From the early childhood Sapir has been drawn to the tools. She was fascinated by hammers, vise grips and files. She felt that they were live things and wanted to be used to create something new, something fabulous.
Her path to the art of copper work was not straightforward. After graduating from the art college in Odessa, Ukraine Sapir moved to Israel where she has found her talents. Her ceramic animals and flowers were so original, that Sapir was invited to teach ceramics classes.
Then came the period of creating art pieces from the leather. She was collecting pieces of leather from the old purses and shoes, and used them to create amazing pieces of artwork, which were both energetic and mysterious.
Despite all that, Sapir knew that it was only the first stage of her artistic endeavor. There had to be the next stage that would have fully allowed expressing her artistic vision and matching her temperament. She realized that the moment is near when she got introduced to the copper work artist – amazing master from the country of Georgia, Gabriel Shalomashvili.
Once she convinced him to teach her, Sapir very quickly found her passion. She has created the whole range of copper work pieces and eventually, after exhibiting them at the “Copper Can Speak” exhibit in the Jerusalem gallery, fulfilled her dream – Sapir got her own studio located right next to the walls of the Jerusalem Old City. There she has been being creating not only copper pictures, but even sculptures.
Sapir says: “Copper is an amazing material. Centuries ago it was more valuable than gold, possibly due to its healing power. Artists who work with copper have noted that none of them ever had arthritis or a high blood pressure. In Hebrew copper is pronounced is nehoshet, the word that shares the root with the word nahash, meaning a snake. And it is widely known that snake venom is used to cure different illnesses.
This warm and malleable metal allows artist to easily express her energy and reflect the mood. It is good not only for designing two dimensional pieces but is also great for creating three dimensional sculptures.”
Over time, once Sapir has moved to Jerusalem, she fell in love with this ancient city, where each stone remembers the vast history of this magnificent place. Here, in Jerusalem, she came up with the idea of marrying copper work with the stone.
Copper flowers, slightly bent from the breeze of the wind but still trying to reach up, towards the sun, are “growing” from the stone, which indicates the combination of the current times on one side and infinity on another.
The feeling of wing flutter is felt looking at the beautiful birds, whose gracious flight got captured in another master piece.
All of that – the stones, flowers and the birds – is an artistic world so elegantly created by Sapir Gelman, whose art pieces can be found in the private collections in Germany, United States, Israel, and Russia.