"When trees speaks"
Joseph Somer
The starting point to my wood work is my fascination with abandoned wood materials, old practical furniture, building materials, old pieces of wood washed on the seashores / rivers, doors, dry branches & roots - commonly seen as “dead material”, meaning the material is not growing anymore and is permanently static on growth but strongly tied to decay.
I see my art primarily as a process of looking into the wood and finding that eye or that shape or that color that pops up and suddenly there is an image, a story to tell. While when starting a drawing in front of an empty page, my imagination or subconscious thoughts are leading the hand on the paper. Here, something in the wood calls for that sign of life in the texture after being out there exposed to the changing seasons, changing temperatures. The change in temperature, rain or sun - all leave life marks on the wood, sometimes those are actual mushrooms or a break that uncovers internal parts of the wood or just scratches on a table a result of wear & tear - all those life signs are evident in the type of wood I prefer to work with. Aged, rugged and some of them even rotten.
In the extreme mode where the piece of wood is rotten I start first with a process of “rehabilitation”, consisting mainly of scraping the rotten parts and living those strong and sustainable to be further treated. Then, like most of the pieces - the sanding and drying process starts
Joseph Somer
Joseph “Yossi” Somer is an award-winning Norwegian-Israeli film industry - professional and entrepreneur.
Across a forty year career, his work has won eight (8) Israeli Academy Awards, two (2) Gold Medals and one Bronze Medal at Worldfest Houston, and numerous awards and citations at various prestigious international film events.
The Economist named him as one of the pioneers of cinematic “magical realism” because of his utilization of computer-generated images in motion picture production (Dybbuk).
Yossi has cooperated with legendary musician Roger Waters of Pink Floyd on the original motion picture soundtrack for his film, The Dybbuk of the Holy Apple Field. The soundtrack album that Yossi produced, involving DJ Dorfmeister of Vienna and DJ Shantel of Frankfurt, won best soundtrack in 1998.
Yossi has also worked with Norwegian master jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek, who wrote the original soundtrack for his film Burning Memory.
In 1983, he created what is considered to be Israel’s first music video, “Don’t Light Me a Candle.” He also produced and directed the music video “Shake our Pom Pom” for Kohinoor, Norway’s woman of the year in 2007.
Yossi has collaborated with the late director Fred Zinneman (High Noon, Julia, Oklahoma) and German film producer Klaus Hellwig (The Lace Maker, F for Fake, and Providence).
He studied at the London Film School from late director Charles Crichton (Fish called Wanda) and established the Theater Seeking Youth organization at Haifa Theater.
Yossi has also worked for Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures as Property Master and has supervised more than 75 successful projects that were the foundation of an education plan delivered to the Israeli Ministry of Education ́s Film & Communication department for 3D, animation and VFX.
Yossi is a highly experience expert in the IT-Entertainment domain as CEO and platform content developer, and is currently the driving force behind the development and establishment of a global content and cutting edge animation and film technology studio in Asia.
Yossi is a social entrepreneur seeking new peaceful ways of connecting between opposing cultures locally and globally, using his artistic soft skills as bridge builder by nature to create new ways of communication.
