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Memorial Tribute to Erika

Erika was my painting partner, and we called each other that “partner” until she could not call me anything anymore. She also called me, “shatzee,” and I called her, “tzazkeleh,” the Yiddish version of the German. I adored her, and we always told each other how much we loved each other and how amazed we were by our relationship. It felt like a type of marriage to us, one focused on work and with a mission. It was wonderful, one of the most wonderful things I have ever experienced.

Erika and I were introduced in 1995 by a man named Charles Giuliano, an author and art critic who had a gallery in East Boston. It was the 50th anniversary of many things WWII, and there were countless commemorative events, including exhibitions. Like me, Erika had begun to address WWII in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. I was going to concentration camps and other places the Holocaust had happened to do research for my work on the subject at the time. Charles knew me, and his new partner, Astrid Hiemer, knew Erika. They asked us if we would show our WWII work together. Astrid, who worked at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, also contributed a booklet on the “Language of War.”

The first time I met Erika alone was in a Russian cafe in Harvard Square. I arrived first, sat down, and Erika entered in a blaze of Erika energy and wearing the same palette as her paintings. She handed me a photograph of a childhood birthday party in Berlin where the kids, including her, had Nazi flags. She was a child, innocent, like all young children, in a vicious system, and she said, “you don’t have to be afraid of me.”

We showed with Charles and Astrid in his East Boston gallery, Maverick Arts, and went on to do so in Europe and America. It was all intense and showing and even talking about the work now is still so. Unfortunately, it is all too relevant today.

Our first show in Germany was in Leipzig, and on that trip, we went to Erika’s second childhood home in Potsdam, where her grandparents lived. Her family moved there after their Berlin home was bombed. It was there that she played with little silver paper flags that fell during bombings. We visited a friend from there, and they spoke for quite a while in German, which I did not know then. At the end, I heard the word, “Jude,” no longer used in Germany due to its association with Naziism and antisemitism, and Erika looked distraught. In talking afterwards, it was clear that our relationship’s honeymoon period was over, and I proposed we speak together visually on canvas, not just in words. It seemed to make sense. Erika agreed, and that is how we began collaborating on the same canvases.

We made rules. We would have a work, not social relationship. We both knew and agreed upon our general themes of war, genocide, and inhumanity. We would decide together what size canvases we would use. We clarified space use on the canvases and, no matter what, we had to be very nice to each other, but we could say anything on canvas, no matter how angry or painful. We would split all expenses and any profits from sales. We kept to our agreement and came to trust each other completely. We had one argument in those ten years of working together and talking almost every day, and we resolved it together. We were committed and completely loyal to each other in the work. I still feel so. Erika was my partner, and our paintings are our offspring.

Erika and I actively worked and showed together for about 10 years. Sadly, after that, we felt that we were repeating ourselves and could not find a new subject to work on, though we tried. Erika was dealing with the cancer that consumed a lot of her life, and she needed to address that. I needed to address other issues of humanity and instances of inhumanity. But mostly, we did not feel that it was artistically integrous of us to go on with what we were doing.

Erika was a true artist in that she could not stop. She had no choice about whether or not to make art if she was going to be ok. She was prolific. Like me, and all the serious artists I have known,she questioned her work’s value, whether it was worth making, whether anyone would care, and who was she to expect them to. She absolutely did not censor herself, something I admired enormously. She was courageous in her imagery, and she didn’t really care whether it was acceptable. She had a lot she needed to say about war and women and cancer and fear. And she wanted her work, most of all, to do good in the world. She cared enormously.

We shared art as our most beloved activity. Together, we were able to put aside all the usual things that plagued us with our work, all the questions we had, all the feelings of being frauds, all the ambivalence of presenting our individual work as if it was worth presenting. We were no longer alone; we could represent each other, and it was wonderful. Nothing has replaced it for me, and Erika and I had many conversations in which we grieved our past collaboration and spoke of how much meaning it gave us both.

Now, when I touch or deal with our work professionally, I will have to do so without Erika. I do not have words to express the hole in my heart that knowledge leaves. I adored my partner and will miss her until my end.

Thank you.
Unitarian Church 26 Pleasant St., Newburyport