Nearly thirteen million can tabs have been transformed
into twenty thousand "feather-like" elements by over sixty
thousand participants, to serve as a kind of raw material, or
"clay", that Schrier configures into massive, sculptural
works. Schrier then adapts the works to respond to the characteristics
of exhibition venues. These image present a reverse chronology of the
transformation of the can tab elements into his assemblage works.
"Unfinished Flight", the most recent in the series, references
lives destroyed by atrocities perpetrated through continuing acts of
inhumanity.
Schrier,
museum assistants and interns developing the 2013-2014 HVCCA
installation
Jeffrey
Schrier making adjustments to UNFINISHED FLIGHT at the
Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art
Senasqua Lodge, Croton Point Park
Croton on Hudson NY, Spring, 2013
UNFINISHED FLIGHT
#1: Prototype for first upright, elevated project installation. Documented in the artist's studio, and developed in response to the 70th Anniversary of
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 19 - May 16, 1943, the seminal act of Jewish resistance against the Nazi action to liquidate the ghetto.
Over a four day period,
nearly 400 participants assisted in the on-site assembly
of the five ton aluminum
butterfly in the Sculpture Garden of the Katonah
Museum of Art.
Under Schrier’s direction, Museum docents, staff and volunteers
sensitively guided students
in placing waves of tab feathers, spreading WINGS of
WITNESS into a masterful form.
The combined energy of hundreds of on-site helpers provided a
metamorphosis
that was fluid and uplifting, touching many who participated,
deeply.
The forms, tones and textures of the asymmetrical masonry walls,
ascending pines and
gravel bed, provided a contemplative setting of tranquility
for the restive work.
The cage-like braided wire figure woven with strands of soda tabs into
the
center of the wings, served as a catalyst for visitor response and inquiry.
On May 5, Yom HaShoah, the Museum and the Westchester Holocaust Education
Center, staged a program involving Sel Hubert saved as a child through the
Kindertransport, museum staff, teachers, student speakers and Mr.
Schrier.
Eva Kor, survivor of Mengele, who was a source of inspiration for the
original soda tab collection, arrived from Terre Haute Indiana, and provided
moving remarks at the close of the program:
"In 1997 I received a phone call from Jeffrey
Schrier telling me that he had the pop tabs and that he was going to create this
sculpture called WINGS OF WITNESS. (As you can see from the WINGS
spread before us), we have come a long way from those days. As I stand here and
look at the glistening WINGS OF WITNESS outside, I must tell you about
RIPPLES. When I lecture to students I talk about preventing
hatred and prejudice, realizing that it is a difficult problem to solve, that
even I, Eva Mozes Kor, survivor of hatred and prejudice, I am prejudiced, and I
have to work at it. To help us all deal with it, I will take you all on an
imaginary trip. We are all going to carry a rock in our hands, stand on an
imaginary bridge overlooking a very quiet, imaginary, lake. I throw in my rock,
We see a ripple. All of you throw in your rocks, we will see ripple touching
ripple.
If we realize that everything we do in our lives is
like a ripple in the lake, it touches the lives of many people. So all I
have to think about is to treat my fellow human beings with fairness
and respect, and judge them on their actions and content of their character, and
we are making a difference in the world. That is a lot easier for me and for all of you to deal
with. The pop tabs collected in a small school in Illinois, many years ago,
touched the lives of many people, and continue to touch the lives of people just
like a ripple in the lake."
Spread in rippling layers of soda can tabs, WINGS of WITNESS remained on
view through June 26, coordinated with an exhibition in an interior gallery,
tracing the evolution of the project over its eight year development, through
photography, works of art, and participant responses.
It is estimated that more than 10,000 students will
still be needed to complete the transformation of the remaining tabs to
feathers, thus enlarging the Butterfly until
complete.
Aerial Photos: Courtesy, Holocaust
Memorial Center of Nassau County County
Formally the Pratt estate, the Memorial Center is located in the Welwyn
Preserve, 206 acres of parkland and hiking trails along Long Island's North
Shore.
The observance marked the dedication of the "Children's Memorial
Garden," reconstructed in memory of the one and a half million Jewish
Children, and all children destroyed by the Nazi regime in W. W. II.
Aerial Photos: Courtesy, Holocaust
Memorial Center of Nassau County County
The restored gardens have been planted with flowers and shrubs that attract
butterflies, a reference to the Pavel Friedmann poem, "The Butterfly,"
which also served as inspiration in artist Jeffrey Schrier's development of the
WINGS of WITNESS project.
Aerial Photos: Courtesy, Holocaust
Memorial Center of Nassau County County
Under the direction of Schrier, assisted by Yonatan Koch, volunteers
carefully placed feathers into the developing mass, until the form emerged: a
four ton butterfly of aluminum wings, resembling the rippling waves along the
nearby Long Island Sound Shore.
Photo: Daniel Theodore
At the Nassau County site, the Wings At Welwyn butterfly
contained more than six million soda can tabs, laid out in over 10,000
feather structures by nearly 600 dedicated volunteers, mostly students, to
form the sculpture in progress.
Photo: Daniel Theodore
Volunteers from the Lycee Francais de NY, Manhattan, Gorton High School,
Yonkers, NY, Nassau County's Grand Avenue, Jericho, and Roslyn Middle
Schools, Harbour Hill and East Hills Schools, were bussed to the site and joined by many
other volunteers.
Photo: Daniel Theodore
In the months preceding the installation, several thousand area youth made
feathers that were unpacked an added into those already constructed by over
30,000 participants across the country.
Photo: Daniel Theodore
As Jeffrey made final adjustments to the sea of tabs, a brilliant red tab demanded
his attention. Its startling presence evoked the recollection of a letter sent
to Kevin Daugherty, Mahomet Illinois teacher, who with his students, amassed the
tab collection project 6 years earlier. The tab contributor wrote: “I
have enclosed 2,038 tabs. I thought it interesting that I came across only one
red tab. It reminded me of the beautiful little girl in the red coat, which
was the only spot of color in the brilliant black and white film, “Schindler's
List.”
On Memorial Day 2001, approximately 10,000 soda tab feathers made for
WINGS OF WITNESS by 22,000 participants across the country during four years,
were shipped to Loudoun County Virginia. During it's presentation there, nearly
two thousand students, community members, church and synagogue
congregants, joined to build additional feathers for the memorial
sculpture. Many dedicated volunteers helped assemble the massive
work-in-progress in a meadow at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg Va.
Photo: Linda
Holtslander, Loudoun County
Public Library
At the opening day program, Leesburg resident Liane Sowa told of her memories
etched in fear, as a seven year old Jewish child in Stuttgart, November 8-9,
1938, Krystallnacht. The glass of a restaurant she was in shattered before
her, with the future. Rocks and stones thrown by Nazi gangs signaled the massive
pogrom, a government supported wave of terror and destruction that became the Holocaust.
Leesburg Mayor B.J. Webb spoke, "This marvelous sculpture,
WINGS OF WITNESS...represents those whose lives were lost during the
Holocaust...How can we honor those who lost their lives and suffered at the
hands of the Nazis today? By striving to accept one another and to reach out to
those in need not after their country and community has been scarred by war, but
before - when the first words of intolerance are uttered - we ask that the
intolerant words be stopped. If we can learn to stop the intolerant words
perhaps we can stop the intolerant behavior." The
Speakers Bureau of The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC,
provided Nesse Godin as the keynote speaker to commemorate the
installation. With eloquence and deep emotion, Nesse related her struggles
surviving a ghetto in Lithuania and the Stuffhof Concentration Camp.
Photo: Sarah
Huntington, Loundon County Public Library
Nesse held up a photo of her in tact family, taken prior to the Nazi
destruction. She vividly recalled the voices of the imprisoned women around her
who did not survive, " If you live, don't let us be forgotten."
The massive 100 foot butterfly of nearly six million tabs representing destroyed
innocent lives, glistened in the Leesburg meadow through June 13. Work on the
sculpture will continue until all 11 million tabs are included.
Aerial Photo, courtesy Loudoun County
Library
The Virginia programs were coordinated by the Loudoun County Public
Library through The Irwin Uran Gift Fund, provided to the Library System for
programs that educate about the Holocaust. The Irwin Uran Gift Fund was created
through the generosity of Mr. Irwin Uran, who was a liberator of the Dachau
Concentration Camp at the end of WWII. Library staff and community
volunteers dedicated unending energy and resources, to insure the success of the
program and installation.
During the week of the exhibition opening at HMH,
Schrier worked with nearly 2000 participants consisting of museum
staff, community members and school groups. Subsequently, museum
docents trained by Schrier ran workshops with nearly 3,600 area youth
during exhibition run.
Houston Area Teens Unpack Soda Can Feathers
Photo: Amy Duke
Students Make Feather Tracings and Place Feathers
Placing The Central Cage-Like Figure Onto WINGS
Photos: Amy Duke
Photo: Jesse De Martino for Holocaust Museum Houston
As Wings of Witness grew in proportion to contain nearly six-million of
the 11 million tabs collected, the
Brandeis-Bardin Institute
provided a
mountain slope for the first outdoor presentation of the work, which spanned an
85 X 40 foot area.
"Like an insect emerging from cocoon, the glistening sculpture of a
butterfly has arisen on a Simi Valley hillside, memorializing the 11
million people killed in the Holocaust. Wings of Witness", a sculpture
composed of the pull tabs of 11 million aluminum cans, was assembled this
summer by counselors-in-training, their advisors, and staff at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute."
(Daily News, Saturday, August 5, 2000, by Krystn Shrieve Simi Valley,
California)
Artist Jeffrey Schrier comments on his experience, directing the assembly of
the work at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute:
"This project which embodies such overwhelming
sadness and tragedy about our history, was tempered by the enormous
commitment of the young helpers here. Their commitment
transforms this statement of loss and tragedy, into one of hope. It
has been an extraordinary experience for me, to have the help of
so many, pushing on to insure the assembly of the work, even in the
110 degree desert heat.
Counselors in training, advisors and staff worked
into the late hours at night, creating massive plastic
drop cloths with drawing indications of where the over 8,000
feathers of tabs, would be placed.
In the morning as we ascended the slope, a cool breeze
escalated into a strong westward wind, and as we began to
unfold the drop cloths, the air currents lifted them and opened them
westward with only our minimal effort. Reflecting on the earliest
symbolic use of rocks as a marker memorial to a lost loved one, we
elected to stabilize the butterfly with hundreds of perfectly
smooth melon size rocks delivered to the site by grounds
crew who had so diligently prepared the land earlier.
Photo: Debbie Becker
"I am enormously grateful to the
Brandies-Bardin staff and assisting sculptor Wilfredo Morel for their
tireless help and camaraderie in the complicated and demanding
assembly of the work.
As part of our stint there, the Brandeis-Bardin Institute arranged resdencies
for us at the East LA atelier, " Self Help Graphics." This
experience afforded Wilfredo and I the opportunity of creating
art in settings related to each of our heritage. A selection of the
silk screen prints we produced were donated as a fundraiser.
Self Help Graphics is a Latino grass roots organization originally
developed to supply a route of expression for emerging young artists
of the Chicano community. After the exhilarating experience of
creating a body of work there, we returned to the Brandeis-Bardin
Institute where enormously dedicated helpers remained on the slope
with us, until the winged formation was complete.
Wilfredo and I reassembled the central figure-like
form we had constructed in my summer studio, and set the tightly
braided wire form into the center of the butterfly.
Sculptor Wilfredo Morel assists Schrier in building a
central figure
by wrapping braided aluminum wire around mannequin forms
Photo: Jeanne Nesselroth-Schrier
Photo: Debbie Becker
The human
lifelike form communicating the symbolism of lost life, replaced a
previously insect body shape that had been made from soda can tabs. It
was made by braiding and twisting aluminum wire around female and male
mannequins, removing and then joining the forms from both, so that the
work would be egalitarian in its representation. By
wrapping and twisting the wire to create a life like form that
actually is filled only with empty space, the presence of a figure is
suggested, but in fact the wire itself is not a figure.
It may suggest entrapment, like barbed
wire. It may suggest the absence, or to some, the
presence of a human soul. It suggests life, lost life, or lives not to
be lost again. It is a life like form that reminds us that each of the
tiny tabs represents a loss and also the potential future generations
that may have emanated from that lost life.
Photo: Yoni
Boujo, taken from a helicopter
After its presentation on the desert slope at the
Brandeis-Bardin Institute, the massive butterfly was disassembled and
prepared for its transfer to Holocaust Museum Houston.
Prior to shipping WINGS to California, Croton Point Park provided Senasqua
Lodge to spread out plastic drop cloths to make drawings for feather placement.
In Atlanta, at the
The Bremen, WINGS contained one and a half million tabs,
representing the number of children who were tragically murdered
during the Holocaust. A photo exhibit and Schrier's related works
accompanied the 36 foot butterfly in the main museum gallery.
Through the opening week, which coordinated with Yom HaShoah, hundreds
of area students came to build feathers with Schrier, assisted by the
knowledgeable and skilled museum staff and docents.
In Atlanta the butterfly contained one and a half million
tabs, reflecting,
tragically, the number of Jewish Children murdered by
the Nazis
Photo: Courtesy, William Bremen Jewish
Heritage Museum, Atlanta
The Yeshiva University Museum in Manhattan presented the first full museum exhibition of WINGS. This
included a series of photos documenting the workshops in which students
build "feathers", as well as photos of students assembling the sculpture. Also
shown were youth poems and artwork in response, letters from contributors
of tabs, Schrier's early preparatory work, and other of his Holocaust
related works that predated the WINGS project. Hundreds of area students who had
built feathers at their respective schools, came to both install and disassemble
the WINGS at the Museum.
Students of the Holy Name School, New Rochelle NY help
place feathers into WINGS,
for it's first presentation in the form of a
butterfly
Photo: courtesy Yeshiva University Museum, Manhattan
When one million of the tabs had been transformed into "feathers"
for WINGS, Schrier brought the project to the school that originated the
collection, for it's first exhibition. The students that collected the tabs then
were able to both build feathers, and construct the first exhibit with
Schrier.
Other area schools and organizations participated and supported the project. The
public presentation was during the week that Yom HaShoah was commemorated
(Holocaust Remembrance Day).
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