Inspiration
May 17th, 2013
Last Sunday I participated in an event that was totally against character for me. I spoke in public, telling a fairly personal story about my life. The event was called Herstory and it involved a bunch of women entrepreneurs speaking about a part of their lives in a ‘I used to… and now I….’ format. I agreed to do it because I was afraid to. One of the reasons I like my job is the oodles of alone time I get to spend. To say I’m an introvert is, well totally true. Speaking in public is not necessarily something I fear intensely, but certainly not something on my life list. I would simply prefer not to in general. Marianne, who runs the program, asked me to participate right after my birthday and I had been thinking about pushing outside of my comfort zone right then. So she caught me at exactly the right time and I agreed to do it.
I have to say there was a lot of support getting to the podium. Marianne arranged a bunch of phone and in person meetings where all the participants could hash out ideas and get them in order. It started with making long lists of ‘I used to and now I’s and them whittled from there. About a dozen women participated and we all told each other our stories. It was kind of amazing what started to come up. I started the project thinking I didn’t have much to tell. I’ve had the odd adventure or two, but between feeling like there was an awful lot I wanted to keep private and feeling like maybe if I did not have a triumphal message to relate, I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell.
After a bit of meandering I realized that the story I wanted to tell WAS about meandering! I have had a lot of different jobs throughout my career and lived in a lot of places. After landing in a place where I could no longer hop away when the going got tough, I finally had to face some demons. And while the odd demon pops up on a pretty regular basis, I can honestly say I am at least in place where I am ready to face it down rather than pack my bags and find another new beginning.
So that was the story I told, in a nutshell. I practiced a lot to feel comfortable speaking in front of an audience. I have to admit I was a bit nervous as my turn approached, but when I got up there, I felt alright. Not awesome, but good enough. There’s that line from the Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall- I’ll know my song well before I start singing. I was thinking of that, to a less epic extent.
I wasn’t surprised I got through it ok, but what surprised me was how many women came up to me afterwards and told me that their stories were very similar and they could totally relate. That was super cool, finding out how not alone I am in this.
May 2nd, 2013
I have been thinking about control and letting go and the flow between the two. This week I am working on a new ketubah design and the process can be a dance between reigning in and releasing. It reminds me of something I struggled with recently.
Years ago I watched Martha Stewart decorate a Barbie birthday cake on her show. She had a little girl there to help her and they each had their own cakes to decorate. I watched Martha hover and micromanage the child as she exuberantly threw handfuls of sprinkles on her cake, ignoring the tasteful restraint Martha was trying to impose. Let me just say, I laughed.
And let me just say also, that that laugh came back to bite me in the butt.
Mena had her 5th birthday party a week or so ago- flower theme, flower cake requested. I almost bought a shaped cake pan but decided I didn’t want to own it after the event, so I used Illustrator to figure out the pattern I needed to turn a 9″ cake into 5 petals. Email me if you want the pattern. I used this canned colored frosting that I swear glows in the dark. Mena of course was so excited but the frosting part proved to be too tedious for her. I gave her the sprinkles and thought I’d let her go to town.
What emerged from some dark place in my psyche was the ghost of Martha Stewart.
I had to bite my tongue and sit on my hands as I watched my delighted 5 year old throw caution to the wind and toss handfuls of the stuff willy-nilly over the surface of my beautifully frosted cake. I know. This is crazy. It’s her cake and it’s being presented to a bunch of sugar-crazed five year olds. Still I had to admit the control freak I had laughed at was rising in me. Ouch. Hello deep dark truthful mirror- where’ve you been?
Flower Birthday cake
April 29th, 2013
Sometimes it’s the littlest things. Even though I keep up a pretty good practice of drawing and painting as a ketubah artist, I never feel like I have given my craft its due focus. Of course, in my pre-mom life I could stay up ’til all hours and sleep waaay in if I so desired (and I often did so desire), nowadays I have a fairly rigorous non-creative schedule to keep to. Between preschool drop off and pick up and household-y errands, I have a few hours to get ketubah biz done and that might be the work day until tomorrow. Creativity can often get lost in the day to day-ness of life and before you know it the thing you love, the thing that brings you such joy is withering on the vine.
Around the new year (I know, that’s a long time ago) I vowed to get back to drawing for reals. Though there was nothing stopping me from leaving my cozy house in the evening and getting to a class, I simply did not go. I continued to announce my intention of going each week and then would faithfully not go each week. At least I was consistent in my failure.
Until finally I did go. I made a date with a girlfriend (and granted the first attempt ended up with us getting cocktails around the corner, but eventually we did get our butts there) and I got the old tools out of the shed and started drawing again. For real.
I can go on and on and quite rhapsodically about the rhythms of the hand and the eye and the constant inner mantra of ‘is it true?, is it true?’ that happens when you get in the zone. It roots me in the world like nothing else and why the heck has it taken me so long to get back home?
lady drawing- by rachel deitsch
April 19th, 2013
This week has been busy. Had my bff Jeri in town. We ran all over the place. Then it was Mena’s 5th birthday party involved her entire class- mostly girls. [There was a bouncy castle, pink of course, a flower shaped cake, shrinky dink necklaces (flower shaped as well) and a pinata. 25 kids.] And this weekend we go camping as a family for the first time ever.
But I wanted to share this at least. I was at the post office, loading up on stamps for thank you cards, and I bought a few sheets of these-
USPS Modern Art postage stamps
Gorgeous, right? I bought some to use and a sheet to save. I am not a stamp collector per se, but really lovely ones feel like tiny pieces of art and I do tend to hoard them. Acquiring these reminded me of a bit of long ago history of my own career. Believe it or not, I too have designed postage stamp art. I dug them up and present them to you forthwith:
I did these back in 1996, the year of the Jerusalem 3000 anniversary celebration. It was a few years before I moved there (that was 2000 and I stayed 2 years) but I’d lived there and visited before and knew the city pretty well. I loved the building all piled one on top of the other into the hillsides of the city, the ancient stone gates, the intense colors the light there engenders. I haven’t specifically depicted Jerusalem in any of my ketubah work yet- some private commissions I think had some of this imagery- but I am looking at this work and thinking… Might be time to revisit this?
Postage Stamp Art by Rachel Deitsch, circa 1996
- Postage Stamps of Jerusalem Scenes by Rachel Deitsch circa 1996
- Collector’s Stamp of Jerusalam 300 Celebration, 1996. Artwork by ketubah artist Rachel Deitsch
April 12th, 2013
Cecil and Rachel- immortalized in wire
One day, when we know each other much better and I am perhaps a little drunk, I will show you my own ketubah. It’s a total shoemaker’s kids going barefoot situation. It’s what happens when you are up too many nights in a row preparing in a panic for your wedding that you are planning yourself. When you’ve lost the original sketch for the design and go way off the deep end with tendrils and details. When you just have zero perspective. Five years later it’s still too soon.
But this is a story I like- how Cecil and I met:
It was a dark and foggy night- no, seriously it was. I was at my studio late and realized I had better get some food now or else that was it for the night. The complex has a bar/restaurant that stops serving at 9 so out across the parking lot I went. Lit by the street lamp, someone approached from the opposite end of the parking lot. I noted the long legs and the loping stride. I might even have said hmm to myself. At the bar we both ordered and started chatting. The Brewery, where I worked, is like a small village. It’s very intimate and generally pretty friendly. Our initial conversation was not particularly memorable except we were both grinning like fools. It was two days before Thanksgiving and I was experimenting with the traditional meal. I was hosting an open house/buffet with a friend instead of sitting down to eat. (it was a nice party, but I never repeated it). I invited this handsome stranger to stop by if he was in the neighborhood and gave him my number and address.
I didn’t really expect him to show up, but he did. And he closed the party down. He told me later that as soon as he walked into my place he felt like he lived there and should be playing the role of host. It flipped him out so much he hunkered in a corner for a bit. I remember walking through a room and him reaching out and pulling me onto his lap. There was so much familiarity already I stayed.
Two days later he sent me an email describing a dream he’d had. He was doing a graphic design layout on an invitation and it was our two names- Deitsch and Schmidt. Neither of us noticed it before, but in him dream he realized that the last three letters of my name are the first three of his- Deitschmidt! Now, aside from the cool coincidence, that was quite a risk, telling a dream after a first date that was essentially a prediction of our wedding invitation. That pretty much broke all the rules of cool detachment in protecting your tender underbelly in early relationship wisdom. It was so open and charming, I was a goner right then and there.
And of course that was our wedding invitation.
April 10th, 2013
I get asked on a pretty regular basis if I do same sex ketubahs. The answer is- of course, with pleasure! I have been making them since I hung my shingle, over 10 years ago. It’s about love and commitment and families and for me that’s enough. I honestly don’t see the argument that someone else’s marriage could affect my marriage in any way. Howcould adding to the sum total of happiness in the world damage us?
E. E. Cummings (1894 – 1962)
Humanity I Love You
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
April 1st, 2013
It’s the wee hours back here in Mayberry. We returned yesterday from Miami Beach and still wrapped in cozy memories of all the cousins, sister and grandparent time we’ve had. While I was there I revisited one of my first ketubahs and thought I would share the romantic story of its owners with you.
My sister lives in Miami now after years in Brooklyn. It didn’t occur to me until we were down there that in a way she’s come full circle, living there. H has been married for 17 years to the love of her life, Z. I have always been happy to say I was there at the beginning. It started this way:
In the winter of 1994 I was living in NYC with two of my sisters in an apartment on the west side of Manhattan. H was in college still but didn’t care for her dorm and stayed on our couch so often that she eventually just migrated there permanently. When I noticed one day that all of her things were piled in our living room she casually mentioned that yes, she’d moved in with us. Oh. She was and is lovely company so it just made the place happier and we were glad to have her. That winter was snowy and cold and we’d had enough so we got ourselves a drive-away car- it’s a deal where you drive someone else’s car to where they need it. It was a cheap way to get down to Miami, where our grandparents stayed for the winter and were willing to put us up for a few days. There was the sketchy car owner and his creepy admonishments not to look in the trunk and adventures along the way and we arrived five days later tired, not terribly clean and looking for some fun. My grandmother insisted on covering the bed with a towel before allowing us to nap on it, we were so gross. The one sister who drove with us got right on a plane back to NY, leaving me and H to entertain ourselves. We borrowed our grandfathers car and trolled the strip to look around. We had not gotten too far when H said- I know that guy! It was a cute boy with bright red hair I’d never seen before. It turned out he was the brother of one of her high school friends and coincidentally was there with someone I knew from childhood. Small world! We stopped and chatted and ended up at Wolfies, a Miami Beach institution where Lou and I caught up and talked and H and the boy sat mutely staring at each other. What was wrong with her? I barely noticed, even when we continued with the boys to the beach and the two of them lagged behind. It wasn’t until we were back home in NY that it finally dawned on me that this boy was special and something had happened that night. They were instantly a couple and H was crazy in love (still is).
H is the 4th sister of our 5 but was the first to marry and about a year after that night she did. Both families are enormous and the wedding was packed with relatives. It was a huge and delirious and exciting event and we partied to the wee hours. I had just begun to play with creating ketubahs and I put special care into making hers. The design references the old city of Jerusalem, where both had spent time, and is hand painted and meticulously detailed. What I like about it and why it’s so resonant with me even after all these years is that it has a very loose, lively bright painting as a base and then has an intricate, highly detailed overlying structure. I wish I could say I intended that metaphor all along, but that wouldn’t be true.
This week as I looked at the framed ketubah on the living room wall of her beautiful home in Miami, it occurred to me that it’s a true reflection of her life as she’s built it in the years since I painted it. Energetic, bright and colorful, with a structure and pulls it all together beautifully. She’s my little sister but in so many ways has been a mentor and model for me my whole adult life.
my sister’s ketubah
March 15th, 2013
This morning there was a bit of fog still settled over the valley as I climbed up the path and these amazing little blue flowers are all over the hillside, the petals already dropping on the ground to create a speckled carpet. Pretty sweet. I thought about flowers and growth and spring pretty much for the entire hour today. I thought about the trees that have been my companions through the chilly winter mornings. I thought about why so many weddings occur in the spring and how many ketubahs feature flowers and trees. I thought about the difference between flowers and trees and what I think about when I paint them or use them in a ketubah design or artwork. I love the dialogue between the two. I paint flowers and trees in ketubahs to speak to those feelings at the moment you begin your lives together. The fleeting, breathtaking beauty and the reassuring solidity flow back and forth, as necessary.
Detail from Jewels ketubah
detail from Idyll ketubah
March 12th, 2013
We leave to Miami in t-minus two weeks to spend Passover with my family. My sister moved there from Brooklyn about a year ago and suddenly the majority of the Deitsch sisters do not live in NY. It’s so strange to me. Even though I have been living away from the northeast for over a decade, and despite the fact that by next year only one of us will remain in the NY area, in my mind my sisters and I are inextricably identified with New York. I grew up in CT, but followed my older sister to NYC for college (she was at Barnard and I went to Parsons) and then each successive sister followed in their turn. There were a few glorious years when we were all five of us living in NY and at the time that was all I needed. Being a Deitsch sister was my primary identity and it suited me fine. There was something terribly self-contained about that particular time. New York was a wonderful place to be young and single and relatively un-rich. It seemed that fun or weird or interesting things happened just by walking out the door. There was always a play in some cheap basement theatre, an opening where they were maybe serving wine, a concert in the park. Having my sisters around meant that I always had a cohort and it would be someone I could always laugh with, someone who would understand me so thoroughly that I would barely have to finish a sentence. For a time it was all we needed, then of course life changes as it always does. Hindi (fourth sister) got married first, had her first golden child. We became aunties and began to think about our lives differently and for me it manifested in a restlessness that took me away from NY to Jerusalem then Tel Aviv then Arizona then San Francisco then Los Angeles and finally to Pasadena, the Mayberry of the West and my own love and golden child.
There is still a part of me that considers myself a New Yorker, but I identify less and less with a point on the globe and more and more with the map in my heart which tell me home is where the people I love are and that is a wide area indeed.
Sisters in Miami about 1972- best guess. I am second from the top.
November 20th, 2012
This just hopped into my inbox, from my good buddy Jessica Rust of Rust Designs. So cute! The bunny was drawn by yours truly a while back and it’s so fun to see what she’s done with it. Jessica and I go way back to our single NYC days. Now that I think of it, this is the third city we’ve lived in together! First NY, the SF and now LA (on totally opposite sides of this giant ‘city’). We’ve gone from freewheeling single to working moms as well, so movement all across the board. I’ve always been a big fan of Jessica’s work and it’s always fun to collaborate with her.
Please check out her site and her new holiday products. Tell her I sent you!
Drawing of bunny by Rachel Deitsch!
