JTA — With many of us living without plans during the COVID-19 lockdown early in 2020, Lisa Edelstein spent some of her time sifting through old family photos. But instead of just wallowing in nostalgia, she was looking for her next painting project.
Since then, the actress best known for her Jewish roles in several hit TV shows — from “House” to “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce” to “The West Wing” to “The Kominsky Method” — has been seen in vintage pictures. is producing a painting to recreate. Photos of his Jewish family. She is showing them in her first solo art exhibition titled “Family” at the SFA Advisory Art Gallery in downtown Manhattan until January 25.
“I don’t think there’s any way around my Jewishness in what I do or do, whether I intend to make it a part of it or not,” says Edelstein. “Almost every role I get turns out to be Jewish if it goes on long enough. I don’t explicitly think of myself as a Jew, but my name certainly gives it away and I don’t mind.
His Jewish identity is also reflected in his paintings. The photographs after which they are modeled capture family members in candid moments, often at group events. There are acts of celebration by men in yarmulkes kissing family members on the cheek, a woman mid-phone call, children and adults stuffing their faces at pizza parlours.
“What I’m looking for are images that tell a more honest story, a captured moment, a weird angle, a weird pose,” Edelstein said. “We don’t have images like that anymore, the world is much more camera savvy and our phones are so high-tech that we can remove things that tell stories we want to forget or filter them into something else.” can. When we took pictures on film, it took time, effort, and money to make each picture, so even though we hated it, we kept at least one box of it. They’re the ones whose I am looking for
Edelstein, 56, grew up in Wayne, New Jersey, in an Orthodox Jewish family observing all holidays and Shabbat.
“Although I was raised with a healthy Jewish identity, it was not without shame and apology,” she said. It didn’t help that the local head of the school board, who later became mayor, published an article in a local paper telling people not to vote for Jewish candidates for the school board because they would cancel Christmas.
Alan Arkin and Lisa Edelstein play father and daughter in ‘The Kominsky Method’ by producer Chuck Lorre. (Mike Yarish/Netflix/JTA)
“The way people talk about Jewish women in particular, for example the word JAP [a derogatory term used to describe young Jewish women], Really disgusting. On some level, I think there was a feeling that I needed to separate myself from that identity so as not to be the thing that people associated with that identity,” she said.
When she moved to Los Angeles in 1991, she considered changing her name, thinking it might help her career. But she said this would take away from the feeling of true success. He said it was letting Hitler win.
She has since dealt with antisemitism in her career, from being included in a non-specific “ethnicity” category early in her career, to not getting a job because they already had a Jewish actor – and casting two Jews in one. Jews were also considered numerous.
A few years ago, Edelstein posted an old photo of himself with his mother and two siblings on Instagram for his mother’s birthday, and it happened in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He received death threats in the public comments, which he removed from the post.
“And until recently, portraying just a yarmulke seems like a radical move, never mind portraying the El Al logo or even just Jewish faces. is daring,” she said.
‘Celebration’ by Lisa Edelstein. (Courtesy of SFA Advisor via JTA)
But she wasn’t afraid to display Jewish-themed art. At first she was very nervous about the whole project.
“Actresses are a breed that people love and they also love to hate, so you never know what the public’s reaction is going to be. But I felt a lot of support within the arts community, at least the community I was in.” I am,” she said.
Edelstein enjoyed drawing as a child and teenager, but did not pursue it after high school. It was not until the pandemic lockdown that she returned seriously to the art form. It started with buying adult coloring books to pass the time, but she didn’t like the images in them and decided to make her own. Her husband, Robert Russell, himself an artist, pushed her to do more, and the images became larger and larger, until she moved from magic marker to watercolor.
Russell always encouraged her to create things — when they first started dating, he asked her to create a portrait about a week into their relationship. Always a fan of using photography as a starting point for her work, she gave him a portrait of herself at the age of four sitting on a beach holding a crab. (She had given him a painting of two doves on their second date.)
“All of a sudden I realized that I was actually allowed to do this stuff, not because it was given to me, but because I always had,” Edelstein said.
She will continue to act, write and direct, but she also wants to continue in her new career. Edelstein has been toying with the idea of adding illustrations to a Passover haggadah that he wrote for his family and updates every year. If he published the Haggadah for public consumption, the illustrations could turn the Seder book into a coloring book for young children.
“I have a lot of energy, so I’m up for whatever,” she said. “And I think it’s important to look at all of these things as one. They’re different ways that my body expels thoughts. Each one feeds off the other.
