Several Jewish artists to participate in Shadyside Fair in the Park

Jewish-themed art will be featured at the annual festival

Every September for the last six years, Israeli-born artist Amos Amit has made the trek from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. The reason? A Fair in the Park, a contemporary art festival in Shadyside’s Mellon Park.

That Amit travels so far for the event is a testament to its quality. This year, he and several other Jewish artists will be displaying and selling their work in the annual outdoor fair, running from Sept.5-7.

While the fair highlights local artists, those from other locales like Amit see it as an opportunity to sell to a new market.

Amit also enjoys the fact that the East End is an epicenter of Jewish life in Pittsburgh.

“I have a work with the tree of life in it, and when I drive into the fair, I always pass by the Tree of Life synagogue,” he said.

Amos Amit works on a batik (Photo courtesy of Amos Amit)

Amit’s work is batik, textiles made using a traditional craft process originating in Indonesia. Batik uses beeswax and natural dye on fabric — Amit uses cotton — to create a design. Amit pours the wax into a design and then peels it off, using the wax resistance to sear the design into the fabric.

Batik is labor-intensive and is not easy to learn, but after seeing an art book about batik during his youth in Israel, Amit fell in love. (Though, he noted, he cannot go to the parts of the world batik originates from due to having an Israeli passport — Israeli citizens are barred from entering Indonesia and Malaysia outside of special visa circumstances.)

The result of the wax resistance and dye is similar to watercolor. “You work from light colors to dark, and decide what you want to keep in the final picture. I have a clothesline in the back of my house, and once they’re dry, I move to the next stage. At the end is when you remove the wax,” Amit explained.

Though originals are large and their prices reflect the labor and training required to do batik, Amit also sells prints of his work, which are affordable to a wider audience.

“I grew up and I wanted to be an artist, but not a starving artist. So, I collected degrees,” Amit said. “I did cultural engineering, then I came [to America] to do landscape architecture since you couldn’t study it in Israel. I completed my thesis, where I put together plans to build a university in Beersheba. But after that, I chose art full time and I never looked back.”

Now, Amit brings batik all over the world. His favorite subject is nature, inspired by both the lush greenery of the Galilee region where he grew up and the majestic forests of Yosemite National Park in California.

Bobby Harr, a glass artist based in Phoenix, creates primarily Judaica and will be participating in the fair this year as well. His work has been in New York’s Jewish Museum, Los Angeles’ Skirball Center and an array of other galleries.

“This year I will show in over 40 events in 12 states,” Harr said.

Bobby Harr’s “Tree of Life” (Photo courtesy of Bobby Harr)

Harr uses colorful dichroic glass fused onto black glass to create vibrant Jewish imagery, including the chai, tree of life, a Torah scroll and Jerusalem’s Old City. He also has made mezuzot for people’s homes, one of the art forms he’s most famous for.

“My wall pieces are in many Jewish homes around the world,” Harr said.

At the Fair in the Park, Harr will display 45-50 mezuzot. In 2025 alone, Harr has taken his mezuzot to Chicago, Michigan, Maryland and Philadelphia.

But he wasn’t always so prolific. “In junior high school I was told emphatically by my art teacher that I would never be an artist,” Harr said. “But, as you can see, she was wrong.”

At age 48, Harr decided that he would be an artist, and like Amit, he never looked back.

“I finally gave myself permission to allow the artist out. I basically taught myself,” he said. Now, he gets to show the world how his work has grown.

Though artists of all stripes will be participating in the Fair in the Park, the inclusion of Jewish creators and artisans makes it a great opportunity to snag some gifts before Rosh Hashanah, or to simply feel inspired by the ingenuity and craftsmanship Jewish themes can encourage.

“I always do very well at the Fair in the Park,” Amit said. “It’s an easy show to do, it’s not big and grandiose and you have a lot of time to set up and tear down. The people that run it are also very nice and connected with the arts. They’re not just there to make money for themselves.” PJC

Emma Riva is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.