In September, 2016, the Knoxville Museum of Art acquired these two works by Arnold.
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“The Awesome Name”
Stoneware, stamped and incised.
Cylinder with traditional Hebrew meditation text.
10” H x 6”
Wooden base by Ernie Gross
5:22 Ben Bag Bag used to say, “Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it. Reflect on it and grow old and gray with it. Don’t turn from it, for nothing is better than it.”
Text: This cylinder has the first portion of an extremely complex meditation. It is a combination of the letter aleph with each of the letters of the tetragrammaton (YHVH) and each pair of letters is pronounced with every possible combination of vowels. If one were able to pronounce four of these two letter syllables every second, it would take about seven hours to complete
Ezra 1:1-8: In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord inspired King Cyrus of Persia to issue this proclamation throughout his kingdom, both by word of mouth and in writing: “Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia: ”
The shape of this cylinder was influenced by the form on which the Decree of Return for the Jews, 539 BCE was engraved. Arnold was influenced by one seen at the Jewish Museum.
The cylinder is included in this book; which has 3 pages about Arnold, with 5 images.
Judaic Artisans Today: Contemporary Judaica in the United States and the Artists Who Created It
by Kathryn Morton
“Divine Plenty”
16 ½” x 19 5/8” to 28½” x 21”
This drawing is graphite on Arches paper.
In 1991, Arnold heard “Barnett Newman’s Jewish Symbolism,” a lecture on Barnett Newman by Ziva Amishai-Maisels during the International Seminar on Jewish Art in Jerusalem, and immediately asked a friend take him immediately to the art supply store.
When Dale Cleaver saw them, he said, those are nice prints. Arnold said they are drawings. Dale said no. Arnold said, yes, I did them. Dale said, you did them!
Several years later, Gilya Schmidt invited Ziva to lecture at UT and we hosted a gathering for her in our home. We did not know who she was! When she saw drawings, I said she had influenced Arnold, and she replied, I could tell!