A VISIT WITH
“WINGS OF WITNESS” ARTIST JEFFREY SCHRIER
By Laura Joseph Mogil
Croton-on-Hudson artist Jeffrey
Schrier knew he wanted to create a pair of wings as a memorial to the victims of
the Holocaust. However, his vision
didn’t crystallize until May 1997 when he heard about a group of middle school
students in Mahomet, Illinois who had collected 11 million soda can tabs to
represent the number of people murdered during the Holocaust.
Schrier was able retrieve these tabs from a recycling plant and then
began a six-month process of creating a model feather made from about 6oo of the
tabs, aluminum wire, and a two-foot aluminum rod.
The artist’s next step was to
work with students to assemble the “soda tab feathers” into a pair of
massive wings. The result was a community sculpture, entitled “Wings of
Witness,” which was first exhibited at Mahomet-Seymour Junior High School in
1998. At the exhibit’s next stop,
Yeshiva University Museum in Manhattan, the wings evolved into a shimmering
giant butterfly. The artist says
that the transformation was inspired by a poem (“The Butterfly,” 1942)
written by young Holocaust victim Pavel Friedmann.
Over the past eight years, Schrier
has worked with over 40,000 students from 23 states to create the massive
butterfly at eight different locations. Each
time the community sculpture is shown, new student work enlarges the piece.
The last stop on the tour was the Katonah Museum of Art, where “Wings
of Witness” was on display in the sculpture garden this past spring. In
addition, student poems, letters, stories and artwork created in response to the
sculpture were on view in the museum’s Pryor Gallery.
According to Schrier, “Wings of Witness” is a continuing project.
The artist is exploring potential sites for future exhibits and will be
holding workshops for schools and religious institutions throughout the country
for the next year-and-a-half. By
that time, he hopes to have used all 11 million soda can tabs in the creation of
the feathers and to have touched the lives of over 50,000 participants.
“Whether responding to an exhibition or a hands-on workshop, what I
hope students get out of this is that creating art is the opposite of the act of
destruction,” says Schrier. “We
live in a world where the history of inhumanity still haunts us through the
atrocities of the present. If we
encourage our children to use their hands and heart to create instead of to
destroy, then we’ve done something extremely worthwhile.”
For further information, go online to www.wingsofwitness.org.
THE BUTTERFLY
The last, the very
last,
So richly, brightly, dazzingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way
up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the
world goodbye.
For seven weeks I've
lived in here.
Penned up inside the ghetto
But I have
found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the
court.
Only I never saw
another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live in here,
In the ghetto.
Pavel Friedmann 4.6.1942
BACK
To
request information about bringing workshops to your school or
community, or about the memorial sculpture itself, contact Jeffrey
Schrier: jeanjeffs@aol.com