Rebecca Weber, owner of the Still Life Gallery, talks about art and artists.

Why I love this piece: “For The Love of G-d” This is a work of art by Eric Robert Parnes, an artist that I feature in my gallery. He found the simple wooden Hebrew letter, Chai, in a flea market. In the Hebrew language, the word Chai means life. The next time I saw the sculpture, which stands about 10 inches high, he had painstakingly bejeweled it with hundreds of tiny Swarovski crystals. I immediately understood where he was going with this piece. The title alone is a direct reference to the famous English artist Damian Hirst, and his controversial work, “For The Love of God,” a skull made out of platinum, diamonds and human teeth. The total thing has 8,601 diamonds and comes in at 1,106.18 carats. It’s the most expensive piece of art ever created, costing between $16 million and $20 million to make, and $99 million to buy.

Here Parnes has taken a found object, humble in material, yet rich in Jewish symbolism, commenting on the state of the High Art market and its vanity. He is also referencing his own Jewish background by not using the name of God, either written or spoken. By appropriating and re-contextualizing these symbols and signs, Parnes has inverted their meaning, and by doing so, become a provocateur of the highest order.

I have been following Eric’s progress for a few years now. He has just recently returned from a month-long stay in Israel, working on an archeological dig with the University of Haifa, a Roman city, set on a hill near Lake Kinneret. I am quite sure this experience will find its way into a whole new body of work.

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BEYOND THE EYE

A few days ago, Eric Robert Parnes was chest-deep in a 1,500-year-old Israeli tomb. The artist, whose work is displayed in Ellicott City’s Still Life Gallery, recently returned from Israel where he spent a month on an archeological dig, blogging about what the ancient, foreign land reveal.

“The task was simple, slowly uncover the tomb floor, and sort through the bones contained within,” he writes in his July 27 post. “After lowering myself into the tomb once again, I was able to spend countless hours sitting with the dead, who last had a human touch them when they were first placed in this tomb over 1,500 years ago ... I couldn’t help but think about the fact that I was literally surrounded by death, an old death, that was now in my clothes, skin, and inhaled in my lungs.”