Hi,

When I first touched on this technique, for a moment I felt like I was going back several hundred years. The contact with the sand creates a feeling of closeness to the earth.

In my works I try to convey a sense of authenticity, of something imperfect. A bit cracked or broken, like the Old City of Jerusalem. Perfect but incomplete.

The technique in which I create, almost primitively, the material is taken from this holy land. With it, I work in a wet form that connects all the billion grains to amorphous forms.

Inside each piece I put ashes from the Temple Mount, and in some of them also small stones that peek out of the piece.

Like the land we sit on, like the history of this holy city, where I was privileged to sit, made of layers upon layers, the technique combines drawing, cutting, casting, and sculpture together.  In the same way. Always finished but not perfect.

I very much hope that my works will bring into your home a little of the feeling I put into them, light and love and a little of the holiness of Israel.

Yours: Shalom Sofer