Helène Aylon
Helene Aylon (born 1931 in New York) is an American artist and ecofeminist known for taking Hebrew and English versions of the Torah and turning them into installation sculpture. Her work is the product of her Orthodox Jewish background. She was raised in Brooklyn's Borough Park and became the wife of a rabbi while still in her teens. In her anti-nuclear war work--the Earth Ambulance--she gathered soil from strategic air command bases across the country into pillowcases ("sacs") and transported them to the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament in 1982. The Earth Ambulance is a permanent installation at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, in Peekskill, New York. In her ongoing work called "Bridge of Knots," she has covered the facades of museums with knotted pillowcases scripted with dreams and nightmares about war--including the Knoxville Museum in 1993, Berkeley Museum in 1995, and American University Museum, Washington, DC in 2006.
Aylon's daughter is the drama therapy pioneer and expert Renée Emunah.