F.C. Artist and 'Art Incubator' Naomi Lipsky, to Give Exhibition Talk at Cherrydale Library Opening Reception, June 16
Here’s a true story of one local Art Incubator inspiring another!
If you’ve had a chance to browse the just-opened mixed-media Falls Church Arts All-Members Show (A-L), you may have caught a glimpse of gold in decorative artist Naomi Lipsky’s “Song of Songs” – a giclée print with hand-gilded 23 karat gold leaf within a gilded frame – highlighting words from the traditional Jewish wedding vows, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”
With symbolic roses, doves, and nuptial ribbons, as well as both English and Hebrew letterings – the latter in gold and brushed finely by hand at the center of the arrangement – the 13.5 in. x 16.5 in. work, matted and framed by Lipsky, differs from many of the others on display in its technical prowess, and the solemn yet joyous spiritual emotions conveyed.
“The background is in giclée, Lipsky told me. “Well, the original piece was in watercolor and then I printed it digitally and then I hand-gilded it. So, each one is slightly different because it was individually hand-gilded….This one has two types of gilding, flat gilding and raised gilding.... And I don’t always do 23 karat gold. I’ve done some palladium and 5 karat which looks like silver. But the thing about silver is, it will tarnish and I always worry about that. Silver’s actually easier to work with because it’s heavier.”
Before I met Lipsky last Wednesday, I had no idea what the technical arts terms “quilling” and “gilding” – much less “giclée” – even meant.
But after meeting her to see her Art Incubator exhibit entitled "Quilling, Gilding, and Judaic Art" at Arlington’s Cherrydale Library at 2190 Military Rd. – the diminutive public library around the corner from the Stratford Building and nearest to me growing up in Arlington, County – I came to admire her artistic/scientific journey as well as her devotion to mastering a variety of technical skills in pursuit of the art she loves and the creation of works that emotionally please her many buyers.
"Naomi is best known for her work with quilling, an antique art in which paper strips are shaped and applied as ornaments, but she works with gold leaf, collage, and gouache, as well," Cherrydale Library said. "Her main body of work consists of Judaic ritual art and liturgical illustrations. She does all her own matting and framing. Naomi’s award-winning work has been exhibited in a variety of museums and galleries, and featured in art books and other publications."
Lipsky had contacted me to come see her show, informing me that she had applied to become an Art Incubator through Arlington County Library’s arts program, having read our earlier article about graphic artist Regina Chua’s Art Incubator show – her very first exhibit as an artist – at the county’s Columbia Pike Branch Library.
Feeling great about Lipsky’s inspiration stemming from her reading about Chua on this site, her garnering of the Art Incubator role, and the connection between these two artists, I was delighted to chat with her at Cherrydale Library to learn more about her artistic journey.
Turns out, Lipsky’s creative journey is quite unique. With a PhD in Biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University and a lifelong love of just about every means of creating decorative art – “except welding,” she said – the creative process has always been about the symbiosis between the scientific/mathematical side of her brain and the creative/expressive side.
“All my life, I’ve done both – science and math – and art and making stuff,” Lipsky said. After retiring as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins and devoting herself to art, Lipsky often told people science and art are almost one-and-the-same for her. “People often say, ‘Wow, that’s quite a change!’ But, it’s not! Both in science and in research as well as in art, you’re looking for the solution to a problem, something you want to find out. And you don’t always know what’s going to happen and it’s trial and error. And you can’t set the hours, you know, you have to be dedicated and go in whenever it’s necessary. And the arts are like that too. So, I never found there was any conflict. They’re both creative enterprises.”
“I never didn't do art,” Lipsky recalled. “But to me the work was also exciting. I mean, when I was in graduate school, I used to think, if I won the lottery and I had $3 million I wouldn’t change anything. I mean, maybe I’d get a house or something. But this is what I love.”
“I decided that my art was really calling me and I was having some success as well,” Lipsky said about the next chapter in her life. “So, I made the change and my late husband was very supportive. So I was fortunate that way.”
Lipsky credits much of her art inspiration to her father’s nurturing of her interests growing up. She came to learn that there are no such things as mistakes. “I’ve been in art all my life. Every kind of painting, pottery, and stone carving – everything…,” she said. “And, you can’t really make mistakes. Just try things! When I was growing up, my father believed that when a child wants to learn something, you should give them the best tools you can afford. Because if you give them cheap stuff, they’ll get frustrated and they’ll never pick it up again. So, that’s how I was raised, just to try things, you know?”
“And people will say, ‘Oh, I can’t draw a straight line.’ And I say, ‘Well, can you draw a curved line?’ Because there are more curved lines in nature than there are straight lines,” Lipsky said with a wry smile.
Pursuing her interest in gilding – that is, the process of applying gold leaf or gold paint – Lipsky joined the Society of Gilders and within eight years became the international society’s president. “It’s a great organization,” she said.
Then Lipsky encountered examples of quilling – involving the use of strips of paper rolled, shaped, and glued together to create decorative designs – and decided to give it a try. “The quilling, I just saw an example one day,” Lipsky recalled, “I had never heard of it, but I figured it out. And, apparently, it’s not obvious to a lot of people. So, I guess I’m meant to be a quiller, you know, because it made sense to me.”
Unlike many modern artists who don’t wish to “color within the lines” or be restricted in their creative expression, Lipsky enjoys the technical and expressive challenges of working within clearly defined limits. “I’m a decorative artist, more than a painter or something like that. I work within confines and I like patterns and things. It could be OCD, but I don’t know, that’s how I’m happiest. [Laughs].”
Now Lipsky, a Falls Church City resident, enjoys giving and taking classes at Falls Church Arts. “They’re very nice people,” Lipsky said. “It’s a great organization…. The people I’ve met there are very pleasant and they offer a lot of opportunities, between the shows and the classes. I’ve given classes, I’ve taken classes. And it’s a great way to meet people…. In Falls Church, I’ve done quilling and I did a class on framing, because I do my own matting and framing. And I’ve done gilding and quilling classes in other places.”
Asked about how she became an Art Incubator for Arlington County, Lipsky said, “Well, I read about it first in The Falls Church Independent, I’m serious…. You were talking about a woman who had a display in another library. So I saw that article and then I found them on the web and I applied. I didn’t hear from them for a while, but then they contacted me and I was very excited. And then they assigned me to this library. And they haven’t had a show here before and they were very excited.... Everybody should read the Falls Church Independent! [Laughs].”
Describing her artistic themes, Lipsky emphasized that she likes to spread joy and beauty.
“I definitely like a result that is pretty and happy and cheerful. I don’t need to share my inner desolation with the rest of the world. It’s not that I don’t have it,” Lipsky said. “But, I don’t feel that helps anybody. So, I like to do nice things. I like to do things that showcase my Jewish heritage in a positive way that they might not even know about, even Jewish people. I do a lot of research for some of the pieces and I like learning things and I like working with the clients if I get a commission. I enjoy that.”
Touring through her exhibition, Lipsky stops to describe a piece centering around the Biblical call of “Hineni” – essentially meaning “Here I am!” – made by Moses after “he was called by the Burning Bush” and “when Abraham was called."
“It’s like, ‘I’m here ready and waiting,” Lipsky said. Describing the work, she added, “For me, it’s like the pure white light is coming down and you’re transformed into something tangible, that’s full of colors.”
Given the piece’s healing qualities, it’s no wonder that it’s been used to help comfort hospital patients. “Actually, the Mayo clinic has an Art Cart that goes around to patients’ rooms and this piece they bought. And I’ve had letters from people telling me it helped them get through their surgery or whatever. It’s very nice…. And actually there’s a young man who’s going to be ordained as a priest and he asked me if he could use it on the cover of his program and I said, ‘Sure.’”
Interestingly, our last piece about Art Incubator, Regina Chua, also focused on her work to help cancer patients with art therapy. Here's the piece:
Christopher Jones
Lipsky also loves to create works with alphabet themes that serve as comforting educational primers, in both Hebrew and English. In her piece “Aleph Bet,” she portrays “the Hebrew alphabet,” where “each letter has a thing that starts with that letter. And that’s kind of fun…. They’re all different. And I’ve done different ones for different people. And I did one that’s on one of my slides in my talk that are all words in the Bible.... And I did an English one that was all flowers that start with a letter in the alphabet. I like that kind of thing.”
Her work “Chai Rainbow,” – In Hebrew, Chai means “Life,” but I mistook the word for the tea beverage – also uses repetition to emphasize fundamental spiritual themes. “This was another exercise in confines where I did the same thing but in different coloring, each time in different filling,” Lipsky said. “The quilling is different in each one. So there's a lot you can do in a quilling.”
Lipsky is attached to her quilling piece “Stegosaurus.” “That was a lot of fun,” she recalled. “I just decided, I don’t know, I came upon a drawing of one and I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder if I could quill that?,’ and I did. And I did the matting and the framing and all of that. I really like that one.”
On July 22, Lipsky will be giving a class on quilling at Cherrydale Library and she’ll be describing the techniques she used in “Stegosaurus.” “I use a tapestry needle,” she said. “It’s a blunt needle about a millimeter wide. And I roll the paper with that. But there’s a quilling tool that has a slot and you put the paper in and you turn it. The problem is that in the middle of the coil, it leaves a straight line, an edge.”
Asked if the quilling takes “hours and hours” to complete because it’s such “fine work,” Lipsky said, “Well, what takes time is, it’s all trial and error. So in order to figure out what size some of those spikes should be, I might have had to figure out what kind of coil to use. But if I could reproduce it, it wouldn’t take so long. But you can’t do it twice because the paper never curls the same way."
“Now, here’s one thing I enjoy,” Lipsky said as we came upon one of her commemorative framed wedding invitations. "Well I like everything. But this is by commission. This is the first piece of quilling I ever saw. It was in a frame shop. It’s a framed wedding invitation. So, first of all, you can take any kind of thing, or a photograph, and you can ornament around it. So, people will send me their invitation. And I like to know the color scheme or anything they would want to include. I did one for my own wedding that has lace for my bridal veil in it too. This is for a Jewish wedding and it’s like a huppah, a canopy. But, I’ve done things to match someone’s china pattern or whatever. It’s just fun.”
A photo of Lipsky’s daughter and niece are also decoratively framed and matted with elements of the photo embellishing the matting. “They’re 11 days apart. That was 30 years ago,” Lipsky said.
Lipsky’s artistic and scientific journey has taken her many geographic places as well. She grew up in the Bronx and Long Island, went to college in Philadelphia, and school in Baltimore where she “stayed on and got married.” She and her late husband – a physician at the Mayo Clinic – then lived in Rochester, Minn., before Lipsky moved to Rhode Island for a time.
And for the last four years, Lipsky has made the City of Falls Church her home. It’s here she’s been bringing so much beauty and joy to so many.
Tonight at 6:30 p.m., Lipsky will give a talk about her work at the opening reception of her exhibition at Cherrydale Library. To register for Lipsky's Meet the Artist talk this evening go here. On July 22, she'll also be offering a class at the library. Stay tuned for details.
By Christopher Jones
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