This is the text from my gallery talk at the "Masterpiece – In Honor of Ruth Dayan" exhibition, curated by Hadar MaRom and showcased in Nahalal.
As most of you know I’m an industrial designer by training, I’m also a mother, a partner, and a bit of a pirate farmer.
In my previous life as an industrial designer, I mainly designed plastic casings for various electronic consumer products. My tools were my imagination and a mouse—it seemed like a dream job. But at some point, my hands grew hungry. It wasn’t enough to see my designs out in the world; I had exhausted the limitations of designing for clients, of being the visual translator of their dreams. I was tired of hearing, "Choose any color you want, as long as it’s white." And perhaps most of all, I missed creating things I could give as gifts.
The medium that I found, or maybe found me, is a kind of crochet using thin metal wires. It starts with a simple loop, built in the air, row by row in a circular form. The rest is just manipulations around this theme.
Most of my work is circular—there are a few exceptions, but the core structure is always a sleeve, allowing for a fluid, meditative movement. But just because I crochet in the round doesn’t mean all my designs are round. I apply these circular principles to sharper shapes—polygons, triangles—like you can see in my work.
I love playing with geometry, solving its puzzles, and inventing. This ISK technique is so versatile that it allows me to keep discovering. That’s one of the reasons I love it so much and remain committed to it.
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But the focus of this occasion is "Asherah", not me.
I’ll share a bit about my creative process in general and about Asherah, how it came to be and why I named it that.
When Hadar MaRom, the exhibition’s curator, invited me to participate, my first instinct was a hard no. I don’t consider myself an artist, maybe a craftswoman, a maker, a designer, but not an artist. But I rarely say no to Hadar.
What ultimately convinced me was the deep connection to the Jezreel Valley, where I’ve lived for the past five years. My husband’s family has roots here for generations, and this felt like another step in my journey of belonging to a place that once meant nothing to me but now feels like home, as if I’ve somehow returned.
Israel is a young country, and I come from a family of Holocaust survivors, so I'm first generation born here. I mention this because having such deep generational roots here is not common, and it made this experience even more meaningful.
Even though I was trained as an industrial designer, and maybe precisely because I want to distance myself from the rigid structure of that field, my creative process today is highly intuitive and non-linear. Crochet gives me the freedom to create directly with my hands, shaping the material as I go.
I started with research on Ruth Dayan to understand what resonated with me. She was a woman who wove connections, between cultures, traditions, and people. She dedicated her life to preserving local crafts and promoting women’s work.
I looked for the intersections between her story and my own, not just visually but emotionally. Like her, I see craft as a means of non-verbal connection between people. This is something I experience daily through the international community I teach and create with, (The YoolaISK FB group).
With these thoughts in mind and under tight time constraints, I decided not to crochet something entirely new. Instead, I embraced Ruth Dayan’s spirit and focused on connections. I laid out numerous crocheted pieces that had been lingering in my studio and started playing with them, assembling, disassembling, waiting for something to call to me.
I built towers of air and thread, networks that defined space, just as I build loops in the air, just as I once built digital mesh structures in my design work.
The final piece consists of nine hand- wire crocheted forms, created over the years, waiting for the moment they would come together as one.
Suddenly, I saw it, a feminine totem, tied to sacred traditions and rituals. When I looked up the meaning of totem, the phrase that stood out was “an object representing a spiritual leader”, or in this case, a female leader.
While working on this piece, I was watching a Japanese series on Netflix called "ASURA", about four sisters. Beyond offering a glimpse into life in 1980s Japan, it was about women searching for their strength. Asura is a Buddhist term for demi-gods in pursuit of power, much like these 4 women.
Somewhere along this associative trail, the name’s sound led me straight from ASURA to Asherah, the central goddess of Canaanite mythology. She was the mother goddess of Canaan, the wife of El, the supreme god, the deity of fertility and the earth, responsible for growth and life.
And that’s when it clicked.
For me, growth and life don’t have to be purely botanical, they can also represent the legacy of Ruth Dayan’s work, encouraging woman to grow through their arts.
At that moment, I realized what I had created:
A feminine totem, delicate yet strong, layered with transparency and woven networks, delicate connections between holiness, tradition, and symbolism. The pomegranate motif runs through it like a thread, tying it all together.
I hope you like this tour through my mind ;)
below you can see images from the process and a few of the art works that take part in the show.
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Landed here by chance and want to learn how to crochet in the ISK technique ?
go to the "Where do I start" page !
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