December  10,  2003

Ruth K. Westheimer, Ed.D.
The Lexington Professional Center
133 East 73 Street
New York  NY  10021 

Dear Dr. Ruth

It was such a warm pleasure speaking with you Sunday, following the showing of ‘Nowhere in Africa’ at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Your kind words for my brother, Allan, were sincerely touching: Yes, he was a knowledgeable and impressive man. I think of him, and his positive affect on me, often. After all, I was his first pupil !

The closing lines of the poem ‘Sneezles,’ by A.A. Milne, was quoted as his by-line in his High School Yearbook. They are so appropriate, and go as follows:

And the look in his eye
Seemed to say to the sky,
“Now, how to amuse them today ?”

The rest of the poem [enclosed], which I had not read for many, many years, has also taken on a special meaning, seemingly not inappropriate, all things considered.

Thank you for your interest in my mosaic-tile work. I work with cut and broken industrial tiles to form mosaic images appropriate to the specific project. Projects include murals, sculptured forms and decorative flat pieces, such as trivets, picture frames and inserts for kitchen or bath. I am one of several artists of the major mosaic-tile bench project at the General Grant National Monument, 123rd Street and Riverside Drive.

I have also run community-based workshops in New York, Newark, N.J. and for ORT, in Johannesburg, S. A. Enclosed, find some illustrative material, which may also be seen on the Web at: http://danzig.jct.ac.il/phil/

With special thanks to you for the fine and inexhaustible work you are doing to help repair the world,

Sincerely

Phillip I. Danzig is an architect who came to mosaic-tile making in mid-career. He regards site-specific murals as a "functional art," and holds that his architectural training, at Columbia University, New York City, has been surprisingly valuable. It taught him to examine the visual and cultural environment of each particular site, to listen to those who own, use and enjoy the space, and to acquire the technical means and methods for executing the work.

Following graduation, Danzig spent a year working in England and then made the "Grand Tour" of Europe, visiting the museums, great houses, cathedrals and churches from north to south. He visited the countryside of England and Holland, savored Paris, and journeyed through Germany and Austria to the former Czechoslovakia, the former Yugoslavia and, of course, Greece. But it was while returning to England, through Italy, that he encountered the great golden mosaics of Raven, whose iconographic austerity and flamboyant color effects were to influence and resonate in his own work.

Although inspired by the great European public spaces and the grand palaces and the didactic messages contained in their high-art decorations, Danzig sought to reduce the emphasis on the elitist artist and to champion a more democratic subject matter and working method. He has been influenced by the writings and works of the turn-of-the century architect Louis Sullivan, Los Tres Grandes of the Mexican mural movement (Rivera, Orozco and Sequieros) and by the rise of an indigenous, streetwise community mural movement in the United States.

Danzig combined his private architectural practice with writing, photography and teaching while responding to the evolving cultural and political changes of the decade of the 1960s. His first public work was directing the creation of 350 sand-cast plaques for the May Mathews Park, in New York's Hell's Kitchen, in 1970. He saw himself as instructor to a loose group of urban youth who had to be asked, invited and cajoled into expressing themselves in their own neighborhood park. This was part of a program sponsored by CityArts, the urban arts organization.

When September arrived and the kids went back to school, Danzig found he was some 50 plaques short. How could he finish the project when the "clients" he was supposed to work with had left? Anyway, he reasoned, he was not an artist, he was merely the architectural "facilitator." The project manager, however, insisted the work be done. So Danzig had to reinvent himself as an urban artist. He suddenly discovered, to his surprise, that he had a real graphic flair and that the process was richly rewarding. He initiated the use of cracked dinner dishes in his work.

The following summer, Danzig joined forces with the Chilean sculptor and community artist, Pedro Silva, and began work in mosaic tile at the General Grant National Memorial, in New York City. His responsibility was the creation of some 400 linear feet of images, in cracked tile, on the outside facing of a sinuous, curvilinear bench. The other artists, and most of the 2,000 community volunteers who created the bulk of the tile designs, produced a wonderful medley of natural images. But Danzig's training as a functional architect led him in a different direction. He designed a portrait of General Grant, a portrait of Grant's horse, Cincinnatus, a 150 foot image of the General's, "Stars and Stripes," and a series of life-sized animals, representing President Grant's triumphal world tour, after retirement.

Much of the next ten years were spent in community-art projects. Danzig created and ran the "Wet Paint" community mural project, a publicly-sponsored effort in New Jersey. It aimed at developing the art talents of youth, at producing a positive self-image through positive accomplishments and at decorating the urban environment. It was conceived, in part, to emulate the creative European cave paintings, which raised unspoken common ideals and spiritual values to the level of cultural metaphors, visible to all. "Wet Paint" completed over 50 painted murals throughout Essex County.

It received the First Annual Art Award of the National Parks and Recreation Association, for Community Arts, 1979.

Danzig was also Artistic Director of the Columbus Homes Community Art Project in Newark, New Jersey, responsible for producing a dozen mosaic-tile decorative panels. Here, under the rubric, "Get Crackin' !" Danzig worked with unemployed, low-income residents to complete a complicated, creative and highly visible decorative addition to their own apartment house lobbies. In this, as in other community projects, Danzig aimed, "To return the means of creation to the actual users of the particular public space."

In 1987 Danzig traveled to Nicaragua and participated with local artists on a painted work, entitled, "El Futuro Esta en Nuestras Manos," or, "The Future is in Our Hands." It measures eight feet high and thirty-five feet long.

Danzig's first "signed" mosaic tile mural project, in 1987, was awarded by the Essex County Parks Commission. The theme of "The Lion" and "The Unicorn" reflects the historic English genesis of the early colonies, and the fantasy and recreational potential of a large urban park, as the "lungs" of city living. Each of the two panels measures 4 feet wide by seven feet nine inches high and was completed with the assistance of artist Sarah Linquist Fishbone. He terms this work "stained glass mosaic tile" because, like works in stained glass, many of the larger shapes are formed from single pieces, cut to the exact, required shape.

In this, as in all subsequent work, Danzig pays special attention to the readability of his images. He strives for the ultimate in sensuality, an elusive goal in a medium as concrete and intransigent as fired, mosaic tile. He is eager to clarify the design through such graphic devices as strong subject/background delineation; contrasts of warm colors against cool; small tiles against large and subtle rhythms of placement. He prides himself on the use of appropriate "found" materials.

During the decade of the 1990s, the artist returned to community-minded work. He directed seven large-scale community mosaic tile projects in New York City. These include, "Above a Fruited Plain," 8 feet high and 40 feet long and completed in only two weekends, with volunteer assistance from the students, parents and staff of a New York City School; "Children Round the World," an eight foot diameter mosaic tile medallion; and "Knowledge is Power," completed with apprentices from a small alternate urban high school.

Among his recent projects, Danzig completed, "A Little Light Dispels Much Darkness," depicting the traditional Jewish Shabot table. This image, for the Chabad Center, in Rockaway, New Jersey, shows the two loaves of bread, the wine cup and the shimmering candles, symbols at the heart of the traditional Jewish observance and remembrance of the Seventh Day. This mosaic-tile work measures three feet eight inches high, by four feet eight inches wide. It was completed in 1998.