Betty Franco Handmacher(BFH) is an Atlanta artist, whose serious work includes abstracts based on her heritage as a Spanish Jew. She feels her culture is disappearing, and the rich traditions of her parents and grandparents are dying out. She paints abstract oil on canvas reflecting these traditions, including celebratory pieces in which you can see men dancing at Jewish weddings or the swirl of adress.
One of her larger pieces on linen is symbolic of the katuba, the colorful wedding license. Resembling disintegrating paper, it represents a distintegrating culture. Look for symbols of the Judaism in her work, including the evil eye. Painted pieces of lace represent the lace her mother and grandmother made by hand.
BFH's heritage is also rooted in Atlanta history. Her father established the Roxy Deli on Peachtree Street at 10th and 11th. As a child, the artist remembers the Governor's mansion being in Ansley Park, and every Saturday a chauffeur coming by to pick up trays. Noted journalists and business men lunched there daily, and Margaret Mitchell wrote “Gone with the Wind” at the deli on herlunch hour. Look for the abstract painting, 1011 Peachtree Street, to see the store front, the Roxy name and her father's countenance. Another piece in vivid hues of pink, a mixed media piece with collage, represents her father. As Betty said, “If my father were a woman, he would have worn too much make up and too much jewelry”. His personality is what made the delicatessen where he warmly welcomedeveryone, and this passion for life carries on in Betty Franco Handmacher's work.
Artist Statement: “My work relates to my ethnic background, a small community in Atlanta. I feel that it has universal appeal: the assimilation of a culture into the larger American culture. Some of the work expresses the celebratory aspects of our community. The abstract canvases express the feeling of disintegration, of an old culture slowly disappearing."
