Rotenberg: Dream Catchers Opens In Jerusalem (Photo Essay)

By BJLIfe/Sharon Altshul
Posted on 02/15/26

Jerusalem, Israel - Feb. 15, 2026 - Canadian-born sculptor Rachel Rotenberg has spent more than four decades carving a distinctive artistic language — one that, as critics describe, “thinks with a pencil and speaks with wood.”

Born in Toronto in 1958, Rotenberg earned her BFA from York University and continued her studies in Jerusalem and New York, including at the School of Visual Arts. For many years, she lived and worked in Baltimore, where she became an active presence in the city’s vibrant arts community and exhibited widely. In 2015, she relocated to Jerusalem, opening a new chapter in an already accomplished international career.

On Friday, February 13, Rotenberg unveiled works from her evolving Dream Catcher series at 'Studio of Her Own' (סטודיו משלך) in Jerusalem. The exhibition curated by Meital Manor marked a significant local presentation of large-scale cedar sculptures.

Constructed from cedar planks, vines, wire, and oil paint, the sculptures twist and arc with organic energy. Rotenberg’s work has long explored the tension between weight and lift, structure and vulnerability, and the meeting of conscious and subconscious thought. 

Rotenberg says, "Dreams, like art, speak the language of symbols and emerge from the unconscious."

While the title may evoke the traditional protective talisman, Rotenberg’s interpretation is more abstract and psychological. Her sculptures do not enclose or trap dreams; they appear to hold space for them. Open frameworks and layered wooden planes suggest memory, resilience, and the filtering of experience. The cedar itself, sourced in British Columbia, Canada, is strong, aromatic, and enduring, adding a quiet symbolism of protection and sacred architecture.

Rotenberg’s career includes prestigious grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts, among others. She has exhibited across North America and Israel, including at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Katzen Arts Center at American University in Washington, DC, where a major 2023 solo exhibition was curated by Jane Livingston, who also authored a book on her sculptures, which was on display during the exhibition. Her participation in the Jerusalem Biennale, led by Rami Ozeri, further situates Rotenberg within Israel’s contemporary art community.

Now based in Jerusalem with her husband, painter Jean-Pierre Weill, and their five children, Rotenberg was previously featured in BJL in December 2019, in coverage of the Jerusalem Biennale. Her Jerusalem exhibition represents not a departure, but an expansion: an artist whose work remains connected to the communities that shaped her, even as her forms reach toward new horizons.