With thanks to Sarah Horowitz for the generous permission to explore her imagery. Sarah’s incredible work can be found at sarahhorowitzartist.com.
I first encountered the Letter Angel in 2006 at an exhibit of prints, new images to accompany Yiddish poems. I was immediately struck by the image of the girl navigating her way through the aleph-beys. There was a postcard-sized flyer for the showing, bearing the print of the Letter Angel; I have carried that print with me since. As it passes from journal to journal, its significance has grown for me. Maybe because of the somewhat wild dark hair of the girl, I grew to see her as a reflection of myself, of my own journey into Yiddish culture.
In 2008 the artist, Sarah Horowitz, graciously permitted me to explore the character in my own practice. I began by making her coat of many letters. The Letter Angel still feels like a metaphor waiting to come into her own. To date, my work on this project has been primarily focused on photography and video. The project was also explored through image, text, and music in Trace.
Artist and curator Yevgeniy Fiks included this work in his 2020 article "Is There a New Yiddish Contemporary Visual Art?"
