What compels an artist to identify as a Jew through his or her work? What role can the artist play in the vitality of Jewish cultural life today? These are the questions that brought us together in Los Angeles to form the Jewish Artists Initiative of Southern California, an artist-run advocacy group committed to fostering visual art by Jewish artists. Most of us identify ourselves as secular but we do discuss Jewish traditions and imagery.

The land of Southern California shapes our internal lives and imbues our art with a distinct sense of place. Religion and culture are linked to our physical environment here: the cloudless skies, the vast desert, and the Pacific Ocean at the edge of the earth. The natural beauty here inspires us all and is what we worship in an essential way. In a city where there are more than 600 separate faith communities and religious centers, Los Angeles has bypassed London and New York as the world's most religiously pluralist metropolitan region. We gravitate to our own but also interact on a daily basis with a multitude of other cultures and languages, which I personally find stimulating and enriching.

We have organized many exhibitions of our work in Jewish centers and museums across the country, the most recent exhibition being at the Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in NYC on view until 1-25-08. As the brochure for our NYC show says: "Los Angelenos think young, embrace their dreams and never look back."

My own background is secular and I studied filmmaking at UCLA. My father was a financial adviser to David Selznick (of Gone with the Wind fame) before I was born and I heard numerous Hollywood stories as I grew up. One of my interests in Jewish themes has been the vision the Eastern European Jews, who started the movie industry in Hollywood in the 30s and 40s, and their portrayal of an America as a pure, innocent nation, a glorified land of promise and happy endings, family life brimming with virtue — an image of America not as it existed but an America they wanted to be part of and an America which contained no Jews.

We are thankfully well past that era and a group like JAI has been created to celebrate our common interests and backgrounds as Jews and as artists. My collage "World Premiere" is currently in the NYC exhibition.

When gallery and museum exhibitions are hard to come by for many artists, especially in big cities, I encourage groups of like-minded artists to come together, organize and curate your own exhibitions. I would love to see some artists who have Etsy shops come together to curate an all-Etsy — actual not virtual — art exhibition. There has been talk of this in the forums and I hope it moves forward.

Further Resources:
Any Etsy Jewish artists who live in Los Angeles are welcome to join our group
http://www.jaisocal.org/

And any Etsy artists in NYC please take a look at our exhibition up now!
http://www.huc.edu/events/07/8/LAStory.shtml