The COJECO BluePrint Fellowship
All Projects
Songs of Our Grandmothers
Songs of our Grandmothers is a film exploring of the role that songs play in the immigrant experience and the history of these songs, through the eyes of elderly immigrants to the United States. 10 different interviews were conducted with elderly Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York and New Jersey. Of those interviews, 4 made it […]
Ilya Blokh, originally from Moscow, has found himself around the world—from Alabama and New York to Japan and Scotland. By day he works as a product manager for an educational software start-up, but by night he dabbles in film and is particularly interested in music from all corners of the world and the culture that forms around it.
Songs of Our Journey
Songs of Our Journey is a live presentation of music that has survived in diaspora and carries with it the stories of struggles and triumphs. We are taken through different geographical regions and various times in history exploring different themes and sounds. The purpose of this project is to unite people in the Jewish diaspora […]
South Brooklyn Art and Science Culture Club
The South Brooklyn Art and Science Culture Club is a community initiative for Russian-speaking American Jews of South Brooklyn (Sheepshead Bay, Brighton and Manhattan Beach areas). The Culture Club provides a platform for South Brooklyn residents to meet and explore their Jewish identity in the context of both formal presentations and workshops as well as informal […]
Anna Rozenboym was born in Moscow and immigrated to United States with her family in 1994. She received her BA in Psychology from Pace University and Masters Degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University. Although Anna’s educational career began with a passion for clinical work and a desire to provide quality services to patients, she continued to explore her interest and fascination with the workings of the brain by engaging in research and pursuing her PhD in Neural and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Downstate. A scientist and an educator, she is proud to serve Brooklyn Community as an Assistant Professor in the Department of the Biological Sciences at Kingsborough Community College.
Speak Memory
Speak Memory is an exhibition of four COJECO Blueprint Fellowship: Katya Meykson, Irina Sheynfeld, Tanya Levina and Yuliya Levit. This show explores Russian-Jewish immigrant identity, artists ties to the historic past, and the connection to our roots that we feel in everyday lives. February 28, 2013 at Columbia / Barnard Kraft Center Auditorium Show opening included […]
Originally from Minsk, Belarus, Tanya Levina is a Brooklyn based painter. Her artistic inclinations showed at a very young age as she started compulsively drawing on every surface in sight including books, walls and papers around the house. As she grew older, Tanya gave up defacing household property and started using drawing and painting as an outlet for documenting surroundings and expressing affection for things she liked, especially horses. To this day horses remain a dominant theme in her work. Tanya often sets her subjects in extremely colorful, exaggerated and slightly surrealistic settings, drawing inspiration from her surroundings, travel experiences, as well as works by Dali, Klimt and Monet. Her artwork can be found at www.tanyalevina.com
Aside from painting, Tanya studied Economics at Brandeis University, and after a couple of stints at various strategy consulting firms landed as a Research Manager at Scholastic.
Yuliya was born in Moscow in 1979 and graduated from RGGU with degree in IT in 2001. She moved to New York, along with all my family: my parents, my 84 year old grandfather, two of my 83 year old grandmothers, our dog, our cat, a violin, a guitar, my father’s bike and sewing machine that same year. Ever since she can remember she was interested in the link between the photo and a story, but she got serious about photography only 9 years ago. I currently reside in New York and work as a professional photographer. See her work at www.ylevit.com
Nadya Meykson and Victoria Schwartzman plan to make a recoding of contemporary Russian-Jewish emigre composers. The recording will include works that are rarely heard and which they feel deserve to be introduced to a wider audience. The recording will be followed by two public concerts.
Nadya Meykson moved to the US in 1996 from Moscow. She holds a Master’s Degree in Music from the Eastman School of Music. She has performed in venues such as Weill Recital Hall at the Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center, The Bohemian National Hall, The State Kremlin Palace Concert Hall, All-Union House of Composers in Moscow and The Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow.
Nadya has appeared as soloist with OSSIA Orchestra, Shoals Symphony Orchestra, Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra and Alabama Youth Symphony Orchestra. She has won various prizes, including Concert Festival, Noel Levine, First Prize at Ray Dunmyer Youth Concerto Competition, and First Prize at Shoals Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competition.
Irina Sheynfeld is an artist, illustrator and designer born in Odessa, Ukraine, where she studied painting at the Odessa College of Art. Upon arriving to New York, Irina earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from School of Visual Arts. She worked as a designer and illustrator for The Wall Street Journal, Time Warner and Oxygen Media. For several years Irina illustrated a weekly column for Editor and Publisher magazine. Irina just had her first solo show at Tagine Gallery in NYC and her work could be currently seen at Amsterdam Art Gallery and at Iridium Jazz Club. She was one of the winners of the Printmaking Completion and recipient of the New Media Award for the best web design.
Spoils of War: Ode to a Refusenik Mother
“Spoils of War: Ode to a Refusenik Mother” was originally published by Tablet Magazine on June 6, 2012 (bit.ly/spoilspoem), and the panels illustrating the poem were exhibited at New York City’s National Arts Club through the Russian American Foundation’s Russian Heritage Month. The poem is accompanied by a spoken word track over a mix tape in […]
Margarita Korol is an urban pop artist, designer, and writer in New York City producing media in the publishing and public worlds including art directing, editing, and illustrating for several online and print magazines. Her writing, illustrations, paintings, and arts and culture propaganda are vibrant expressions of urban progress in directed contexts.
Born the week of Chernobyl in Ukraine to refuseniks, Korol’s focus on empowering individuals in disadvantaged struggles against their political systems is an ongoing theme in her work. Her most recent exhibit for Brooklyn’s ArtOnBrighton exhibition on the Coney Island/ Brighton Beach boardwalk featured a series of propaganda posters directed to the area’s SovJew immigrant community in Korol’s generation. Previously, Propaglasnost: The Transparency Projects series was on view at NYC’s KGB Bar May and June 2011. Meanwhile, her Berlin Wall installation Die Mauer is housed at Chicago’s DANK-Haus German Cultural Center.
Stateless
In the late 1980s, the Soviet floodgates of emigration were thrown open by perestroika,. However, for thousands of Soviet Jewish émigrés, hopes of a quick arrival in America were shattered when the United States immigration service started denying these people refugee status while they were in transit in Italy. Stateless captures this untold story from […]
Michael Drob was born in Riga, Latvia in 1978 and arrived in New York as refuseniks in 1988. Raised to become a professional violinist by his musician father and economist mother, he instead today works as a software engineer at Audible.com. He lives with wife and children, and runs a family business on the side, Story Tailors, a video production company.
Stealing Cherries
Rubin’s BluePrint project involves the publishing of her fourth book, a collection of flash fiction stories considering existentialism, Jewish identity, Russian upbringing, transcendentalism, cultural genetics, time travel, religion. Telling the stories in a style that is ”Babel meets Sholom Aleichem,” they describe the hilarious truth about being a newcomer to the American cultural house and […]
Marina Rubin was born in the small town of Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union. Her family immigrated to United States in 1989 seeking asylum. Her first chapbook Ode to Hotels(2002) was followed by Once(2004) and Logic(2007). Her work had appeared in over seventy magazines and anthologies including 13th Warrior Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Dos Passos Review, 5AM, Nano Fiction, Coal City, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Jewish Currents, Lillith, Pearl, Poet Lore, Skidrow Penthouse, The Portland Review, The Worcester Review and many more. She is an associate editor of Mudfish, the Tribeca literary and art magazine. Her work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007 and again in 2012. She is a 2013 recipient of the COJECO Blueprint Fellowship. Her fourth book, a collection of flash fiction stories Stealing Cherries was released in November 2013 from Manic D Press and is available on Amazon, B&N and other booksellers nationwide.
Strange Pilgrims No More
“Strange Pilgrims No More” is a collective portraits of Jewish women who emigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union. Like all women, we struggle to overcome the unique challenges of our time; our struggle to balance work and home, children and career, love and marriage, past and present. We want it all, but […]
Irina Sheynfeld is an artist, illustrator and designer born in Odessa, Ukraine, where she studied painting at the Odessa College of Art. Upon arriving to New York, Irina earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from School of Visual Arts. She worked as a designer and illustrator for The Wall Street Journal, Time Warner and Oxygen Media. For several years Irina illustrated a weekly column for Editor and Publisher magazine. Irina just had her first solo show at Tagine Gallery in NYC and her work could be currently seen at Amsterdam Art Gallery and at Iridium Jazz Club. She was one of the winners of the Printmaking Completion and recipient of the New Media Award for the best web design.
StroyKa
Architecture workshops for Russian-speaking families with kids 6-12 years old. The project participants will discover works by architects of Jewish descent (ex: Moisei Ginzburg, Alexander Brodsky, Moshe Safdie and Louis Kahn among others) and will develop the foundation of architectural design and freedom of creativity. Through the workshops families will find parallels between Jewish values and specific […]
Masha Dinor is originally from Saratov, Russia and recently immigrated to New York. She is an architect and interior designer by trade and finds inspiration in teaching kids about art and design. She was an active member of Saratov' Jewish life and taught tradition and craft lessons at a local Jewish Family Center. Once she moved to Moscow to advance her career, Masha also led classes at a local architectural studio for kids. Masha continues her work as an art educator in New York, where she teaches at Kibbutznik summer camp, Kompot events, Little-Avangardist and Dacha project.
Survival Codes
An originally composed and performed musical piece, based on stories collected through conversations, writing and interviews with Holocaust survivors and Russian Jewish dissidents. The meetings to find out how their methods of communication were altered and turned secrets, so that they would be able to keep practicing Judaism under the very strong suppression of the […]
Survivor: Aron’s Story
This unique project is part graphic novel and part historical education in one book. The first part of this book shares Aron’s (my grandfather) experience, living in Odessa, Ukraine (part of the former USSR) and his survival as a teenager under the Romanian/Nazi occupation during WWII. Aron’s story, visually depicted in the graphic novel form, […]
Alex Teplish was born in Odessa, Ukraine. Alex graduated from Stony Brook University and has since become a leading expert in Web/Mobile Technologies, Graphic design, and Digital Marketing. His work has enabled him to architect applications and campaigns for major corporations, international brands, as well as startups. He has also had a significant role in the ever-developing internet since its inception, including the founding of Brower Based Solutions (BBS), a web/mobile-focused, digital agency. Alex collaborated with a colleague and co-authored the Finance/Investment strategy book, “When Buy Means Sell”, with his chapter concentrating on the history and future of investing. The work was published by McGraw Hill, in September 2003. Most recently, Alex published a science-fiction graphic novel titled “In The Beginning: The Epic of the Anunnaki.”
Alex Zhuravsky works as an occupational therapist in Brooklyn. For his project he decided to bring his skills as a therapist to the senior community of Brooklyn.
The Art Sprinter
The Art Sprinter Emerging Jewish Artist Awards is a global art competition specifically targeting talented contemporary Jewish artists from all over the world. The project was created with the vision to recognize exceptional early and mid career artists and present their talent to a global audience through online promotion and a gallery exhibition. While submissions are […]
Katya Bychkova is a New York based marketing and event planning professional with over 10 years’ experience in journalism and PR. Prior to moving to New York in 2008, Katya studied Journalism at the Moscow State University, where she was admitted as a winner of the Journalism competition organized by the International Confederation of Journalists’ Unions. Her first years in the US, Katya worked as a reporter and then as a Managing Editor for the Russian-American newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo. In 2012 she started to work for the award-winning law firm Wilk Auslander LLP, where she is currently handling marketing responsibilities.
The Art Story: Jewish Themes in Modern Art
Michael founded The Art Story Foundation in 2009. A year later, he was the recipient of the COJECO BluePrint grant with which he launched a series of lectures related to Modern Art. The audience consisted mainly of Russian Speaking Jews and lectures focused on the achievements of Jewish artists to 20th century art. After a […]
Michael Zurakhinsky is a graduate of Manhattan College with an MBA from New York University. His background includes extensive experience in web technology, business and finance and a passion for art and literature. He has been involved as a lay leader and volunteer in many aspects of the NYC Russian Jewish community. He also founded the modern art appreciation organization TheArtStory.org.
The Challenges We Face
“Our Journey Home” was a photography exhibit that tracked various immigration patterns of Jews who left the former Soviet Union. The exhibit was a community event designed to raise awareness for the viewer with little or no knowledge about Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union. The photographs were taken in collaboration with Felix Lipov […]
Yelizaveta was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1982. In 1989, she immigrated to the United States of America with her family. In 2005, after graduating Brooklyn College with dual degrees in Computer Science & Fine Art, she attended New York University’s Masters program in Digital Imaging and Design. Yelizaveta has been working as an Application Support Specialist and Project Manager for several of New York’s largest arts institutions. During which time, she has volunteered for various Jewish agencies in New York and abroad. She’s participated in various non-profit informal education programs with young adults traveling to Israel. Since 2013, she’s taught computer programming at Baruch College (CUNY).
