Sophie Bugat is a Montclair High School senior who will be attending the Rhode Island School of Design in the fall. She works in a variety of media - oil, watercolor, ink, pencil, and clay (air-dry, ceramic, metal clay) are recent favorites - and loves to experiment with new materials.

Sophie has admired miniatures ever since she was a child, creating objects like cabinets, stove tops, a functioning lamp, and a tiny replica of her dad’s favorite rocking chair, all of which became part of her nine-year-old repertoire. She sold her first piece of art to a local Montclair business in 9th grade.

Last year, she created a spinning “carousel” about famous fairy tales (including those by the Brothers Grimm and those animated by Disney), and the antisemitic tropes they contain. She made this piece for educational purposes, as a way to encourage discussion about how this particular form of bigotry has manifested itself for centuries. In All in the Family, Sophie repudiates traditional fairy tale antisemitism with depictions of mythical beings that appear in Jewish texts and folklore. The miniature pieces displayed in the Tiny Gallery celebrate the types of stories she wished she had read as a child. With them, Sophie hopes to educate the public and introduce them to the diverse and whimsical world of fantastical Jewish creatures.