Anshie Kagan

so angie thank you so much for joining us on the show really appreciate you being here thanks for having me tell me what art means to you what is art and what is jewish art so jewish art is has connotations or elements of religion in some way or another and the way i see art is a way of expressing or showing emotions through visual or interpretive of some way or another something visual usually to me because i happen to be a visual person but it's something that you can share and relate with other people so how long have you been doing jewish art um for the most part i've only been doing jewish art very little that i have to do in college but other than that 20 years and how do you mean professionally so so for the for those of us who really don't know how to get in the s in the in the in the subject of it i mean we can look at it we can appreciate it but we don't really understand it how do you approach it when when you i guess start creating your your your artwork right how do you how do you get started how do you approach it what are you trying to accomplish so the best part i find in the best part about artwork is that art in general i could you and i can both be looking at the same picture and interpret different ways so with that i have a couple of friends who i'll run the idea by but pretty much i'll see something it triggers my creative genes and all uh creative uh neurons or whatever i will figure out what's the best way to relate that in that image or method so sometimes it's a sculpture sometimes it's drawing sometimes i think it will be really great and it will be a fine art versus just a quick sketch just to get the idea out there but pretty much that's what motivates me to make sure this idea gets out there i want to share with the people is there any examples where you brought something out that nobody saw or that was a something that um when they when people saw it it it was it awakened something that they never saw before so i have a piece called in case the machiac break glass to me it was more of a spoof on i saw uh okay so the actual piece is a sculpture of an um emergency in case of emergency you break the glass and there's a chauffeur inside this one says in case of a shield you break the glass it resonates with people on many different levels but to me i saw it as i saw somebody had an ax i'm like okay end of the world what would i want to have in let's say a zombie apocalypse so that would be an axe wait end of the world in jewish terms meshiach is ready to do his thing let's announce it to people so it was a i see something i try and give it a jewish twist and i make it out there that's amazing are there are there pieces that you have that are your favorite um one of my favorites is um waldo finds himself waldo is praying at the western wall and just the fun play on words yeah i think i've seen that as is but the wording gives it that extra depth right um bunch of baem uh rabbis um one of my more recent ones is i was trying a new style where i took a picture of the uh co cell and just gave it a bunch of bright pop colors to it so that's nice that's great so when when you when you are drawing a rabbi yeah what are you trying to accomplish is just accuracy is there something else you're trying to get out so i started doing rabbis like the ones behind me um was one of the first things i did everybody has the same photos in their house and it kind of gets boring and monotonous so i'm like okay give it a quick twist i grew up reading comic books and going to museums and i'm like give me something with pop color so i decided to do a series of those people liked them i still once in a while i'll add another rabbit to a collection and it's just simple like that amazing do you find that people understand jewish art enough yes and no okay they're i think they're mostly used to seeing the standard renaissance style where it's a rabbi in a shoal scenario or shabbos setting those are the ones everybody sees and it's appreciated for art i believe nowadays people are going a little more in depth and giving a deeper meaning to the artwork so as generations progress and change so is the meaning of the artwork and what do you think that the meaning is in this generation of art staying relatable um staying connected to judaism um any way to show that we're all in this together and jewish in judaism in general mm-hmm so fascinating how do people see your artwork uh anxie.com a-n-s-h-i-e dot com amazing so angie thank you so much for joining us on the show thank you very much for having me what you do you as well thank you thank you have a good one thanks so much for watching for more content like and subscribe and be sure to tune in live every thursday at 8pm eastern at the shabbato.com or right here on youtube