taciturn Grant the benefit of the doubt, provided he delivered the crown jewels that Abramovich and the whole club craved, the European Championship? His mission statement- if that is not putting the mumbled words at his early incoherent press conferences too strongly- was that he was going to do it with attacking football! OK he has been hampered by a succession of injuries to key players, but still now there is no evidence of some sort of master plan. I have lost count of the times halfway through a game when he has made a seemingly inexplicable substitution and the crowd have chanted in unison, “you don’t know what you’re doing”
And yet and yet. On Saturday we played Manchester United with just the outside chance of winning the league championship, provided we beat them and win the following last two games of the season. But it should not have come to this. The feeling is that games have been wasted and we have lost just when everything was assured. Incredibly we scored in extra time in the first half, having played some of the most attractive football that we had seen during the season. The frustration of giving away that lead to a soft goal by the usually peerless Carvalho was, offset by the award of a penalty late in the second half and the legendary luck that alledgedly follows Grant around, worked this time in our favour. We have had no luck this season, demonstrated by a string of bad injuries to key players, but true football fans will happily welcome anyone who can change that sequence. Is that to be Grant’s true gift?
And by some miraculous chance we play Liverpool at home next Wednesday 1-1 with home advantage and therefore as favourites for the first time to go all the way through to the final in Moscow in May. All will be revealed. Is Chauncey Grant the man, despite all the reservations? Does he have some special insight that only the privileged few are able to discern? As a supporter you can only go on hoping. And if we do are we then to be saddled with one of the most unpopular managers we have ever had?
Holy Moses
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 1:12 pm on April 19th
Tonight is The Passover (Pesach) Seder. Yesterday in my column in Maariv I made a portrait of Moses. No idea why he looks that way except that it seemed right to me. Thank god the gefilte fish box didn't open in the suitcase..
A great text by Kobi Arieli accompanied it, whose point was a small and often unnoticed sentence in The Torah, mentioning a quality Moses possesed which leaders nowadays don't seem to have:
"Now, Moses himself was by far the meekest man on the face of the earth." (Num 12-3)
Happy Passover.
Gefilte FIsh, Kneidlach(Matzoballs), Matzoh, the obvious materials for Moshe.
Hands Up
Posted by Hanoch Piven at 4:43 pm on April 14th
Raise your hand if you want to talk.
Last week I visited Gan Shikma (a kindergarden) in Yehud, Israel to do a little Artist visit and Workshop. I promised the kids they will all appear in my blog so here we are.
I try to visit at least 2 kindergardens a year. It is usually a lot of fun. The kids, who watch my TV show, told me: "We saw YOUR HANDS on TV"
