NEW YORK.- Yeshiva University Museum (YUM) in Chelsea will present Feminine Principals: Works in Iron, Fiber and Glass by three contemporary Jewish artists: Orna Ben-Ami, Tel Aviv; Georgette Benisty, Boston; and Sarah Gallin, Westchester. Their individual life stories and identities as Jewish women are reflected in this triplex exhibition.

Orna Ben-Ami welds iron transforming everyday objects into personal symbols recalling childhood memories offering universal messages. A master of the medium, Ben-Ami draws on iron’s attributes of rigidity and rawness yet achieves softness and texture in her work. Ben-Ami teaches art at Tel Aviv University and has studied sculpture at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., as well as in Israel. Her work has been exhibited extensively in Israel including the Tefen Industrial Park, and six commissioned works at the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem.

Fiber artist Georgette Benisty was born and raised in Casablanca and spent many years living and working in the U.S. as a fashion designer. She successfully marketed clothing through Neiman Marcus and her own atelier on Newbury Street in Boston. Her fabric figures, entitled Renouer (renewal), reflect her desire to stitch together the dispersed fragments of her Moroccan past and French culture, interweaving the color, rhythm, architecture, and antiquities of her native land through fabric, paint and collage.

Saara Gallin works in glass creating abstract reliefs and ceremonial objects using kiln-formed glass and copper-foil technique. Light is her motivation and her inspiration also the strength and heroism of the Jewish woman and the land of Israel. It is the quality of glass and its relationship to light that attracted Gallin to the medium. Her earlier works were completely abstract until she was inspired by the rescue at Entebbe. At that time, her subject matter changed and she began to incorporate symbolic motifs in her work, commemorating momentous periods in Jewish history and significant contributions by individuals. Gallin studied with master glassblower Maurice Heaton at Connecticut State College, and continues to incorporate his theories into her work which includes architectural, public, and residential commissions. Gallin’s work has been exhibited in Israel and the U.S., and she was a finalist in the Spertus Judaica Prize Competition in 2004.