This work was to have been sent out as Pic of the Week on April 29th this year. However, we had technical difficulties getting it out in a timely manner. It is a work which deserves to be seen and appreciated by our full audience. Hence, we are sending it out again so that it may be enjoyed by all our viewers. Thank you for your feedback. Reggie

This work was done by Corinna Taylor:
"A Sign"

The quotation is from Deuteronomy 6:5, although it also appears in Matthew and Luke. It’s recited in every Jewish service after the Sh’ma.  This part refers to the laying on of t’fillin. This is a long thin leather strap with a little box at the end. It’s wrapped on the bare left arm starting with a finger, so that it forms the letter shin, initial of one of the names of God, on the finger, on the hand, then three times up the arm, until the little box ends up on the inner side of the upper arm next to the heart.  The shawl is a tallit, or prayer shawl, with tassels on the corners as prescribed in Leviticus. The little box contains a kosher parchment scroll with the sh’ma  and the verses from Deuteronomy written out by a specialized Torah scribe.

The first time I did this piece was homework for Reggie’s Twenty-Six Seeds class in 1999. My son was being bar mitzvah, and using t’fillin is part of that rite of passage, as only adult men use them. 

My first version (sorry, no photo) was made of cut metal foils, copper  bordered by aluminum, and mounted on purple heart plywood, attached with copper tacks. It was rejected by the Newberry jury, most likely because the foils were too heavy to cut easily so the workmanship was rather poor. But I liked the design so I re-did it with ink on paper. The mechanical-looking striped shading was done with Formatt  graphic film. The size is 12” wide (the width of the foils) and approximately 20” high.