In art school in 1980 I rediscovered a series of animal drawings I made at the age of 5 or 6 and thought they had more artistic merit than anything I was then creating. This left a lasting impression.

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As a kid I loved letters. I enjoyed looking through calligraphy books and taught myself enough calligraphy to hire myself out to address Bar Mitzvah and wedding invitations.

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I also loved to invent animals.

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At one point I created a mobile of fictitious creatures to hang in my bedroom.

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I had very little exposure to Hebrew as a child. We made our annual treks to Grandma and Grandpa’s Passover seders in the Bronx, which were conducted exclusively in Hebrew. I had absolutely no clue what the story was about, and if you had asked me who Moses was I couldn’t have told you. (I was raised by parents rebelling against an orthodox upbringing.)

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Still, Hebrew fascinated me. I believed it to be a mysterious secret code, and I don’t think I was far off. I asked my parents if I could learn Hebrew and they hired me a tutor. I enjoyed it for a few months, but then we moved to a new town and over time I thoroughly forgot it.

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Then as a young adult I felt a pull toward Jewish centers of learning, first in Providence, RI and then in Northampton., MA. Once settled here in Northampton and a young mother, I studied beginning Hebrew, and later became an adult Bat Mitzvah.

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In the late nineties I became fascinated with medieval art and illuminated manuscripts. I started to create commissioned pieces with people’s Hebrew names, short phrases from liturgy and wedding contracts (ketubot).

Although I'm still a beginner when it comes to the Hebrew, my lifelong fascination with both Judaism and animals has culminated in this project--my version of the Hebrew alphabet.