ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: Where did Marc Shanker first hear the proverbs that he illustrated in the book?
Marc Shanker grew up in the Boulevard Housing Projects in East New York, Brooklyn, where he attended Thomas Jefferson High School, and then studied Sociology at Brooklyn College. He trained as an Orientation and Mobility Instructor for the Blind but spent the greater part of his working life in administrative positions in the labor movement. After college, Marc began to make art. He rejected a formal art education preferring instead to struggle alone toward a realization of his own creative vision. Marc uses humor, irony and paradox to reference existential questions, and issues regarding art, language and contemporary social problems. His subjects range from the Ladino proverbs of the Sephardic Jews to the complexities and absurdities of modern life.
In 2008 Marc published Traces of Sepharad (Huellas de Sefarad), Etchings of Judeo-Spanish Proverbs. He has since published a wide range of Artist Books, and about 80 small, colorful 12-page books on a variety of topics. In 2008 Marc founded Gravity Free Press to show, publish and distribute his artwork, books, broadsides, and to serve as a platform for collaborative projects with other artists, especially writers and poets.
In 2012 we spoke with Marc about Traces of Sepharad and this week to celebrate International Ladino Day we are bringing you that interview again.
(NOTE: International Ladino Day is celebrated each year in January or early February in places with Sephardic communities, including New York, Seattle, Florida, Madrid, Istanbul, Buenos Aires and Jerusalem, with events like music, lectures, and storytelling to preserve the Judeo-Spanish language.)
