Although an Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn is only a short subway ride from the artsy enclaves of the West Village in Manhattan, the space between is immense, according to artist Helene Aylon.

Aylon, who describes herself as an eco-feminist Jewish artist, will be in Kansas City next week as a visiting author at the Jewish Community Center. She’ll also be the artist in residence for the Feb. 6 session of “The Valor Project,” a painting class focusing on expressions of feminine valor in Jewish sources, held at the JCC’s Heritage Center.

Her career has spanned decades, and she reflects upon that and the effect of her Orthodox upbringing in her memoir, “Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist.”

“It’s all interwoven and even though I sort of am critical of my Orthodox background, it still inspires me,” she said. “It’s like I’m on a treadmill — I go back to it all the time.”

Aylon is quick to say that the book is not an indictment of how she was raised.

“I had to pour my heart out in the book. It’s full of other sweet thoughts about my upbringing and about my mother especially, (but) it’s still very critical (with my view as) a feminist. I had to be and I still am,” she said.

Aylon has expressed her artistic visions in a variety of media. One of her more well-known ventures is the God Project.

Part of that project involved her covering each page of the Torah with a sheet protector and highlighting words she said represented militarism, cruelty, misogyny and words she contends did not come from God but came from people who were writing the Torah. In all uses of the term “G-d,” she makes the hyphen pink, to symbolize the stories of women lost to history.

The medium she uses “all depends on the subject … I had to use certain materials so the work would change,” she said.

For her current project on foremothers of Judaism, she’s using photography.

“Some people call me a visionary artist; some people say I’m a future foremother,” Aylon said.

Her life as an artist is divided into five parts, Aylon said. The early years of her art started around her 30th birthday, when she was a young widow raising two small children.

“Every 10 years I change. I react to a big issue of the day,” Aylon said.

Those issues have included how women’s bodies are viewed and her support of nuclear disarmament, and she has brought her interpretations of them to museums and other spaces worldwide.

In 2011, she brought part of the God Project to The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa., and last year, she participated in an exhibition of Jewish feminist art at the Museum of Art in Ein Harod, Israel.

Helene Aylon events

Helene Aylon will speak about her memoir, “Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist,” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 5, in the Social Hall at the Jewish Community Campus, followed by a book signing. During her three-day stay in Kansas City, Aylon is also presenting to participants in the Jewish Community Center’s Valor Project, the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Kansas. For more information, call 913-327-8077.