The CJM Blog

 Photo: W. Kryński. Courtesy of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. I attended the October 2014 opening of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The new museum is a work of genius from every aspect—conceptually, architecturally, programmatically, and intellectually. The POLIN Museum stands across from and in dialogue with the monument to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 during World War II. Both are sited in what used to be the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jewish resistance opposed Nazi Germany’s command to transport the remaining population to the Treblinka extermination camp.

Happy Fangs by  JenOf CalibreePhotography Local band Happy Fangs plays Night at the Jewseum on Thursday, November 18. How would you describe Happy Fangs’ music? Our music sounds like Black Sabbath and Bikini Kill got in a pillow fight. Where does your band name come from? The band was formed by a guitarist whose legal last name is Cobra and a singer who is notoriously giddy. Sometimes bands name themselves. 

Hand drawn sketch by J. Otto Seibold. Photo by Jeremy Fish I discovered J. Otto Seibold 's artwork many years ago through a holiday store display using his character Olive The Reindeer. At the time I was just out of art school with a degree from a strictly "fine arts" institution. I was struggling with what I wanted to do with my artwork. Illustration vs. painting. . . art galleries vs. commercial artwork. . . The idea that this artist's reindeer he created was making SO many more people, including myself, happy all over this big department store as opposed to being on the wall someplace in a gallery, or even in a children's book. I found it deeply inspiring that his drawings could translate onto many platforms, and affect a much larger audience. Technically, I felt his illustrations were very ahead of their time. A digital illustrator who was obviously using a computer to generate his art, but somehow kept the drawings very loose, organic, and ...