Capturing and Honoring Family Memories with Karen Frostig

This workshop, led by Karen Frostig, is designed to help you explore and commemorate significant family memories. It focuses on the stories, objects, and people that shape your sense of family, from celebrations and traditions to losses and ruptures.

Preparation: Please bring a journal for writing and an object or photo of an object that stirs feelings about home and family: a special person, an ancestor you never met, a significant place, an occasion; a cherished object, a letter or jewelry; keys to your home, a photo of a special chair or a place that provides space for reflection, a garden, a book.

Discussion: The session starts by exploring the meaning of rituals and commemoration. The leader will share her own artistic process for creating meaningful objects, large and small, public and personal, related to her family’s history.

Writing & Creating: You’ll use a journal and a series of prompts to reflect on your own family memories and the object or photo you brought. The goal is to imagine and create a ritual to honor a specific memory. Paper and colored pencils will be provided if you wish to sketch your ideas.

Reflection: You’ll have time to share your experience with the group, discussing your original object, the process of creating a ritual, or the power of commemoration as a personal expression of meaning and memory.

Karen Frostig is a public memory artist and cultural historian known for directing large-scale memorial projects. As a Professor at Lesley University and a scholar at Brandeis University, her work has been recognized globally, including at the United Nations General Assembly and in the New York Times. She is the Founding Director of The Vienna Project and the Locker of Memory memorial project. She was recently commissioned to lead the design concept for a new permanent memorial at the Jungfernhof concentration camp in Latvia.

Register to join us onsite on Sunday, March 29 at 10:15 a.m. Contact cajl@tisrael.org with questions.