...Another alternative space in New York, the Ernest Rubenstein Gallery at the Educational Alliance provides classes and instruction in many art forms, and its gallery program reflects this educational focus. Humanity-- A Living Installation, an exhibition by artist Devorah Sperber (May7- June 10, 1998) enlisted children and families to help create the artwork. The work deals with issues of individuality and cultural diversity and is made u of hundreds of similar but unique cast forms suggesting human faces.

Participants of all ages were invited to paint one of the cast forms and create their own unique contribution to this "visual celebration of individuality and diversity." Sperber's installation was unique in the extent of public involvement it allowed; here, viewers, even children, became collaborators in the making of the exhibited work. Sperber says, "I think the artist must be able to 'let go' of all preconceived notions of what should happen, how it should happen and what it should look like. Only after the artist has achieved this state of 'egolessness,' does authentic collaboration with non-artists and/or children become possible.

Entirely worth the trip to SECCA, however, is Devorah Sperber's "Virtual Environment 1," an 8-by-28-foot wall construction featuring 20,000 spools of Coats and Clark thread in a subtle range of pastel hues. Talk about a difficult medium! Like the dabs of paint in an impressionist painting when viewed too closely, this piece makes little sense up close, other than as a display of an awful lot of spools. Back a way and squint a little and the dabs of beige, gray, peach, blue and lavender reveal a large and quite beautiful "painting" of stones in a mountain stream. Sperber's vision is remarkable. It brings to mind a monumental worm's-eye view by photographer Ansel Adams of a rock-filled mountain stream. Sperber's subtle construcion has all the necessary artistic conventions: originality, skilled delineation, control of the medium, a unified, pleasing palette. All that's missing is a message (unless you are one who finds sermons in stones), and that omission, in this case, is sort of welcome!