Woman Washing Her Hair

Josefa Ben-Shmuel was a sculptor and graphic artist for thirty years under her maiden name of Jo Jenks, before marrying fellow sculptor and teacher Ahron Ben-Shmuel. She did direct carving in onyx, granite, and alabaster and worked in bronze, plaster, and ceramics as well. She is known primarily for portraits and female nudes, or “rock women”, as she called them. Active in the Progressive Education movement, she helped found the Mount Kemble School in Morristown, New Jersey and taught art there until 1937. She also taught at Columbia University in New York City and Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. Jenks was a serious student of Jungian child psychologist Frances G. Wickes and later, she joined the Wilhelm Reich movement and sculpted the bronze bust of Reich that adorns his tomb in Maine. After her marriage to sculptor Ahron Ben-Shmuel in 1961, she changed her medium to weaving, under the name Josefa Ben-Shmuel. Her tapestries were done on a high vertical loom, by hand, with the help of a simple dinner fork, tightly pressing fine strands of wool over finely twisted cotton warp to combine color and texture, similar to the medieval technique known as Gobelin.