Helene Aylon

Helene Aylon is the author of Whatever is Contained Must be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist. You can find this captivating memoir at http://www.feministpress.org/books/helene-aylon/whatever-contained-must-be-released

It can also be ordered through Amazon. Aylon will be reading from this memoir in November in SF(TBA) but check her website for information.

THE EARTH AMBULANCE:

The Earth Ambulance has found a permanent home in the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY. The Earth Ambulance installation recalls the 1982 cross-country voyage to military sites that originated in Berkeley to “rescue” the earth in women’s pillowcases. These pillowcases were shown in long knotted lines on the facade of the Berkeley Museum in 1995, and now have been acquired for the permanent installation surrounding the Ambulance. Other pillowcases later exchanged with survivors of the A bomb in Japan and with women in the Soviet Union and at the Seneca Women’s Encampment at that army depot, were also knotted in long lines in 2006, covering the American University Museum in Washington DC.

Now my desire is to show the sequel – a multi-media installation, “Current: two sacs en route” – the 1985 river voyage of 2 sacs filled with seeds adrift on the waters of Japan, enroute to Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. A two minute meditation (taken from video of this installation) was screened at Sony Jumbotron, Times Sq., NY, hourly on August 6 and August 9, 1995, Hiroshima and Nagasaki days in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of these tragedies.

A permanent installation on the West coast is The Digital Liberation of G-d, a collaboration with Peter Samis, curator of educational technologies of the SF MoMA. It can be seen day and evening at the SF Jewish Community Center. It addresses homophobia, misogyny, speciesism and militarism in biblical texts. (See Art in America Oct. 1999, pp 142-147.)