In my most recent column, I discuss my friendship with a young rabbi and a 60-something Jewish painter in Brooklyn, named Archie Rand. When I first met Archie he was showing his enormous work "The 613" in the dilapidated warehouse he owned in Brooklyn. Due to space concerns for the column I wasn't able to go into as much detail about Archie and his work as I'd like.
I'd originally learned about Archie and "The 613" through Peter Steinfels who had told me he was writing a column about it for the New York Times. Based on his recommendation I thought Archie's work was a perfect fit for the online magazine, BustedHalo.com that I was running at the time. We brought a photographer, Mary Faith Oneil, out to the site who took some great pictures that unfortunately no longer seem to be accessible on the BH site. Mary enjoyed the work so much that she actually volunteered to photograph each of the 613 paintings individually as Archie disassembled the exhibit (as you can imagine, not an easy task). There are hopes that all these photos will be compiled into a large art book of some sort and Archie's agent continues to shop the work to publishers.
In the meantime, I thought it would be good to link people to Peter's original article as well as some of the images the Times printed of the show.
