by dan pine
staff writer
Drew Schnierow is not your typical rock star.
When a block of hewn calcite falls into his hands, Schnierow chisels it into a work of art.
The Marin County sculptor has just completed one of his biggest commissions yet, a ner tamid (eternal flame) for New York City’s West End Synagogue.
Schnierow doesn’t just carve stone. He illuminates it. Because of the bright orange hue of honeycomb calcite — his mineral of choice — he often hollows out spaces for a light source, either candle or electric. The results, as with the ner tamid, are brilliant. Literally.
“It’s the color,” he says of the calcite, which comes from a single Utah quarry. “When you cut it open, it looks like orange slices. You can carve it like marble, but it’s as soft as alabaster, the traditional stone used for lighting.”
The ner tamid is Schnierow’s first explicitly Jewish commission. Once landing the assignment, he saw his task as both mechanical and metaphysical. “The ner tamid is a channel that brings God’s energy into the congregation,” says the artist. “Making it look like a flame would have been man’s language. I had to find God’s language.”
The ner tamid is made of three freestanding pieces of stone mounted on a brass base. When lit, it glows like fire. Unfortunately, manmade light is not eternal. The LED bulb should take the synagogue through the next seven years before needing replacement.
With more than 25 lucrative commissions behind him, Schnierow is on his way to a place of prominence among local stone sculptors. Yet he’s only been doing this for four years.
Before that, the Los Angeles native had been a painter, a graphic artist, a Web designer and even a fashion designer. But stone sculpting, he says, has been “the most successful, both financially and in terms of my happiness. It is grueling though. Every day I’m covered in dust, I’m hammering, lifting. Every few days I ask ‘What am I doing?’”
That question went unanswered earlier in his life as Schnierow, 39, tried out various creative personas. Growing up in a Reform household in the San Fernando Valley, he went on to study business at Cal State Northridge. A summer drama class led him to try acting for a while (he once had a call-back for a Madonna video), but ultimately he attended NYU to earn a masters degree in painting.
In 2003, Schnierow moved to San Rafael to get away from the frenzy of big city life. “Obviously money’s important,” he says, “but a lot of the stuff society says is important, and the rules we’re supposed to follow, are not true for me. For most of my friends who stayed on the path they were told, there’s something missing.”
As for his Jewish connection, it remains strong. He describes himself as “110 percent Jewish. I’m like a tall unfunny Woody Allen.” And he can trace his family lineage back to the late Chabad Rebbe Menachem Schneerson (“My great-great uncle was his brother”), though he is not Orthodox.
As for the future, Schnierow expects to increase his commissions, and perhaps create a large-scale work someday: one a viewer can walk through, and solar powered, so that it stays lit at night, all night.
Those kind of outsized dreams may or may not be typical of other artists. But they certainly typify Schnierow. “I’m just wired a certain way,” he says. “I get visions and come up with all these ideas. The most important subject is God, the universe and how it is. I believe it’s time we all come together to find out what is God. I don’t think God is hiding.”
staff writer
Drew Schnierow is not your typical rock star.
When a block of hewn calcite falls into his hands, Schnierow chisels it into a work of art.
The Marin County sculptor has just completed one of his biggest commissions yet, a ner tamid (eternal flame) for New York City’s West End Synagogue.
Schnierow doesn’t just carve stone. He illuminates it. Because of the bright orange hue of honeycomb calcite — his mineral of choice — he often hollows out spaces for a light source, either candle or electric. The results, as with the ner tamid, are brilliant. Literally.
“It’s the color,” he says of the calcite, which comes from a single Utah quarry. “When you cut it open, it looks like orange slices. You can carve it like marble, but it’s as soft as alabaster, the traditional stone used for lighting.”
The ner tamid is Schnierow’s first explicitly Jewish commission. Once landing the assignment, he saw his task as both mechanical and metaphysical. “The ner tamid is a channel that brings God’s energy into the congregation,” says the artist. “Making it look like a flame would have been man’s language. I had to find God’s language.”
The ner tamid is made of three freestanding pieces of stone mounted on a brass base. When lit, it glows like fire. Unfortunately, manmade light is not eternal. The LED bulb should take the synagogue through the next seven years before needing replacement.
With more than 25 lucrative commissions behind him, Schnierow is on his way to a place of prominence among local stone sculptors. Yet he’s only been doing this for four years.
Before that, the Los Angeles native had been a painter, a graphic artist, a Web designer and even a fashion designer. But stone sculpting, he says, has been “the most successful, both financially and in terms of my happiness. It is grueling though. Every day I’m covered in dust, I’m hammering, lifting. Every few days I ask ‘What am I doing?’”
That question went unanswered earlier in his life as Schnierow, 39, tried out various creative personas. Growing up in a Reform household in the San Fernando Valley, he went on to study business at Cal State Northridge. A summer drama class led him to try acting for a while (he once had a call-back for a Madonna video), but ultimately he attended NYU to earn a masters degree in painting.
In 2003, Schnierow moved to San Rafael to get away from the frenzy of big city life. “Obviously money’s important,” he says, “but a lot of the stuff society says is important, and the rules we’re supposed to follow, are not true for me. For most of my friends who stayed on the path they were told, there’s something missing.”
As for his Jewish connection, it remains strong. He describes himself as “110 percent Jewish. I’m like a tall unfunny Woody Allen.” And he can trace his family lineage back to the late Chabad Rebbe Menachem Schneerson (“My great-great uncle was his brother”), though he is not Orthodox.
As for the future, Schnierow expects to increase his commissions, and perhaps create a large-scale work someday: one a viewer can walk through, and solar powered, so that it stays lit at night, all night.
Those kind of outsized dreams may or may not be typical of other artists. But they certainly typify Schnierow. “I’m just wired a certain way,” he says. “I get visions and come up with all these ideas. The most important subject is God, the universe and how it is. I believe it’s time we all come together to find out what is God. I don’t think God is hiding.”
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