Now more than ever as I am trying to make sense of the world and find employment, I find myself looking for female role models. I realized quite recently that my Jewish grandma is the only female icon that I really need.
To put it simply, my grandma is a badass who pursued her dreams and knocked down any barriers that stood in her way. When I was younger, I just saw my grandma as the nice, old lady who gave me coloring books into my early teen years. Within the past couple of months, I have started to do more research into my family’s ancestry, which has made me really see how remarkable she truly is, especially as a Jewish illegitimate child who grew up during the Great Depression.
My grandma, for the better part of her life, has been an artist who has been able to turn her passion into a profession. Her first art-related job was being a window decorator for stores. My grandma then transitioned into creating scene designs for plays, and then she transitioned into being a painter. Her greatest artistic accomplishment was having one of her paintings become a permanent part of the Baseball Hall of Fame, for which she was profiled by The New York Times. Even though she is almost 92, she continues to create pieces of art.
While her artistic accomplishments are remarkable, she never really spoke about them. In fact, I only learned that The New York Times profiled her by searching her name on Google around a month ago.
What I do remember is looking at her paintings that covered her walls when she lived in Summit, New Jersey, before she moved to Florida. While my grandma is most known for her realistic paintings, these paintings were all abstract. I must have been five or six years old when I first asked her about those paintings and her paintings in general. At that age, I did not see her that often, maybe twice or three times a year. I blame distance for this (for the first six and a half years of my life, I lived in Winnipeg, while she lived in suburban New Jersey). I was staring at one of her paintings, which had bold black and red slashes, when she started to walk by. This painting stood out to me because it seemed so angry.
While not breaking eye contact with the piece of art in front of me, I ask, “Hey, Grandma, why do you paint so often?”
“Because it’s a way to express myself. You know how you like to draw outfits?” I slowly nod my head. “I like to paint. It’s nice to be creative.”
“It’s nice to be creative” – those words have definitely stuck with me. My childhood love of drawing outfits led me to a creative extracurricular. Throughout high school, I was a costume designer, which was my creative outlet at the time. There were some weeks where I spent twenty hours making costumes and fixing rips made by actors who didn’t seem to be careful when moving in vintage clothing.
In university, I can say at least some of my writing is a creative outlet. I use the word “some” because a lot of emotionally burdensome reporting on sexual assault and disability issues has created more stress for me, instead of releasing stress.
Most importantly, during the Trump administration, it’s nice to be creative with my resistance. I use my creativity to write articles, decorate signs for demonstrations, and for self-care as someone whose identity as Jewish woman with disabilities is constantly undermined by the current administration.
When I think of the last poster I made, a “Free Palestine” poster for a Palestinian solidarity rally in late May, I think of my grandma. I thought of my grandma when I created this poster because she used art to express herself, and so do I.
Julia Metraux is a student at The New School in New York City.
