the road to Eilat 2 Print

A shortened autobiography My name is Worman Camille Danielle, I was born in Tunisia in 1942, from a French mother and a Tunisian father with very divergent views about everything but both Jewish. I studied in the best French schools in my home town and after the” baccalauréat”, I carried on to study in the prestigious “Lycée Carnot “ In Tunis. I was successful in getting the “Certificate of General Literary Studies”, but due to the end of the French protectorate in Tunisia, I couldn’t further my studies there and as a member of the clandestine youth Jewish movement of the “Shomer Hatsair”I decided to emigrate to Israel, to go and live in a kibbutz with the members of the movement. I went on a hunger strike for a week before my mum finally gave up and let me go. I met my husband of 57 years on the boat from Marseille to Haifa, and after lots of moving around we got to kibbutz Zikim, in 1967 where we still live as members. In Zikim I have worked in the kitchen, the fields and mainly in children houses with handicapped children . Education Eventually I was allowed to further my studies, but after so many years of being estranged from my mother tongue, instead of studying philosophy and literature I opted for studying visual arts. Events In 1980 we took a year’s leave from the kibbutz to live in New York! I was very naïve at the time, and although my paintings amounted to almost nothing, I wrote to the Gogenheim museum and sent the few photographs of my work!To my surprise I had an appointement with the curator of the museum at the time , Miss Clara Denison who reviewed my work for three long hours and told me that some of it was very beautiful and that I should leave my catalogue with the museum… But, I didn’t! In Tel Aviv and Jaffa I studied on a program of one day a week for 4 years with different prominent teachers at the time: Streichman, Vexler, Propes, Mokadi, than two years later I went to study for the full 4 years course in the Art school of Ramat Hasharon, where I studied photography with Simha Sherman, and painting with Mitch Baker, Rafi Lavi and yair Garbouz.