Ten days to wrap up Steffi Domike’s and my two-year project, Moving Targets, with Ruth Fauman-Fichman, which will be shown at Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods in Deerfield, IL (North Chicago). Still working on a few final pieces, and we have to assemble everything, but here’s a sneak peek. (See my 1/16 post below for background on the project).

This map represents the passenger pigeon migration range. The textured area marks the principal nesting grounds. The narrative will continue through four posters produced by University of Michigan Museum of Natural History for Project Passenger Pigeon (with which our project is affiliated). The posters will lead visitors into the Brushwood Library where we will mount a Passenger Pigeon Portrait Gallery. We have invited 14 artists, each representing a state within the nesting range, to produce a passenger pigeon “portrait” for this part of our exhibition. See some of the portraits here.

These works will be hung on a map of the Ukraine (not shown). The image on the right is from a newspaper of the early 20th century depicting the aftermath of a pogrom. On the left are ships that transported our families to North America with one ship’s manifest listing my family members. The top-most piece is an impression of wheat, a staple crop of the Ukraine and a staple food for most families. Steffi’s forebears were also wheat traders in the Ukraine, and mine farmed wheat in Canada after immigrating there.

These maps show the flight of the Ronder (Domike) and Sterling (Rosenthal) families from the Ukraine to North America. East to west, the textured areas represent where the Ronders landed in the eastern U.S., and where the Sterlings settled, first in Canada and then California (textured areas not shown on westcoast map). For the Brushwood Reading Room, we have created four posters, comparable to those for the Passenger Pigeon and in the same format, that recount the history of the Jews in relation to our family stories. The poster content was developed by Ruth, who also located many of the images and maps, and pursued the permissions to use them. She and Steffi worked tirelessly to condense and present the text and images in a compelling narrative.

The actual maps have been cut out of MDO board and will replace the cardboard mockups above. There are additional pieces that will go between the maps and on the opposite walls.

Here we are in front of our work (Steffi on left)…

The exhibition at Brushwood will run May 4 – July 3. There will be a public reception 1-3pm on Sunday, May 4. The Smith Nature Symposium at Brushwood on May 17 will honor Joel Greenberg and feature scientist Beth Shapiro as the keynote speaker; our exhibit will be highlighted for the attendees. After the Brushwood exhibition, the Portrait Gallery and some of our work will be shown at the Art and Environment Gallery in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. We are in the process of locating a space in Pittsburgh for the Fall. We welcome inquires for possible exhibition of Moving Targets!