Zena Zipporah

Zena Zipporah (b. 1942) is an American artist and poet.^[1] She often uses quotations and words in her art, which she describes as being "all about spirituality and gender."^[2] Her inspirations include ancient cultures and religions, especially creation and destruction myths.^[3]

Career

She moved to Cleveland in 1976.^[3] There, she wrote poems and did freelance work for local magazines;^[3] at first she was a writer and poet rather than a visual artist.^[2] Later, however, she transitioned into visual arts, although she continued to use words prominently in her work.^[2] She describes the shift being inspired by a papermaking class she took as an evening course, where she began putting her writing on handmade substrates.^[2]

In 1989, her work was included in the Center for Book Arts 15th anniversary show.^[4] In 2013 Zipporah was the recipient of a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Cuyahoga County Community Partnership for Arts and Culture.^[5][6] In 2015, her work was included in the Ohio Craft Museums exhibition On the Page: The Book as Art.^[7] Her mixed media assemblages were accepted for the May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art; in 1985 and 1993.^[8]

Work

Asked in a 2016 interview to periodize her art, she divided it into five periods, listed below:

1. "College and After - first poems"
2. "The Craft Period - weaving/ crochet/ and paper"
3. "New Forms - hybrid books, collage/ painting/ and assemblage"
4. "More Conceptual Pieces - about language, creation and destruction"
5. "New Poetry and Art- more surreal and mature"

Her book Recall of the Soul is in The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry.^[9] Her book Breast tea is in the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA).^[10]

Her work "Notes from Other Worlds" is a collage made from things taken from a 1930s scrapbook, including receipts, photographs and postcards, as well as Zipporah's own drawings and found objects.^[3] Tiny words, phrases, and excerpts are scripted on the objects and in page margins.^[3]

She also handmade an "autobiography", full of completely embellished pages covered in drawings with tiny words featuring in the designs.^[3]

Her work "My Autobiography on Eggs" consists of a square grid of eggshells, on each of which is written her life story in tiny font, surrounded by two rows of plain eggshells.^[3]

Her work "Madonna" is a montage of Madonnas.^[11]

Other works recorded in the Ohio Online Visual Artist Registry include Bed I: Hair & Eggs (1993), Hopi Creation Dress (1995), Bed of Sorrows (1996), Creation/Destruction (1997), Iroquois Creation Bonnet (1997), L'Espirit Du Monde (1997), Wahungul Akuni Creation Dress (1997), and Kabbalah Dress (1998).^[12]

Education and personal life

She attended Case Western Reserve University.^[13] Zipporah was married to Myron Kapalan, and together they helped host Junkyard, a poetry festival in the 1980s that was held at the Pearl Road Auto Wrecking and run by Daniel Thompson.^[14] According to her, Junkyard originated in a poetry reading held at her ex-husband's Auto Wrecking Junkyard.^[2] In later years the festival also came to include music and visual art, which she contributed to.^[2]