Celebrating Women's History Month by celebrating Palestinian-American ARTIST Samia Halaby

Producer Sharon Reich from Reuters TV interviews Samia Halaby, exhibit consultant and one of the artists. Born in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1936, Halaby departed Palestine with her family for a few days only to find themselves denied their right to return to their home and places of work, losing all their possessions to confiscation and looting. After living in Beirut for over three years, Halaby emigrated to the US as a teenager. She graduated from Indiana University with a Master of Fine Arts in painting in 1963 and began teaching, including 10 years as professor at the Yale School of Art. (Photo: nigelparry.net) Photostory: Made in Palestine Exhibit opens to packed crowds in New York Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 17 March 2006

http://www.sakakini.org/visualarts/halaby.htm
The Artist:

Born in Jaffa in 1936, Halaby was raised in Haifa until her family immigrated to Lebanon after the occupation of Palestine in 1948. In 1951 she moved to the US where she got her MA in painting from Indiana and Michigan. The artist is exhibited in museums and galleries all over the US. Her solo exhibits include the Yale School of Art gallery, and galleries in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, where her latest exhibit was at the Sakakini in 2000. Halaby’s kinetic paintings have also been performed and presented in numerous locations in the US, Syria and Palestine since ’93. She has taught art at Yale, the University of Hawaii, and others. She was also a visiting artist in Birzeit University, Palestine for three weeks in 1997.

Her work:

Halaby’s art is abstract and she usually uses oil paints for her work, she also executes a lot of work on paper using acrylics, encaustic and print media. Her art includes works as large as six by twenty four feet. Halaby’s drawings and paintings are influenced by nature; many feature trees of Palestine. In 1985 she began using digital media, she programs kinetic computer paintings and performs them live with musicians. The paintings are printed out from a computer software she invented and designed herself.

For more information on Samia Halaby go to: www.art.net/Studios/Visual/Samia/samia.html

http://www.art.net/Studios/Visual/Samia/pal/olives/olives.html

Olives of Palestine

Ain Keanya, 1999. Colored pencils on paper

The Great Great Grandmother, 1999