B.W. COOK -- The Crowd

“The more we run and the farther we get from the center of ourselves,

the higher our level of anxiety becomes. It takes time to be with

ourselves, to know who we are, to understand what we feel and what we

care about. What we must give our energies and time to and what we can

let go of.

“Quiet is the soil, the foundation, the air, the light that lets ideas

flow and allows peace and harmony to enter,” writes painter Mindy Weisel

in her very personal and spiritual book, “Touching Quiet ... Reflections

In Solitude.”

The recently published piece from Capital Books Inc., also features

the artwork of Weisel, a contemporary painter whose art hangs in such

halls as the Smithsonian, the Hirshhorn, the National Museum of Art,

Israel Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, to name only a select few.

Introducing the book and her work to Orange County, Weisel came to

Costa Mesa last week to front a reception held in her honor at the Orange

County Museum of Art Gallery and Store at South Coast Plaza.

“Touching Quiet” is a journal by the artist covering a short but

significant time in her life when she was awarded a fellowship to paint

for one month at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

“I had dreamed for years of having my three daughters independent

enough that I might paint without worrying about the other daily demands

of my life,” shares Weisel, who has been painting for 25 years. “I had

never had more than three or four hours a day to work because this

painting time was always wrapped around a myriad of responsibilities.”

The fellowship was something of a turning point in the artist’s life.

“My desire was to learn what quiet really felt like and to put those

feelings into the painting,” she states in the book’s preface.

She came to terms with the very personal influences of her own

existence as the daughter of survivors of Auschwitz, perhaps the most

notorious of the World War II Nazi extermination camps.

“My father, a deeply spiritual man, would start his sixteen-hour

workday quietly saying his prayers, allowing himself a small measure of

peace and quiet,” Weisel writes. “These seem like small gestures, but to

me they spoke volumes.”

Weisel shared that her parents worked long hours in their bakery

business, six days a week when she was a child. They were up each morning

at 3 a.m. to prepare the daily bread.

She learned as a child to do things fast and efficiently. There was no

time to waste. Life, after all, was very precious. And work -- well for

survivors of the camps, work gavelife meaning in a way that a human being

who did not experience the horrors of Nazi internment could never grasp.

Coming to terms with solitude, with time to think and time to create,

was an epiphany for Weisel. And she brought her message to friends,

colleagues, art lovers and strangers who dropped by the gallery on any

ordinary midweek evening in Costa Mesa.

Weisel states, “What I have learned is that quiet is not a matter of

wasting time. It is, however, something harder and harder to come by. We

live in a constant state of noise.”

Weisel’s awards and honors fill pages of a curriculum vitae. Recent

accolades include recognition from the NASA Art Program in Washington,

D.C. In 1998, Weisel was commissioned to do paintings celebrating “Women

in Space.”

Her art hangs in American embassies in Belgium, Israel and Egypt. And

her work has graced the covers of books from authors including Primo

Levi, who wrote two books on the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany.

In Costa Mesa, Weisel was greeted by her friends and colleagues Judy

Slutzky and Nancy Sheffner, both of Newport Beach. The women, who deal in

contemporary art, have represented Weisel in Orange County for many

years, and they greeted her with appropriate aplomb.

The very civilized in-store reception and book signing attracted local

aficionados and supporters of both the Orange County Museum of Art in

Newport Beach and local purveyors of fine art, Slutzky and Sheffner.

In the crowd were Jane Fowler, Arthur and Mary Anna Jeppe, and Bud and

Alison Baker Frenzel. Allison Frenzel is a trustee of the Orange County

Museum of Art. Also on hand were Renee Harwick, Ilene Spear, Louise

Litwack, Viviane Wayne, David and Lynne Bloomberg, Joanne Mercer and

David Sheffner.

“Touching Quiet” is surely a message we all can benefit from. During

this very tumultuous week of elections, with our news sources stating and

retracting and restating results, thereby sending the nation and the

world into emotional tailspin and euphoria, we surely need to trust the

inner voice inside each of us that cautions us to get in touch with the

truth we can find in our own existence.

Mindy Weisel’s book and work can be previewed at the museum store. Her

message remains in the mind.

* THE CROWD appears Thursdays and Saturdays.