![Life cycles 1 spectorheavenlr](https://www.theartblog.org/wp-content/uploaded/spectorheavenlr.jpg)
Spector’s vision of heaven, not to be missed, is in the upstairs gallery, where a small army of superhero ancestors come to the perpetual rescue, circling on three mechanized carousels to sprightly klezmer music.
![Life cycles 2 spectorheavendetlr](https://www.theartblog.org/wp-content/uploaded/spectorheavendetlr.jpg)
Equally surprising are the chunky little clouds beneath the dear-departed souls, separating heaven from the floor below, where we on earth get to remember the dead.
Down below stands an assemblage minyan (10 Jews–the minimum number needed for prayer). They are bottom-heavy, earthbound figures made of stacked rings of wood that hold in their glass torsos talismans of memory and spirit–Jewish nkisi-totems. The simple fabrication succeeds in evoking male and female, the dirndl skirts harking back to shtetls and folk-shuls all at once. (I have to put a vote in here for the shoes on all the figures, large and small, upstairs and downstairs. They are ur-shoes of some prior generation and I love them especially) (right, the minyan).
The figures face toward the rising sun in the east, which is both traditional and hopeful. The painted sun is labeled “East,” and this sweet literalness is part of what makes this installation feel so childlike and so directly connected to its wellsprings of feeling.
One of the things I especially liked here is that every visitor, just by arriving, interacts with the installation. When someone walks into the space, the little congregation of praying figures swells both in height and number and spiritual strength.
Visitors also get two chances to add their own loved-and-departed heroes and heroines to the installation. They can memorialize someone now gone by writing the name on a leaf to add to the lollipop trees on the wall, or they can drop a memorial memento in the one open glass jar in the minyan group. While the trees of life and the leaves are literal, taken straight from Jewish memorial observance and tradition, the glass jar is personal and adds an African touch as well as a time-capsule optimism that matches the superheroes on the floor above.
The memorial portrait of Rebecca Westcott (our appreciation/obituary of Westcott can be found here ), is a wall of framed clouds against blue skies, with a flower still asserting its presence in the world. It borrows from Westcott’s own imagery and dominates the nearby 16-foot totem pole of men and women standing on eachother’s shoulders, which becomes a timeline in space(left, “A Flower in the Clouds” detail).
Spector, whose Spector Gallery showed Westcott’s work, makes a powerful statement for a broad definition of family.
In some ways Spector’s installation is so simple. In other ways it’s pure magic.
Also at the Bride…
![Life cycles 5 jacobsbluesky](https://www.theartblog.org/wp-content/uploaded/jacobsbluesky.jpg)
I especially enjoyed the paintings by Hedwige Jacobs, whose paintings of an overcrowded world with people coming and going serve as reminders that art can pack a complex message with economy of means. Jacobs’ work also talks to Spector’s in the main galleries, with its concerns about life and death (right, “Blue Sky,” acrylic and pencil on panel).
![Life cycles 6 gontarekriver](https://www.theartblog.org/wp-content/uploaded/gontarekriver.jpg)
![Life cycles 7 mcmahonspectoraflowerintheclouds](https://www.theartblog.org/wp-content/uploaded/mcmahonspectoraflowerintheclouds.jpg)
Also encaustic, acrylic and paper work from Libby Saylor (hey, that’s my name, not hers), includes what I took as a salute to Bonnard, the nude replaced by her fashion statement (left, “Bathtub”).