As a blind, Jewish visual artist, I was immediately, personally drawn to the concept of “Speaking Volumes.” A life-long painter, I became increasingly inspired by what I could hear, remember and imagine as I lost my sight due to a retinal degenerative disease.

Thus many of my large paintings are text-based, weavings of words, where the letters form the actual imagery and gesture of the painting.

In Dialogue: Star and Dialogue: Peace I collaged actual pages from Rahowa and other books by Ben Klassen as the backdrop for painted text passages culled from the same books, which espouse racist and anti-Semitic views.

My goal was to highlight various words within the passages to form an alternate benign text. As I worked on the paintings I became engrossed in the aesthetic as much as the rhetorical aspect of the work. Sometimes the words may be difficult to read or follow, but I hope the viewer can make “poetic” sense of the positive words which are highlighted. Also, by adding the peace symbol and Star of David, I believe these symbols carry enough positive charge to negate the malignant words.

Reading through the Klassen books, I was struck by how much of the writing was repetitive, garbled nonsense. Therefore, I didn’t worry so much about visually losing some of his words (although I did not edit out any words from a particular passage).

Additionally, I hope the fact that there are two paintings will increase the perception of dialogue, as they speak with each other.

I feel that this form of dialogue is particularly appropriate to Jewish culture, which is based on the “word” and interpretation and discussion of texts.