In this episode, I speak with filmmaker and journalist Toby Perl Freilich about why some subjects demand the documentary form. Freilich contrasts writing's breadth with film's "shallow medium that packs a punch," arguing that moving images—especially archival footage—can create an unusually immediate kind of understanding.

Our discussion centers on Freilich's feature documentary Maintenance Artist, centered on Mierle Laderman Ukeles—best known as the long-time artist-in-residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation. That movie, along with several others, are featured as part of the Portland Jewish Film Festival later this month.

We explore the subject of the film and her radical insistence that "maintenance labor" is both essential and worthy of dignity. Freilich and I also discuss Ukeles's institutional critiques (including her famous "mummy/vitrine" intervention at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art), her reframing of "invisible" work, and the film's Jewish ethical undercurrent (tzelem Elohim and a values-based Jewish imagination rather than "ritual-object" Judaism). Finally, my guest offers a rare window into craft: the years-long fundraising, the editorial architecture shaped with her editor Anne Alvergue, and the deliberate design choices that keep the film visually "clean" while dealing with the aesthetics and politics of waste.

Enjoy my conversation with Toby Perl Freilich.

The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose.

Links

Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: https://artlabpdx.org

Maintanance Artist, film website: https://www.maintenanceartist.com

Portland Jewish Film Festival (at OJMCHE): https://www.ojmche.org/events/portland-jewish-film-festival/sting

Mierle Laderman Ukeles and the Art of Work - at the New Yorker Magazine.

In this second part of my conversation with Dana Lynn Lewis, she reflects on how art can be "political" even when it isn't issuing explicit slogans: in a culture that underfunds artists and treats art as decor, simply insisting that creative work matters is political. We get into the difference between message-forward political art and art that opens a capacious vessel—inviting people to express through their shared humanity without hammering them with ideology.

A centerpiece is Dana's participatory project "Clearing"—hundreds of tiny anonymous envelopes people filled out with whatever they wanted to "clear," sent from around the world, then ritually burned unopened.

We also talk about "witchy" earth-based spirituality: daily contemplative walks, attention to river/trees/wind, and the moment a tree became her realtor (!)

We connect that to creativity, to the feeling of being small in the face of the gorge and the river's deep time, and to the trickster energy of making community in public. Dana Lynn Lewis is truly a one-of-a-kind - enjoy part two of our conversation.

The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose

Links

Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture - www.artlabpdx.org/

Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education - www.ojmche.org/

Dana Lynn Louis: CLEARING" (2014) —www.lclark.edu/live/news/26500-dana-lynn-louis-clearing

My guest this week is Dana Lynn Lewis, a Portland artist whose work is fabulous but does not stay politely inside the gallery by any means. Dana is the founder of Gather:Make:Shelter, a long running collaborative project that brings professional artists together with people experiencing houselessness and poverty making work side by side, sharing meals.

Paying participants for their time and then bringing those stories and objects into public view in a way that refuses the kind of usual us and them bifurcation that so many cities dealing with homelessness confront. She really breaks that down with her incredibly beautiful work approach.

In this conversation, we go back to the moment that this work really ignited Dana's time in Senegal during the 2016 election. She discusses the kinda strange clarity that came from being far away looking in on the United States, people around her with every reason to be cynical, insisting that something important was happening and something good would come out of this.

And she embraced that idea. She talks about her return to Portland in a very important human moment under the steel bridge that became the seed of an idea. It quickly became gather, make shelter through the beautiful work that she does. We also talk about connection and the central role that plays in her life and work.

We venture into her background and her Jewish upbringing and the role that Jewish summer camp played in her work, and we also talk about the idea that there's Dana, the artist, and Dana, the activist. For her, it's all emergent out of this sense of connection. Finally, we do talk about her beautiful, beautiful, multimedia artistic work, and there are links for you to encounter her work up online, including the link to Gather:Make:Shelter.

This is a two-parter because we had so much to talk about. The second part of the conversation will be out next week. Enjoy my conversation with the one and only Dana Lynn Lewis

The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose.

Links:

Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: www.artlabpdx.org

Gather:Make:Shelter www.gathermakeshelter.org/

Dana Lynn Louis: www.danalynnlouis.com/

Russo Lee Gallery: www.russoleegallery.com/exhibitions