Patrick Comerford
The closing acts of worship during this week’s Ecumenical Pilgrimage to Walsingham were in the Shrine Church, led by Prebendary Norman Wallwork and the Revd Dr Richard Clutterbuck, and in the Parish Church of Saint Mary and All Saints in Little Walsingham, where the celebrant and preacher was Bishop Lindsay Urwin of the Diocese of Southwark.
The parish church in Little Walsingham, which I hope to describe in another posting, holds three important works of art from the 1980s, commissioned in association with ‘Art in Churches’: ‘Genesis’ (1986) by Naomi Blake; Ruth Duckworth’s untitled ceramic relief installed in 1988; and ‘Spring Carpet’ (1985), a painting by John Riches.
‘Genesis’ is a sculpture in resin bronze by Naomi Blake (1924-2018) which she ‘dedicated to the sanctity of life’ and depicts a mother and child. Both the title of the sculpture and its subject suggest her Jewish background and faith. Naomi Blake is a Jewish sculptor who was born in the former Czechoslovakia, and her work can be seen in cathedrals and churches and other locations throughout England.
Blake’s works that I have written about in the past include two sculptures at the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine in Limehouse, London, ‘Genesis’ (1994) and ‘Love is My Meaning’ (2000), and ‘View’ in Fitzroy Square Garden, London.
Naomi Blake was born in Mukaĉevo, Czechoslovakia (now Mukacheve, Ukraine) to Jewish parents in 1924. The youngest of 10 children, her original name was Zisel Dum – she was named Zisel, meaning ‘sweet’, by her parents. She survived the Holocaust as a child in Auschwitz, although many members of her family died there.
In 1942, her family included 32 members: four grandparents, her parents, nine siblings, six spouses and 10 young nieces and nephews. In 1944, when Naomi was 20, most of her family was deported to Auschwitz and she was separated from everyone except her older sister Malchi; her father, another sister and her nieces and nephews were led into the gas chambers. She returned to Mukacevo in July 1945 to find her family home in ruins and that of the 32 family members before the war, only had seven survived by 1945.
After World War II, she lived in Milan, Rome and Jerusalem, before making her home in North London. She changed her name to Naomi in 1948 and she left Israel in 1952 to seek medical help and rejoin members of her family.
She met and married a young German refugee, Asher Blake, they settled in London, and they were the parents of two children, Jonathan and Anita (Nin). The early days were not easy as she knew no-one, spoke poor English and had no qualifications. But Asher encouraged Naomi to pursue her love of sculpture as a career. She enrolled at the Hornsey School of Art, now Middlesex University, and she studied there in 1955-1960.
Naomi’s work began with ceramic pots and portrait sculpture, progressing to figurative and then abstract work. Sculpting originally in clay and then in polystyrene for casting in bronze, she gradually reintroduced figurative elements in her work, showing the influences of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
Her work developed through a cycle of embryonic forms, enclosed and protected figures, gradually opening out ‘to free the figure from its haven to stand against all adversity and spread its free wings.’ With her great interest in Jewish life and learning, she also sculpted imposing, expressive Biblical figures, bringing to life their strength and character.
Through her work, Naomi Blake promoted understanding between faiths. Her work has been exhibited in many galleries in Britain and abroad, and her sculptures can be seen in many places of worship such as the cathedrals in Bristol, Chelmsford and Norwich, Saint Ethelburga’s Church, London, Saint Botolph’s Church, Aldgate, Saint James’ Church, Muswell Hill, All Saints’ Church, East Finchley, the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine’s, Limehouse, and synagogues in Finchley, Hampstead Garden, Kingsbury, Leeds and Oxford, as well as the National Holocaust Centre in Newark, Nottinghamshire. Her work is also in many royal collections and in public places such as Great Ormond Street Hospital, the University of Leicester, and Fitzroy Square.
Naomi Blake’s ‘Genesis’ (1994) in the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine’s, Limehouse, is a figure of a mother and child with an inscription explaining that the work was given in honour of Lady Elizabeth Basset and ‘to promote understanding between people of different faiths.’
Her ‘Genesis’ (1984) in Little Walsingham predates that by ten years. The viewer may, perhaps, recall the words of Isaiah: ‘Look to the rock from when you were hewn, to the quarry from which you were dug; look to your father Abraham and to Sarah who gave you birth’ (Isaiah 51: 1-2).
In its present setting, in a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the sculpture is interpreted, inevitably, as a Madonna and Child. In this context, the title ‘Genesis’ reminds the Christian that the Incarnation is about a new beginning, or genesis for humanity.
‘Genesis’ was the gift of the artist to the church. She dedicated the sculpture to ‘The Sanctity of Life’ and this dedication proclaims the common conviction of Jew and Christian that human life has a special holiness through the gift of God.
In spite of her Holocaust experiences, Naomi Blake believed ‘there is something positive in the human figure – there is a lot of good in people … with my past, if I were pessimistic, somehow, it wouldn’t have been worthwhile surviving.’
Naomi Blake died on 7 November 2018. Her daughter Anita Peleg, published two books devoted to her life and work: Naomi Blake: Dedication in Sculpture, a comprehensive catalogue of her sculptures; and Glimmer of Hope: The Story of Naomi Blake, telling the story of how she defied the odds and survived to bring joy to thousands.
Ruth Duckworth’s untitled ceramic relief was installed in the church in Little Walsingham in 1988 with the support of Art in Churches, and was the gift of Peter Palumbo. The artist has deliberately left the mural untitled so that no one interpretation is imposed on the person looking at it. It evokes different ideas and thoughts in different people, but ultimately the subtlety of line and colour is sufficient to make it appropriate to its setting. The coloured folds which emerge from the alcove in two distinct sections suggest, on some interpretations, this present life and the life to come.
Ruth Duckworth (1919-2009) was a modernist sculptor who specialised in ceramics, she worked in stoneware, porcelain and bronze. Her sculptures are mostly untitled. She is best known for Clouds over Lake Michigan, a wall sculpture.
She was born Ruth Windmüller in Hamburg, the daughter of Ellen Strack, a Lutheran, and Edgar Albert Windmüller, a Jewish lawyer. She left Nazi Germany in 1936 to study at the Liverpool College of Art and later studied at the Hammersmith School of Art and at the City and Guilds of London Art School.
She married the British artist Aidron Duckworth in 1949 and they later moved to the US in 1964, where Ruth taught at the University of Chicago and was a visiting professor of sculpture at the University of Illinois. The couple divorced in 1967.
‘Spring Carpet’ in the church in Little Walsingham is a painting by John Riches (1941-1999), who was originally from Norwich and who returned in 1972 to teach at the Norwich School of Art. His later work was strongly influenced by his interest in church iconography and mediaeval decoration.
‘Spring Carpet’ speaks of new life by means of light filtered through branches speckling the earth which harbours the new buds of life.
It was appropriate that I saw this work in springtime, because The artist asked that his painting should hang in a place where the sunlight would fall on it, with the shadows made by the window tracery giving the impression the sunlight was filtering down through the branches of trees onto the earth, earth in which new plant life is springing up.
These three works of contemporary art were added to Saint Mary and All Saints Church following exhibitions in the church from 1985 to 1988 and with the support of Art in Churches. They were originally grouped at the entrance to the Lady Chapel. But Naomi Blake’s ‘Genesis’ has since been moved to a corner at the west end and sadly it is easily missed by people entering and leaving the church by the north door at the west end.
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