The art world has never really known what to do with artists who make pipes for smoking weed. Working-class artists haven’t gotten the respect they deserve either. And what comes to mind when you think “Jewish artist?” At best, Marc Chagall. At worst…well, given the declining support for Jewish art in recent decades, nothing at all. So it’s time to talk about Jeremy Grant-Levine, a Jewish glass artist who specializes in both bongs and biblical objects.
Grant-Levine’s parents were both sculptors and art teachers, but instead of living off grants and big commission checks, her father repaired washers and dryers.
“He would be like, ‘be an artist, but also be a plumber,'” Grant-Levine said. Hyperallergic in an interview. Her father handcrafted many of the family’s ritual objects, providing Grant-Levine with an unusual tactile relationship to Jewish tradition. “My father made metal mezuzot and menorahs, so I was constantly interacting with these objects,” the artist said.
But Grant-Levine, who also goes through Germ, came to art through another spiritual practice: the smoky air of the Grateful Dead concerts of the 1990s. “I bought my first pipe from a hippie in New Haven, and it became this tool that has always been with me,” he said. “It became the center of this social ritual. So I fell in love with this object; it’s almost like a talking stick. But I had no idea how they were made.
Since you can’t major in Bong Design at an accredited university, Grant-Levine enrolled in the nation’s only science-based glassblowing program at Salem Community College. It was there that he and many of his classmates figured out how to blow glass bowls in makeshift glass studios in their apartments. “There was this amazing sharing of knowledge,” he recalls. An old-school pipe blower named Spandex traded the chance to see him working in his basement for a 6-pack of beers.
To pay the bills, Grant-Levine took a job at an arms manufacturing plant. “We made landmine triggers, missile guidance systems for fighter jets,” he said. “The factory environment is quite horrible. I sometimes questioned what we were doing, and no one else seemed to have a problem with that. All I wanted to do was make bongs when we were making bombs! »
But there was a silver lining: the job had brought him to Philadelphia, home to one of the most vibrant glass communities in the world. “When it comes to pipe making and flame work, Philly is one of the major hubs,” the artist said. And it’s not just because the city likes to smoke weed, which has been decriminalized since 2014. While deindustrialization has slowed Philly’s rich manufacturing past, a vibrant network of wood, clay, textile and glass artists survives, making the city a leader in the world of craftsmanship today. today.
A relatively low cost of living and a distinctly uncompetitive atmosphere made the perfect recipe for the growth of “Piper Row”, a nearly one-block expanse of glass pipe studios north of Center City. Grant-Levine has settled with artists like Marble Slinger, who directed the documentary degenerate art: The art and culture of glass pipes (2011). “It’s kind of his fault it all went mainstream,” Grant-Levine laughed, “Which is awesome.”
A love of weed is far from incompatible with Grant-Levine’s Jewish faith. On the contrary, it mixes quite well, as evidenced by curator Eddy Portnoy’s current exhibition on Jewish Weed Culture at the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research in New York, which also features some of Grant-Levine’s work. The exhibition includes cannabis proof Since an old synagogue in israel, a 1911 edition by Fritz Lemmermayer Hashish translated into Yiddish, and a mural of a quote from Richard Nixon where he wondered aloud why “every one of the bastards who want to legalize marijuana is Jewish”.
Grant-Levine, a former Hebrew teacher, was well aware of the connection before Portnoy asked him to appear on the show. “I already knew enough Psychedelic Hasids in Israel. A friend of mine wrote an entire book called Cannabis Chassidisabout the weed in the Torah.
Inspired by Jewish folklore, in particular the dybbuk (a wandering spirit that seeks a human host), Grant-Levine describes her work on the YIVO show as a “gnarled, twisted rabbi figure that’s been taken over by this demon possessor.” The coin is from his past series of rabbi bongsinspired in part by the Orthodox men who hit the headlines in 2015 for removal husbands who refused to give their wives religious divorce papers, or gittin in Hebrew. The series’ ugliness and fun are immediately disarming: you can’t help but think twice about what it means. look devout, religious and pure.
Glassblowers and Judaic artists imbue the magic of everyday objects. “My interest in glass has always been its function in ritual objects,” says Grant-Levine. “The pipe is a ritual object. A menorah is a ritual object. A mezuzah is a ritual object. A Kiddush cup is a ritual object. They are things to interact with, as opposed to things that are just put in a display case.
Glass wasn’t taken seriously as “fine art” until the 1960s, but Grant-Levine found evidence that glassmakers had been making what we would call art since at least the 1800s. They made “fantasies,” delicate glass pipes and tchotchkes shaped like walking sticks and top hats, to show off their skills while emptying the oven at the end of the working day.
“I think there’s a bigger contingent of blue-collar artists in this world than people want to think. It’s just a bit of this unexplored world. If works like “fantasies” and “degenerate” rabbi bongs have been neglected for so long, what else could the art world be missing out on by not giving artists their due? working class?
