Creative Soulmates
From The Pen Woman, Summer 2019
Earlier this year, Boca Raton music member Sheila Firestone’s work, “Miriam and the Women of the Desert,” premiered as a staged concert in Delray Beach, Florida, followed by a production of the musical at a small black-box theater. The musical is about the Biblical story of Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, and the women who surrounded her.
Bonita Tabakin, art member of the Chevy Chase and Washington, D.C., branches, created original art that was featured as scenic backdrops. She flew in for the final performance to see the beautifully blended art and music that was the result of their collaboration.
The two women met at the NLAPW 2016 Biennial Conference in D.C. They became friends, and eventually began discussing the idea of collaborating.
Firestone had decided to attend the Biennial after receiving the second-place award in the Vinnie Ream competition for a newly created choral piece, “Waters of Transformation.” Tabakin was glad to meet Firestone at one of the workshops, even though she was exhausted from recently returning from juried art exhibits in Europe.
“After chatting with Bonita, I learned that she came from nearby Potomac, Maryland, and that Bonita was not staying in the hotel,” Firestone recalled. “I realized that she was fatigued. Wanting to continue our conversations about our interests and work, I invited her to come rest in my room.”
But it wasn’t possible for two new friends creatively connecting for the first time to simply rest.
“Before either of us knew it, we were sharing our past, present, and even our future plans and dreams,” Tabakin said.
Firestone’s project and story, about the prophetess Miriam’s accounts of the Exodus, intrigued her.
“I’d like to see that,” she recalled saying.
Firestone sincerely confessed that she’d like to see it too. They both chuckled.
Tabakin shared ideas about her abstract paintings and concepts, which she calls “Waters of Color, and Colors for Health,” and their symbolic meanings. She told Firestone how she was moved far beyond herself when she began to create new work after a lapse of time.
Months earlier, Tabakin described waking and pushing herself out of bed at 2 a.m. to finish a creation and how this momentum did not seem to come from her.
“I was afraid to admit that all this creative blitz may have been led by God’s hand,” she said. “Perhaps some of my new ideas would come to complement Sheila’s work.”
Tabakin suddenly felt she was on an unintentional journey into a new universe.
“Sheila’s music seemed to be inspiring a unique style in my work,” Tabakin said. “Both of our works embrace at least two major religions, Judaism, Christianity and some others. We would talk for hours and found that we had some similar beliefs and had both studied related spiritual concepts.”
After many email exchanges, Tabakin learned that Firestone had family in the D.C. area. During Firestone’s next trip to see her son in Maryland, she visited Tabakin’s gallery.
The two began discussing the possibility of choosing some of Tabakin’s paintings as projections for the show.
“Bonita explained that her work was to be shown in Rome and that she would like to use some music that I had shared with her to accompany her paintings,” Firestone said.
That was the birth of their first collaboration. Tabakin’s piece displayed in Milan, a wood carving called “Remembering,” was about the continuation of life with a child looking at the horizon.
“It was as though the child was seeing a past life,” Tabakin said. “The music that was played during the exhibit was a piece from my musical, a setting of the ‘Song of the Sea.’”
At an exhibition in Rome featuring a painting titled “2017,” Tabakin selected Firestone’s piece “The Hearing Forest and the Seeing Trees.” The music had been inspired by an art work by H. Bosh as part of a Delian Society challenge.
“Several years later, we talked about using a number of Bonnie’s slides for my musical as projections on a large, canvas-like screen,” Firestone said. “As I began costuming, I was considering the colors and the flow of the fabric in relation to the colors of selected paintings that we had discussed.”
The two women are happy to have found each other.
“What wondrous blessings life can bring: a new dear friend; a creative soulmate; a wonderful new opera expressing the women’s stories never told and never known to me, which lighted my soul,” Tabakin said.
Firestone added, “Finding the treasure of a friend who understands your thoughts, who inspires you to act upon your dreams is indeed what did occur when we reached out to each other at a biennial conference in 2016.”