More on: Visual Art

In Judaism, we are taught to not fully complete an object, to leave a sliver incomplete until Moshiach (the Messiah) comes to help us rebuild the Temple. As I relate this to my paintings, I am not sure they are truly finished.

Hardly anything is not fragile now; the world may be in the most fragile state of our lifetime.

Growing up between silence and discussion, repression and resilience, shaped my understanding of freedom as both political and personal. This understanding informs my art today.

As we stand eye to eye with one of nature’s greatest killing machines, in awe of the jagged teeth that maul and maim, we are also aware that the life force that once animated this death-dealing predator has gone, and the formaldehyde in which it floats is merely delaying its decay.

I strongly believe that for a Jew to make art, one has to be steeped in Jewish culture, as well as the contemporaneous culture of the West. I found my way into Judaism through the biblical story of the Exodus, especially the idea that each Jew identifies with this story as if they were present at Mount Sinai, because, as the Talmud explains, all Jewish souls, present and future, were at Mount Sinai to witness the divine.

While I was uninterested in the Bible stories of Sunday school, the quiet ritual of the service and the music appealed to me.

Will the divine elegance that science reveals in nature provoke wonder and a re-enchantment of his world, allowing him to break free of the reductive frame? Or is it merely an evolutionary survival instinct to ascribe meaning to what Richard Dawkins calls a universe of “blind, pitiless indifference”?

When a desire remains unfulfilled—when, for example, our viewing of a televised sporting event is interrupted—our frustration can create a sense of discomfort or longing, directing our focus toward the presence and intensity of desire itself.

From conversations with viewers, I’ve learned that their experience depends a lot on the physical presence of my work, not just the size but also how it connects with its surroundings.

Along with astronomy, Maker’s work borrows from biology, physics, chemistry, and—perhaps most importantly—geology.