This is a piece that will be included in the Grunewald Guild’s 4^th annual travelling exhibit. The theme for the exhibit was Jubilee: A Celebration of Rest, Renewal, and Relationships. As a co-curator on this year’s show, I was able to see the artwork as it was submitted and create a piece that combined both research and response. In this case, as I first researched Jubilee in the lives of the Israelites I noted how Jubilee was to be a Super-Sabbath observed only once a cycle of 7 Sabbath years had been observed. I noted that few pieces picked up this numerical structure of the early Jubilee.

We have this giant ideal that is Jubilee and all the things it stood (and grew to stand) for – once every 50 years – but we also have the much smaller steps that led up to Jubilee and made way for, and even expressed, it. For this piece I wanted to think about how we approach these big ideals in life. Often it’s all or nothing. It is the little steps however, that bring us there. And in this case, Jubilee begins first in Sabbath observance.

This piece began as a sketch in the Guild’s gardens – I intended to draw tomatoes but the raspberry bushes grabbed my attention! I cleaned it up in pen and then shaded it with charcoal with gold leaf as the final addition. I wanted to depict something very small and simple and wanted to show how Jubilee can even, in the context of a Sabbath, begin to take expression here. I have represented, numerically, a Sabbath cycle (7 years) with the raspberries. Accordingly, one of them is set apart from the others.  In a Jubilee year, like the Sabbath years, the produce that grew from the land was to be accessible to all. What you might be able to express ownership over for 6 years was not yours to do so in the 7^th, and this was a reminder that, in fact, all of it in all years was God’s. They were more stewards then owners. This piece reminds me, even in the smallest things in life, about God’s heart for those who do not have access to His gifts