Interview with Shaira SD Holman for On The Record: The BC Jewish Queer & Trans Oral History Project in collaboration with JQT Vancouver. Interviewed by Carmel Tanaka via remote Zoom video call. SD identifies themself overall as queer, but also as a butch dyke and genderqueer. SD talks about being raised as a secular and cultural Jew. SD talks about growing up in LA to a single parent and eventually moving to Rock Creek, BC becoming a cowboy on the countryside. SD shares about being ‘out’ as queer in high school and eventually going to Emily Carr for arts upon moving to Vancouver. SD talks about not feeling at home in Vancouver’s Jewish community as compared with the working class Jews in LA or their Jewish leatherdyke community in San Francisco. SD talks about their late wife Catherine, and how they were each others’ sanctuary where Catherine was encouraging to their arts endeavors. SD talks about the Pride in Arts Society, and creating the Queer Arts Festival. SD also talks about opening the SUM Gallery as a place for queer artists to be themselves and kickstarting queer recognition in Vancouver's arts scene. SD closes by giving the advice that life is not a sprint, but a marathon; to keep learning, and remember the history that comes before you.
Interview with Nancy Rosenblum for On The Record: The BC Jewish Queer & Trans Oral History Project in collaboration with JQT Vancouver. Interviewed by Carmel Tanaka via remote Zoom video call. Nancy (she/her) is Jewish lesbian born in Los Angeles, California and currently residing in Nelson, BC. Nancy reflects on her parents’ lives in LA and her family’s origins in the Eastern Europe. She talks about her family’s entrepreneurship in the American fashion industry. Nancy talks about finding family in the Jewish lesbian community and how she realized she was a lesbian in her early 20s. Nancy talks about discovering filmmaking in high school and eventually going to California Institute of Arts for photography and filmmaking. She talks about two prominent art shows she did: one in protest of mainstream media’s normalized portrayal of violence against women; and one photographing the lesbian community of 1980s LA. Nancy talks about her partner of 36 years who is also a professional photographer and how they ended up in Nelson, BC. Nancy compares her experience being a Jewish lesbian in LA to Nelson. Nancy talks about the changing acceptance and assimilation of the lesbian identity, where the trans community experiences the most backlash today.
Oral history interview with Anne & Jack Black who were born in Toronto and Winnipeg respectively. Jack was an electrician and later worked in a number of local Vancouver businesses. Anne was involved in numerous organizations, she was the chairman of the Kinsmen Club; Heart Foundation; Diabetic Association and Young Judea.
Oral Interview with Jeannie Kamins for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Bill Gruenthal. Jean was born in San Francisco, California. She offers an extensive history of her family’s roots in Europe and early American settlement, and shares about her marriages, children both biological and fostered. Jean stayed in California until she was 28, before she moved to Canada in protest of the Vietnam War. She talks about how she has always been entrenched in politics and public demonstration for causes such as Women's Rights, Black Rights and against conflicts in North America and abroad. Reflecting on her time as an arts student, Jean decided to make her art her permanent way of protest. Jean talks about doing political commentary in public murals, having her art used in event posters and sending a message through an expressive style. Jean shares her recent interest in erotic art, and how some of her previous art has been too risque for some gallery shows. Jean also talks about her volunteerism with the 411 Seniors Centre as well as food banks, as she says she doesn’t do art as much as she did before. Jean describes her most recent project which is a collaborative erotic calendar she is working on, alongside grant writing to raise funds for arts in the Seniors Centre where she volunteers.
Oral History Interview with Ronald (Ron) Appleton, accompanied by his wife Brenda Appleton for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Carol Herbert. Ron Appleton was born in Vancouver and describes his youth working with his father who was an auctioneer and arts dealer. This experience introduced him to Inuit art which became the focus of his life’s work showing and selling works of Indigenous artists in his family-owned and operated galleries. Ron and Brenda describe the relationships they formed with Indigenous artists but also many art collectors, especially Jewish diaspora, around the world. Ron shares anecdotes related to prominent Canadian artists, as well as unique art pieces he’s seen across the decades in the business.
Oral History Interview with Sima Elizabeth Shefrin for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Brynn Gillies. Shefrin was born in Ottawa in 1949. . She is married to Bob Bossin, a Canadian folk musician, and they live together on Gabriola Island. She spent her youth part-time in Italy, surrounded by family fabric-workers and tailors. She describes how this informed her enthusiasm for fabric as a medium, and how she aims to convey stories through sewn projects. The name of Shefrin’s studio as well as her website is Stitching for Social Change, which she explains how she does fabric arts while integrating folk art tradition with activism, including feminism, anti-war sentiments, and reclamation of her Jewish heritage. Most notably, Shefrin tells the story of the Middle East Peace Quilt which aimed to discuss what peace would look like between Israel and Palestine with participants sending her quilt squares with their visions of peace from around the world. Shefrin also shares her exploration of comic and illustrative arts working on Jewish themed children's books and comics about her own life, including her husband's cancer diagnosis and life over the Covid pandemic.
Oral Interview with Marcia Pitch for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Carol Herbert. Marcia discusses her upbringing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and her parents and grandparents’ origins in Eastern Europe and immigration to Canada. Marcia mentions influences that led her to the arts, including education at the University of Manitoba and doing graduate work in California. In 1969, Marcia experienced the police suppression in response to the People’s Park Revolution in Berkeley. Soon after she returned to Vancouver where she studied education at UBC and volunteered with Amnesty International. She pursued an art style that reflected her strong feelings about politics, war, and the influences of her grandparents’ stories of Eastern European pogroms. Marcia's art includes mixed media collages and sculptures, and producing large scale installations for her gallery exhibitions. Marcia speaks about her upcoming project focusing on sexuality, women’s repression and feminism. She further explains her perspective as an older woman in the art world and the differing responses she has received regarding her art online vs. in person. Marcia relates experiences such as having children, volunteering, and being a part of the recycling community to how they’ve inspired her pieces or participation in the arts community.
Oral Interview with Joyce Ozier for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Carol Herbert. She speaks about her upbringing in the Jewish community of Boston, MA and provides a brief summary of her immediate family. She talks about her education, including her early artistic influences, and anecdotes relating to producing art and experiences as a child and teen. Joyce talks about how her arts career truly started in the experimental theatre/performance art scene in 1970 Vancouver. She talks about how this led her into arts administration in dance companies, and later teaching English as a second language into her fifties. Joyce explains how ESL teaching didn’t bring her the same happiness as the arts, and how her son convinced her to try store window dressing, which she eventually turned into a business for 10 years. She tells of how she transitioned to a full time visual artist, and how her art style is based in abstraction, movement and thematic use of colour. She also describes a prominent collection of work about the Holocaust that she is most proud of. She talks about how she continues to paint, and is also a part of a collective that she created for artists aged 65 and above called the B-Older Gallery.
Oral Interview with Miriam Aroeste for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Daniella Givon. Miriam was born in Mexico City in 1961 and she explains how her family ended up in Mexico from Poland prior to WWII. She discusses her immediate family, and how her and her husband resettled in Vancouver in 1990. Miriam talks about her career in the film industry and how she transitioned to visual arts with inspiration from her father and the need to balance her career with parenthood. She speaks about having little interest in arts, besides dance, growing up, but that changed when she lived in Europe for almost a decade during her 20s. Miriam describes her art style as more abstract than figurative and discusses her love of bright colours and the necessity of knowing what you want from an art career. She talks about curating art for Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics, selling her work, and the kinds of commissions she enjoys. Lastly Miriam discusses her time in art galleries as an artist, curator and art consultant and what she had learned about art collectors and art institutions along the way.
Oral Interview with Susy Naylor for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Helen Aqua. Susy was born in Brooklyn in 1943 and talks about her family history in the city and abroad, as well as her immigration to Canada as an adult. She talks about her education including two nursing degrees which led her to teach nursing upon moving to Winnipeg. Wanting to transition to counselling, Susy moved to Coquitlam and commuted to school in Washington which eventually enabled her to open a private practice. Susy describes her challenges doing art from home as a middle-aged mother and how her outlook on her artistic ability changed as she did more workshops and gained mentorship, albeit still experiencing impostor syndrome. Susy discusses how her paintings don’t truly have stories, but are ambiguous and she loves to hear the interpretations of the viewers. Susy also discusses how participating in a Leonard Cohen themed art show made her realize her difficulties visualizing imagery in her head when she had an idea, helping to clarify her artistic process. She talks about her involvement in galleries and art crawls, and teaching classes to others who question if they can be an artist.
