About the artist:

Ahuvah Dushey, an innovative multi-media artist and resident of Massapequa, died March 13, 2000. She was 78 years old. Known to most as "Bebe", Mrs. Dushey was born in Tel Aviv, the daughter of Russian immigrants. The only child of the sole Holocaust survivor of her maternal line, Mrs. Dushey professed and displayed a positive and joyful appreciation of life and a firm belief in the persistence of the human spirit, said her husband Nathan. Mrs. Dushey was forever adventurous in new and varied media, and used form, color and texture in her prints, drawings and photographs. She used hammered and soldered objects and antique art in her metalsmithing, creating both wearable and freestanding sculpture. She was described by Margaret Gosden, writer and printer and then curator of the Discovery Gallery, as a Renaissance artist "whose multi-media versatility equals the inventions of Picasso. "She is concerned with expressing a vision within her being that has not been hewn; an authentic artist, her sculpture and constructions are created and recreated over periods of time to give new meaning.... to found artifacts and natural objects." A 1972 article in Craft Horizons stated about her jewelry designs: "Each piece has an appearance of an archeological find in a princely dig, while New York Times critic Helen Harrison said her work "has exquisite detail." Mrs. Dushey attended New York City High School of Music and Art and obtained a bachelor of arts degree from Akron University. She received a master of arts degree from Columbia University, where she studied under a scholarship program. Her work has been exhibited in galleries throughout Long Island and Manhattan, as well as in many galleries in the Eastern and Midwestern states. She taught from her studio on the Great South Bay in this community, and with the Empire State College of New York and College of Eastern Utah, where she was a guest lecturer. One of her last projects included the design and construction of wooden sculptures in tribute to the victims of the heartrending devastation she saw in Yugoslavia.