Page 20 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Winter 20
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THE ILLUSTRATING MAN
WHENEVER A FEATURE NEEDED
BRIGHTENING UP, WE TURNED TO
QUICK-ON-THE-DRAW DENIS
CARL HOFFMAN
Walking into Denis's small Ra’anana
apartment is like entering a unique art gallery,
or perhaps a museum, containing a
fascinating array of kinetic wooden
sculptures; busts of cartoonish-looking
people, who look like everyone from Hilary
Clinton to Charles de Gaulle; small figures,
mostly made of wood, filling literally every
Reprinted With Permission from bit of available shelf space, and thought-
The Esra Magazine, Number 200, provoking paintings lining the walls. All of
June/July/August 2019 these things were created by Denis.
Venturing into another room, we find easels
I and brushes for painting, vices and tools for
have known Denis Shifrin for years, and
I liked him even before ever I met him.
woodworking, a large desktop computer and
As a long-time artist, illustrator and
cartoonist par excellence for ESRA countless other pieces of work and creative
magazine, Denis's work has graced accoutrements of a lifelong artist.
innumerable articles over the many years that He was born nearly 92 years ago in
he has contributed to the "mag". He has also Liverpool. "I believe my parents and a lot of
provided an enjoyable added value and extra people, who came from Russia during that
dimension to more than one of the articles period in 1904, believed they had arrived in
that I have written for the magazine, always the golden land of America when they got off
drawing me to look a lot better than I actually the boat in Liverpool”, he says with laughter.
do, in real life. So, when ESRA Editor Merle Denis's father was a cabinetmaker, a master
Guttmann asked me to interview this very carpenter, a craftsman in wood. "He was very
special man for our 200th. issue, I literally proud of being a perfectionist. I've been in
jumped at the chance. wood all my life. My father wouldn't let me
A chip off the old block, Denis enjoys get into it at all. He said, “I have to work with
working in wood; his father was a master my hands, but you'll go to work with your
carpenter. head”. He wouldn't let me go near any of the
woodworking machinery.
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