How Hadassah Greater Miami’s ArtWare for Good Mural Project Built Community

Hadassah Greater Miami members at Artware For Good Mural unveiling. Photo courtesy of Hadassah Greater Miami.

The author unveiling Hadassah Greater Miami’s Artware for Good Mural. Photo supplied by Hadassah Greater Miami.

Hadassah Greater Miami members, family, friends, and supporters recently came together to help create an incredible mural representing what Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America stands for.

The process started when Diana Polack from ArtWare for Good reached out to Hadassah about collaborating on an art project. ArtWare for Good’s mission embodies creativity, philanthropy and community around the world and in your hometown. The organization shares Hadassah’s mission of improving the lives of women everywhere. We came up with the idea of a mural that would be a collective representation of what Hadassah is and have our Hadassah Greater Miami members decorate the individual pieces.

We commissioned artist Andi Sustrin Filonow from Studio 222 in Tuxedo, NY to create the mural. Andi’s mother is a Lifetime Member and supporter of Hadassah, so Andi already had a special connection to our organization and what we stand for. Andi used her artistic abilities to design the mural spotlighting some of the significant themes of Hadassah. Some of the featured aspects are the Hadassah Medical Organization, our clown program, our Youth Aliyah villages, the Israeli flag, the Western Wall, Keepers of the Gate, breast cancer research, and much more. In her own unique way, Andi created  an incredible vision of Hadassah.

We received the mural from Andi in black and white, and Diana turned it into forty-eight different eight by ten inch coloring pages. These coloring pages would be colored in by leaders and volunteers in their own version of what Hadassah means to them.

Hadassah Greater Miami used this mural as an opportunity to reconnect our leaders and members after being separated for so long due to COVID 19. We hosted an Art in the Park fundraising event at Crandon Park in Key Biscayne, Florida to gather and color the mural pieces. It was a perfect day to celebrate together with generations of our Hadassah Greater Miami members, from grandmothers to grandchildren!

After all 48 pieces were completed, Diana assembled the various parts together and Hadassah art was created. I was proud to unveil this collective 24” x 36” piece of art representing significant Hadassah themes Sunday, Sept 11^th at the Jewish Museum of Florida FIU, where it was displayed until October 5^th. The piece will then rotate to various Jewish institutions in Miami for all to enjoy seeing. This was an incredible opportunity to showcase Hadassah to the Miami-Dade community.

The mural represents how the total is more than the sum of its parts, like Hadassah, each member is important and together we make an impact on  the world.

Hadassah Greater Miami’s Artware for Good Mural. Photo courtesy of Hadassah Greater Miami.

—

To learn more about the lifesaving, world-class medical research at Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel, visit this link.