Life-Tumbled Shards by Heddy Breuer Abramowitz (review)

Reviewed by: Life-Tumbled Shards by Heddy Breuer Abramowitz Jeffrey M. Green (bio) Heddy Breuer Abramowitz Life-Tumbled Shards Jerusalem: Jerusalem Fine Art Prints, 2023 "The following is based on the journal I wrote after the death of our daughter," writes Heddy Breuer Abramowitz in the opening sentence of her book. "I mostly wrote during the quiet hush in the middle of the night." Her daughter Talia, only in her mid-twenties, newly married and full of love and hope, succumbed to leukemia in 2015. Heddy—whom I happen to know slightly, so I may be excused for referring to her by her first name—is an artist, a thoughtful and intelligent woman, a child of Holocaust survivors, religiously observant and an immigrant to Israel from the United States. A loving mother, she was devastated by her daughter's death. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Life-Tumbled Shards, Cover image. © Heddy Abramowitz [End Page 175] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Life-Tumbled Shards, p. 31: Monoprint, 15 × 10.8 cm. Goaches on sketchpad, no. 8 of 9. 2016. © Heddy Abramowitz Her book combines journal entries from the years after Talia's death with Heddy's colorful monoprints, including self-portraits from what she calls the "Finding Me Series," a moving reflection of the artist's struggle to rediscover herself as an artist and a woman after her bereavement. The artwork is as much a part of Heddy's book as her words. Early on, she says: The accompanying artworks extend beyond language when words go wanting. I made the self-portraits after [Talia's] death, roughly overlapping writing the journal. Events surrounding her illness interrupted my studio practice. Reentering my studio—resuming making art—was a difficult internal process. To start, these self-portraits were, for me, crumbs along an unmarked trail that I naively hoped would lead me back to finding my Self. The prints started as a way to reenter my [End Page 176] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Life-Tumbled Shards, p. 35: Monoprint, 13.4 × 18 cm. Goaches on sketchpad, no. 9 of 9. 2016. © Heddy Abramowitz studio, to face myself from a place of inner focus rather than external observation, which was more typical of earlier self-portraits. … I focused not so much on producing a convincing likeness but on listening to my emotional state. With that choice, my senses slowly opened to the physicality of mixing color as creating became ostensibly simpler and more immediate. (p. 15) I'm not clear about why Heddy used the adverb "naively" here, in that her artwork seems to demonstrate that she did find herself again. Monoprint, the medium she chose, is entirely appropriate to her shattered emotional state and the process of self-restoration. The artist places pigment on a surface and then presses paper down on it, producing shapes and combinations of colors that are not entirely in one's control. I was struck by the contrasts of bright and dark colors in the monoprints, mirroring the darkness of Heddy's grief and her determination to keep that grief from entirely overwhelming her life. [End Page 177] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Life-Tumbled Shards, p. 70: Finding Me Series, Monoprint, 29.5 × 21 cm. Printer's inks, no. 17 of 25. 2016. © Heddy Abramowitz Later in the book, Heddy remembers her youth in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, as a daughter of Holocaust survivors. Her self-discovery as an artist—her assertion that she was essentially an artist—long preceded her struggle to use art to reconstitute herself after her daughter's long and painful illness and eventual death: For me to study art was a battle of wills, along with what I wore, what I did, where I went. I felt very little agency and dutifully went from being an art student to pursue less vital interests of mine: government, politics and eventually law. (p. 75) She implies that moving to Israel gave her a sense of agency. [End Page 178] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. Life-Tumbled Shards, p. 94 (left): Finding...