Aranyani Rachel Rosen is a multi-media artist who moved to Shawville two years ago after living in Toronto, Ottawa and Gatineau. A few months ago she began renting a space in the Hursty’s building, where she has moved many of her works.

Rosen has done illustrations for children’s storybooks, done commissioned portraits, and has had her work featured in various synagogues in Toronto. One series of pencil drawings she did covered the entire wall of a synagogue, and featured the faces of several different Jewish “cantors” – the people who lead the synagogue in chants and worship songs.

“He survived Auschwitz and he lost members of his family,” she said of a friend whose face was part of that drawing. “He was the only one that survived and he went on to be a great cantor. He had the voice of voices.”

Rosen’s studio features many works from over the years, featuring colourful paintings and fantasy illustrations as well as an array of pencil drawings.

She also creates and performs with puppets, something she has done for many years. She said she got the bug when she was a young child.

“When I was a child, I remember going to the store and seeing all these puppets [ . . . ] So I went to [a local puppet expert] for a week, and learned how to make puppets, and next thing somebody pushed me on stage so I did performing arts,” she said.

Rosen said she is offering lessons in art as well as puppetry, and would like to help people create their own puppets to tell their own stories.

“I noticed in Shawville there’s not much for children or seniors, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s sad,’” she said. “What I thought is to offer people, if they want to develop a children’s story for the grandkids, it might be fun [ . . . ] I can bring that to Shawville and take people step for step from a children’s story to developing a script and a puppet script.”

She said with an often-negative news cycle and a difficult world climate, she wants to bring joy to the lives of children.

“I think loving acts of kindness, if we do that, Earth will become a better place. It’s to bring joy, happiness, comfort,” she said.

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