At 17, in
America, Sara Erenthal ran away from her Orthodox Jewish parents to avoid an
arranged marriage. She went to Israel to live with family on a kibbutz. She
battled her sense of shame as she learned to trust herself, fend for herself,
and most important love herself. In her travails she grew up and eventually
became a street artist.
Years later, she eventually came
back to America to live in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
She is a self taught artist who reclaims lost objects left on the street. She
transforms these castaways into folk art and leaves it where she found it for
someone to reclaim. “When I walk around, wherever I happen to be, and I see
something in [a] trash pile outside, like a piece of furniture or a mattress, I
like to draw on it and leave it there for people to enjoy. And often, actually,
people grab it,’ she said.” (McLogan). Much of her
art ends up being reclaimed by its former owners who saw new worth in their old
castaways.
She began doing performance art
where she stands on a stage in front of strangers and begins telling her story
as she strips naked. “Erenthal began to unbraid her hair while the voiceover
described her flight from the community, her loneliness, her first time putting
on pants. She began to disrobe as she described her first pair of jeans, her
difficulty finding her own sense of style, the difficulty of letting skin show
for the first time, or letting people touch her body.” (Ungar-Sargon). She found it hard to be naked, physically and
emotionally, as she told her life’s story.
On her website, Sara
Erenthal, she posted some of her more memorable art. The captions she adds
to the street art embellish the everyday objects. One such object is a board
where she sketched and wrote: My Art Is..My
Healing.” (saraerenthal.com). “Art operates as a kind of therapy for her.
‘Every time I make a piece I'm kind of letting go of something,’ she said.” (Ungar-Sargon). When Sara lets go of her art she is encouraging others accept her emotional release as a gift to others.
