Select Projects/Exhibits
For additional community based projects see www.creativeways.org
OTHERLAND, Klezkanada Summer Retreat, Montreal, August 2022
A collaboration between Benny Ferdman, Shari Davis, and Michael Alpert, in this intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and collaborative project the wild spaces within us met the wild spaces around us. With the larger creative community at Klezkanada, we co-created art installations and music and took a journey of surprise and wonder (in the rain) along a hidden trail at KlezKanada’s Summer Retreat. By taking ourselves beyond the four walls and into the outdoors, participants created and experienced art that explored the poetry of our our multiple identities and connection to the natural world. Having arrived at this place and this moment after migrations from diverse Motherlands, we shared common ground on this Otherland. Carrying the languages, symbols and textures of our cultures, together we stepped into the wild, where nature and culture reconnect.
A Library of Trees, A Landscape of Words: An Arts Workshop to Co-Create the Visual World of Otherland
Benny Ferdman and Freed Fellow Ava Berkson worked with Klezkanada participants to co-create the visual art elements of the Otherland project: Inspired by Yiddish poetry and text as well as personal stories, participants used both traditional art materials, and found objects to create collaborative works of art culminating in site-specific, interactive installations along the trail.
A collaboration between Benny Ferdman, Shari Davis, and Michael Alpert, in this intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and collaborative project the wild spaces within us met the wild spaces around us. With the larger creative community at Klezkanada, we co-created art installations and music and took a journey of surprise and wonder (in the rain) along a hidden trail at KlezKanada’s Summer Retreat. By taking ourselves beyond the four walls and into the outdoors, participants created and experienced art that explored the poetry of our our multiple identities and connection to the natural world. Having arrived at this place and this moment after migrations from diverse Motherlands, we shared common ground on this Otherland. Carrying the languages, symbols and textures of our cultures, together we stepped into the wild, where nature and culture reconnect.
A Library of Trees, A Landscape of Words: An Arts Workshop to Co-Create the Visual World of Otherland
Benny Ferdman and Freed Fellow Ava Berkson worked with Klezkanada participants to co-create the visual art elements of the Otherland project: Inspired by Yiddish poetry and text as well as personal stories, participants used both traditional art materials, and found objects to create collaborative works of art culminating in site-specific, interactive installations along the trail.
KlezKanada Summer Retreat 2019: August of 2019 Benny led visual arts workshops at KlezKanada’s retreat in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains. In Yiddish Goes into the Wild, participants made art exploring stories where Yiddish encountered old and new living landscapes –from the dense Polish pine forests, to the myth-filled deserts of the land of Israel, to the vast and wild lands of the American southwest, to the Laurentian Mountains where we gathered. Through poetry, personal narrative and art making, we explored the untold stories of life in the old world, new world, and other far-flung lands, through the lens of Yiddish speaking eyes. Participants created block prints and watercolors, culminating in a collaborative installation. In addition, Benny presented The Art of Encounter—or The Crow Looks Backward and Other Stories--a gallery talk about his work, and participated in Art Out of the Archives, a conversation facilitated by Evelyn Tauben exploring artistic projects that engage deeply with archival materials – bringing them to life or reinterpreting them in dynamic new ways.
WondeRing Project at the Ashkenaz Festival, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, August 2018
For the 12th biennial Ashkenaz Festival, North America’s largest celebration of global Jewish music and culture, Shari Davis & Benny Ferdman of Creative Ways, together with curator and producer Evelyn Tauben, designed a site-wide, interactive visual arts experience that transformed the Harbourfront Centre into a wondrous landscape of giant mermaids, mystical unicorns, spinning rabbits and an elephant with a castle on its back. Inspired by Ferdman’s decades-long exploration of the rich visual culture that was once central to Eastern European Jewish communities, this project built upon the artist’s visual library of surprising and fantastical creatures brought to life from medieval Jewish manuscripts, rare photos of lost, painted wooden synagogues and other ritual objects. www. ashkenaz.ca
WondeRing included:
- Giant sculptural puppets of fantastical creatures created for the parade by Benny Ferdman, Jacob Ferdman, Isis Walls, Yavni Bar Am and a team of incredible volunteers.
- Art workshops for all ages--the metal amulets, spinning whirligigs, and painted flags, celebrating the diverse languages of Toronto, animated the signature Ashkenaz Parade. More images at
- The Room in the Elephant-- exhibition and gallery talk by Benny Ferdman in the Marilyn Brewer Gallery at Harbourfront Centre; curated by Evelyn Tauben.
- An intensive, four day studio course-- at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) by Ferdman, introduced students to the rich world of Eastern European Jewish folk art traditions and gave students an opportunity to create artwork for the large puppets leading the Ashkenaz parade.
CD Cover Artwork `
In Der Heym/Down Home. Recorded by Michael Alpert and Craig Judelman borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/album/in-der-heym
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Cover art work and images in liner notes for CD Night Songs From a Neighboring Village, Michael Alpert & Julian Kytasty. Youtube video link to Nightsongs full CD, with artwork.
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ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: BENNY FERDMAN: COOK-UP A SOUP AND OTHER TALES
Exhibit at Laemmle Theatre Town Center, Los Angeles, 2018
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As a collector of materials and stories from human, natural and cultural landscapes, BENNY FERDMAN’s artwork juxtaposes and reinterprets these images and tales to reclaim wonder in everyday life. Cook-Up a Soup And Other Tales is a collection of Ferdman’s adventurous reclamation and reworking of iconography, folk motifs and works drawn from diverse narratives and East European Jewish culture, that once expressed itself in Yiddish, Benny's first language.
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