Luck of the Draw

STORYTELLER “As artists we should be able to tell our stories just as they are without crafting every book into an educational message that hits the reader over the head” says Lumer

“E dgy” isn’t usually a word that’s used to describe illustrations for frum children’s books but French-born Los Angeles artist Marc Lumer isn’t your typical frum illustrator. One of the first things a person sees when walking into Marc Lumer’s art studio on the second floor of his home is a large bright-yellow Pop Art–style painting of a fire hydrant with Hebrew letters gracefully escaping from underneath.

Torah is water Lumer explains adding “So what better metaphor should represent how it flows in all things than a fire hydrant?”

What indeed? And just as this is not the usual traditional painting that your elter zeide would have hung on his living room wall neither are the nine children’s books and one graphic novel that Lumer illustrated and cowrote.