|—Entertainment
Story by
Josh Krauter
Photo by
Matt Miller
Inspired
LEV SCHIEBER, a senior art major, says his visit to Auschwitz changed
his life. But less than half of his art, such as the painting in the back
ground, represent Schieber’s feelings about his visit.
I
Art student
creates
portraits
from family
experiences
of the
Holocaust
Ancestry
j ev Schieber doesn’t remember when he first
became interested in art. It’s just something
he’s always done, even when he was growing up in
an Atlanta suburb.
“I lived out in the woods, and as a kid, I would get
logs and carve stuff out of them.”
Schieber, a UNL senior art major, traded his log
for ceramics and a paintbrush, and now concentrates
on painting and sculpture. Most of his art concerns
himself, women and human emotion, but a recent
trip to Poland took some of his work in a new direc
tion.
Schieber’s paternal grandparents are survivorsof
Auschwitz. But the artist never spoke with them
about their experiences there. While studying in
Europe, Schieber visited the Polish camp his grand
parents wore forced into. What he saw changed him.
“Everything is intact,” he says. “Birds don’t fly
over it for some reason.”
Schieber says 35 percent of his art uses
Holocaust imagery, but he doesn’t use any specific
images he witnessed there, such as the wooden beds
where the prisoners were kept, the piece of cement he
brought back with him and the train tracks that
brought his grandparents and many others there.
He says he just wants to capture the atmosphere.
However, his Jewish heritage is not a primary influ
ence on his paintings, if it is an influence at all.
“I’m not a practicing Jew, I just think the
Holocaust is everybody’s business, not just Jewish
people,” he says.
Schieber’s primary influence is the Italian
Renaissance painter Carvagio.
“He painted really realistic things, war stuff,
chopped-oflfheads and swords. It’s pretty gruesome.”
Schieber would like to paint just as realistically,
but he says it takes years to become accomplished at
realism. Right now, he says his strength is in repre
sentation.
One of his representations, “Dignity,” a painting
of prisoners of war, has been his most acclaimed
piece. He has shown it at Yia Yia’s, the University of
Nebraska at Omaha and a student show, where he
won a grant for $100.
His first showing wasn’t as successful.
“It was at the Coffee House. I didn’t know what I
was doing, and my paintings all fell off the walls.”
When Schieber found out his paintings were on
the floor, he gathered them up and took them home,
rather than continuing the show.
Now over his early embarrassment, he is current
ly working on three projects, a series of portraits of a
friend, paintings about his father and a Polish ghetto
scene of a Jewish street child.
u
Vm not a practicing Jew; /
just think the Holocaust is
everybody s business,
just Jewish people
Lev Schieber
UNL senior art major
Schieber prefers working on his own to the set
curriculum of school, but he says the university’s
influence was positive in that it forces artists to pro
duce.
“Because of the time restriction, you can end up
with something that’s really half-ass,” he says, “but if
you have one good idea in mind, and it will take you
10 paintings to get there, the school can push you to
get those paintings done.”
Schieber wants his work to sell and hang on
gallery walls. But he says that material success is not
the reason he makes art.
“At the end of the day, I’d just like to drink a beer,
look at the stuff I’ve made and just hang out with it.”