While at an art workshop, Julius Eisenstein, a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor, met art instructor, Lori Arbel, founder of “Marks 4 Their Lives,” a collaborative project that honors the 1.5 million children whose lives were taken in the Holocaust and our global community.
Eisenstein, who was a 101 at the time, shared his story, participating in the project drawing marks or lines — with each line representing a year in life lost to the Holocaust.
“It’s a global art initiative and ‘Marks 4 Their Lives’ is an act of healing personal and global trauma,” says Arbel. “Each mark represents and honors the lives that were lost and each mark he [Eisenstein] made represented his brother, his sister, and he made 101 marks to honor his life and the lives of others.”
Arbel, who is known for her mixed-media artwork, began working as an art teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School 20 years ago. Since then, she’s taught in New York and throughout South Florida.
From an early age, Arbel would go to the library to read art and history books. Her lifelong enthusiasm for history and the arts led her to attend March of the Living, an annual Holocaust educational program trip to Poland and Israel.
“In my teens, I went on that trip and I was quiet,” says Arbel. “It was traumatic and I was quiet on the subject of Holocaust history for 15 years.”
While teaching at the David Posnack Jewish Day School, she realized the art curriculum lacked projects for Holocaust history.
“I couldn’t be quiet on something that’s so important,” says Arbel. “It came to my heart to share an important understanding that we should celebrate our similarities and differences so that another genocide doesn’t happen.”
She got the entire school, 600 students and staff, involved in the butterfly project, “Blanket in the Sky.”
The goal of the project was to get 1.5 million butterfly-punched prototypes displayed to acknowledge and honor the over 1.5 million children who lost their lives in the Holocaust.
“We tried to get 1.5 million butterflies,” says Arbel. “We didn’t hit it but we got close.”
The school-wide project created crafted designs and completed over one hundred thousand butterflies within one month, with one student creating 30,000 butterflies on their own.
Similarly, Arbel’s series, “Thought Patterns,” uses hand-drawn ink lines to question how people connect, respond and make marks on the world.
Arbel noticed parallel lines kept showing up in her art and her home address. This inspired her to use a pen, parallel lines, handmade paper and geometric shapes to express her creativity with linework. The pop of gold lines illustrates metaphor, transforming sometimes negative energy into something beautiful.
“While doing this series, I was in a dark place, and thoughts of the Holocaust were deeply in there,” says Arbel. “Like hair pulling thread, marks on the wall and seeing these marks were all intuitive. I realized these are the marks of the children and I realized it had to be something more.”
Arbel’s “Marks 4 Their Lives” invites people to participate and send their projects for inclusion in the online gallery. The mailed submissions will be woven together to create a quilt. All works will be displayed in a traveling art exhibition.
“While celebrating our lives, our marks, let’s remember the lives that were taken,” says Arbel. “It’s an international project and I already got people from Israel, Portugal and Canada."
For Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27, Arbel is working with FIU, The Wolfsonian Museum and The Jewish Museum of Florida on a program about the Holocaust and genocide awareness.
“When I was with the Holocaust survivors at that workshop, a lot of them found it to be very hard because they couldn't make a mark for just children,” says Arbel. “They were children, they lost their families and friends of all ages. They made a mark for everyone they could think of. Julius was the oldest of the group and doing it with him, kids and other people, regardless of age, race, color – we realize this is something that’s special to everyone and everyone can make their mark.”
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