Biography from Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden:
| The weariness of Woman and fine intricacies of “woman’s work” - needlepoint, embroidery, and serge stitching - are the primary forces in the work of Hadar Sobol. In fact, the wilted and senescent woman is a leitmotif in this body of work. An artwork of thread and ink on vintage linen, The Procession III is a small figure-text triptych. Two skin-sagging women wearing droopy sackcloth dresses are stitched in black thread. They flank a Hebrew text written in ink at the center. Trudging along as though bearing someone else’s heaviness, one woman carries a wrapped bundle while the bundle-less other is in mid-step. The text at the center comes from Weeping Susannah, a book about a young woman, who, though socially challenged and immature, blossoms into her full self by reaching out to a visitor.
Inspired by this book, Sobol has made a body of work which is not so much about midlife crisis as midlife sadness. Midlife marks the passage into true adulthood. Sobol stages it as the “supreme moment,” or the Kairos, wherein mentee becomes mentor, follower passes over to leader, and young-adult female develops into Woman. At the same time the Greek term Kairos refers to an in-between-ness, a liminal zone where the unexpected occurs. It logically follows that Sobol’s thread-on-fabric, ink-on-paper works and paintings strike an odd sense of temporality.
The off-white swatches of linen strike a sense of nostalgia, a feeling for the past, while the figures of worn-out old women look darkly out to the future, to the inevitable entropy of time ahead.?? The saccharine new-age undercurrent of this work is fortunately cut by the cruel truth of aging. The women woven into Sobol’s fabric are slightly hunch-backed, toughened by the drudgeries of housework and manual labor. “Goddesses are never pregnant” is another triptych. There are three figures: two of the stock women on opposite sides, with a skeletal marionette dangling in between them. A small box with the word “GO” is stitched at the bottom.
Also inspired by the “inner voyage” of the woman in “Weeping Susannah,” “Go” is the title of a larger multi-media installation in which Sobol incorporates video into her work. A component of this work stands at the center of the gallery in the form of a vitrine containing precious linen fabric on which is woven four of the crone figures, each carrying a heavy bag. To the left, there is a faint flicker of a small screen that sits beneath the thin fabric. It is a video showing the pendulous forms of bare-breasted women. Skin-sheathed and bulbous in form, naked women slowly roil around in a cramped space. She padded the models’ bodies in the videos, having them don panty hose filled with wads of cloth. Reminiscent of Louise Bourgeois’ “Obese Bulimic Anorexic” series, Sobol makes a statement about female body dysmorphia. It would be a stretch to call this work political. A more apt appraisal is that it was made in the spirit of a quiet, reserved, and resolved feminism. At the same time, the work functions apart from universals. It is intimate and deeply personal – about the isolation of Woman and woman, the archetypal female and the artist.
Born: 1971, Israel
Currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas
Education:
1997 Bachelor of Design, Textile Design, Shenkar, Tel Aviv (The Israeli University for Fashion and Textile Design), graduated with excellence
2003 Life Drawing and Mix Media Classes at Collin County Community College (Spring Creek) and Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
Solo Exhibitions:
2005 Best of Show Winner Viewpoints 2004, THE ARTS Gallery, Collin County Community College, Dallas, Texas
2005 Hadar Sobol, Purnell Gallery, Hockaday School, Dallas, Texas
2008 Invitational exhibition for art collectors, Dallas, Texas
2010 Kairos (the supreme moment), Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas
Group Exhibitions:
1997 Hamumche Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2004 All-State Student Juried Competition, Collin County Community College Gallery, Dallas, Texas
2004 Art in the Metroplex, TCU Gallery (Texas Christian University), Fort Worth, Texas
2004 The Rockwall Artist League National Juried Art Exhibition, The Center at Rockwall City Place, 108 E Washington, Rockwall, Texas ( juried by Paul Rogers Harris)
2005 37th Annual Juried Exhibition, Visual Art Society of Texas, Dallas, Texas
2005 Member show, McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, Texas
2005 The First Annual Figure 1 Show, Studio 33 Eighteen, Dallas, Texas
2006 Gerald Peters Gallery, Dallas, Texas
2006 Works on Paper, Studio 33 Eighteen, Dallas, Texas (group exhibition)
2008 Art for the Bridge, The Women’s Museum, Dallas, Texas
2009 Thank You Fort Worth: An Appreciation from Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, Texas
2011 Dallas Art Fair, Fashion Industry Gallery, Dallas, Texas (Valley House Gallery)
Literature:
Dan Pritchett, “Hadar Sobol: Valley House Gallery,” A + C Magazine, October, 2010.
Awards:
2004 Best of show, All-State Student Juried Competition, Collin County Community College, Dallas, Texas
2004 1st Place, 2D, All-State Student Juried Competition, Collin County Community College, Dallas, Texas
2004 3rd Place, The Rockwall Artist League National Juried Art Exhibition, Rockwall, Texas
2005 Award, 37th Annual Juried Exhibition, Visual Art Society of Texas, Dallas, Texas
2005 Best of show, The First Annual Figure 1 Show, Studio 33 Eighteen, Dallas, Texas
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