Debbie Mostel: A Talented Visionary

Debbie Mostel: A Talented Visionary
Debbie Mostell Passion Flower with Heartbeat

“Passion Flower with Heart”

 

I wanted to introduce you to a bright new emerging artist who you should definitely know about.  I was recently asked to jury a show at the Lighthouse ArtCenter Museum and chose this artist to win first place.  I immediately decided that I wanted to rep her in my gallery.  To date her work has caused a lot of excitement.  It is fresh, unique and makes a strong statement about the world we live in and the environment.

Originally Debbie Mostel was a very well known jewelry maker.  Shots of her work on glamorous models have adorned many important fashion magazine pages over the years.  She has incorporated castings of these jewelry elements into her paintings.  Most of her work is half painted and half collaged with not just the jewelry, but many other found objects that contain special meaning to the artist.  A lot of these elements include computer parts such as hard drives, wires, and mother boards.  Globes of the world are another prevalent feature in her work.  They are transformed by paint, cut up into sections and applied to her finished pieces in some very intriguing configurations.  Some contain little rooms inhabited by people.  You never know what you will find in a Mostel work of art.  There are even mirrors so you can see your own reflection as part of her created world.

South West by Sky

“Southwest by Sky”

“Southwest by Sky,” the image immediately to the left is a commentary on how we may be losing our s”piritual battle and the therefore, the world, to technology.  It is a piece that is infused with a great deal of drama, packed full of individual symbols and found objects, yet never losing its way.  Somehow it manages to hang together without losing itself in the minutia.  This is not an easy feat to accomplish but this artist manages to walk the very pecarious line between much and too much without crossing it.

Below left is the “He Beast” one of two sculptures on display in my gallery.  Notice the small globe on its right shoulder.  Below right is a beautifully textured piece of the sea, a subject that the artist is extremely fond of portraying.  Notice the silver crustacean crawling off to the right.  This was one of her original jewelry pieces.  To see a video on her work go to the following  link:

Grotesque: The New Visual Ideal?

Grotesque:  The New Visual Ideal?
Lucian-Freud-Benefits-Supervisor-Sleeping-Big-Sue-Tilley-19951

“Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” by Lucian Freud

In 2008 “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” by Lucien Freud fetched 33.6 million dollars at Christies Auction House in New York City.  This was a new record for a price paid for a living artist’s work.  It was bought by Roman Abramovich who is ranked the 4th richest man in Russia and the 50th in the world.  He is a self-made man of questionable business practices who today is perhaps most well known for owning the Chelsea Football Team.  In that same year he set another art world record when he bought Francis Bacon’s “Triptych” for 86.3 million dollars, the most ever paid for a post-war work of art.  These purchases were most likely bought to help promote his new gallery that he and a partner opened in Moscow, a very smart marketing move.

Weeping_Willow_Serenade

“Weeping Willow Serenade” by JB Berkow

 

Is it the shock value of having a morbidly obese women commanding center stage in the canvas that grabs people’s imagination.  Is it the ‘800 pound gorilla in the room’ mentality that rivets our attention and obliterates everything else from our view when it/she is present?  Is it the fact that Lucien Freud is Sigmund’s grandson? Is it that Lucien is no doubt a very painterly and accomplished artist?  I say it is all of the above.  I also say that in this person’s, artist’s, and dealer’s opinion, it is not worth 33.6 million dollars.  It is fitting that Mr. Abramovich also set a record for Francis Bacon who also specialized in the grotesque.

The Man Behind the Mask

“The Man Behind the Mask” by Francis Bacon

Please take note:  I greatly admire both of these artists, especially Francis Bacon who was an innovator of the highest order, so don’t misconstrue any of my comments as a rebuke of their talent.  What I am exploring in this article is how and when did our ideal of beauty, or perhaps better stated, what we covet visually above all else, become something perverted and grotesque.  Today, for most major collectors and museum curators there is a third factor to their adoration quotient:  The more they don’t understand what the artist is trying to convey the more they covet it.

I could rationalize the high price that Mr. Freud’s work commands if he had started a new school of art as Bacon had, or if he had been an originator.  But he wasn’t.  “After Cezanne” which he produced in 1999-2000 is so reminiscent of Philip Pearlstein’s work, who had originated this style of nude genre in the 1960s, that it almost borders on  plagiarism …except for the fact that Pearlstein did and does it so much better.  But unfortunately for Pearlstein, his work is done so well that it almost seems pretty and we must keep in mind that the uglier it is the more money it commands.  “After Cezanne” was bought by the National Gallery of Australia for 7.4 million.

After Ceazanne by Freud

“After Cezanne” by Lucian Freud

For most artists who like myself would rather paint images of beauty this whole ‘grotesque esthetic’ can put us at a tremendous disadvantage.  For us the world is full of enough carnage and injustice and what we want to provide our viewers is a respite from all that, a place to escape in these dire times.  For this we are punished and relegated to the dustpan of culturati.  This is the inside circle, a very small handful of players who control the art world.  Yes, my friends, there are literally only a dozen people out there who determine the tastes and opinions of the art world and dictate to the rest of us what we are suppose to appreciate and desire as ‘fine art.’  I could name them but I don’t want to burn any bridges.

Two_Models_in_a_Window_with_Cast_Iron_Toys,_by_Philip_Pearlstein,_1987_from_Smithsonian_American_Art_Museum_2006.9

“Two Models in a Window with Cast Iron Toys” by Philip Pearlstein

 

I was recently commissioned to do a four by ten foot painting for a collector of mine who wanted me to do one a scene of Giverny.  After 600 hours I produced “Weeping Willow Serenade.”  In a painting as intricate as this every turn of a leaf can affect the composition.  If a clump of waterlilies become too over powering or attention grabbing it would have the effect of pulling down the whole.  Every stroke and nuance is calculated to sweep the viewers eyes gently across the canvas enjoying each and every detail on its own merit but without distracting it from the appreciation of another.  It’s a tightrope dance that is very difficult to pull off.  And no offense to Lucien, but it takes a whole lot more brain cells to organize this sort of composition than placing the focal point of your painting in the middle of a couch in the middle of a room in the middle of your canvas!  For all this beauty that I created that took infinitely more synapse charges than Lucien sparked I got a measly 33,000 dollars, which is exactly one-tenth of one percent what his work fetched.

I bring this up, not as a complaint, but more as an example of how far we have drifted from what we once cherished as our visual ideal.  Maybe it is a reflection of the times or maybe it’s the exact opposite, and it is the arts that is helping to shape times we now live in.  In the mid 1970s I remember when Truman Capote’s novel, “In Cold Blood,” was made into a movie and shown on television in a prime time slot at nine in the evening.  I was outraged and wrote a letter to the Washington Post editor complaining about this sort of violence being brought into our homes at such an early hour.  How quaint that seems now.  Today we have the most violent programing imaginable being run all day long on television, video games that teach our youth to become impervious to the consequences of violence, and an epidemic of bullying and hate crimes.

Maybe if we watched less violent programing, if the news would cover more stories of good endeavors and not relegate it to once a year around Thanksgiving, if we went to museums that were not afraid to defy the dictates of a dozen jaded art aristocrats and exhibited more esthetically beautiful work, maybe we could get our society back to one that valued compassion towards our fellow human beings.  Maybe we would be more civil to one another.  Maybe there would be less bullying.  Maybe Congress would compromise more and respect the fact that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that if a person’s opinion doesn’t concur with their own it doesn’t mean that that person is a traitor or will go to hell.

We have to start respecting each other and relearn what it means to be considerate and polite to one another.  This will take reeducating ourselves to a forgotten set of values and sensibilities.   Perhaps one important part of that process is to learn to appreciate beauty all over again.

A New Business Model For Selling Art

A New Business Model For Selling Art

This was a great article written by Laura Hampson and published on the cover of the Business Section of the Palm Beach Post on June 21, 2010 describing JB’s new business modle that she has implemented in her new gallery location.  JB loved the tag line that reporter, Laura Hampson, came up with when she wrote that, “RosettaStone Fine Art Gallery in Jupiter is the no-frills airline of the art gallery world.”  Ms. Berkow was thrilled with her no-frill analogy because it truly captures what her new model is all about.

Clients will still have access to the same carefully chosen, high-quality, yet fair-priced ‘fine art’ that Ms. Berkow’s impeccable taste is known for acquiring.  However, they will not find the art in a fancy location with a bunch of thumb-twiddling staffers circling them with invoice pads close by.  Instead, her new 3,200 square-foot industrial space, which is conveniently located in Jupiter Commerce Park (just one mile from the I-95 or Turnpike exit at Indiantown Road is far from sleek and fancy.  There is no staff but Ms. Berkow herself.  There are no set hours precisely because there is no staff.  Potential clients have to call first to set up an appointment.  But all of the above saves her clients money because she has slashed her overhead by 75%.  In fact, everything in her new showroom is discounted from 20% to 50% all year round!

There are some additional distinctions between her gallery and her other well-heeled counterparts.  Unlike those galleries she can no longer afford to offer free home-shows or free art-consulting services.  If clients want JB to bring art to their home, they are asked to pay a fee of $50 for this service, which will go towards the purchase of anything in the gallery.  If customers want her to come to their home for a consultation session, the same fee is employed.  So far no one has objected because they know that they will be saving a lot more money in the long run.  They also seem to fully understand and appreciate what JB is trying to accomplish not only for herself but for them as well.  This approach not only saves JB time and money but eliminates people who are just wasting her time and are not really serious about acquiring fine art for their home.  So far it’s been of huge benefit for both her and her customers.

JB Berkow’s Sculpture Chosen For New Women In Leadership Award

JB Berkow’s Sculpture Chosen For New Women In Leadership Award

 

JB was very honored when local Money Manager, Regina Bedoya, and Interior Designer, Gil Walsh came to her about up-grading the annual award that Executive Women of the Palm Beaches hands out to three outstanding women in leadership.  She knew as soon as they requested her help that she had already created the perfect sculpture for their purposes.  It was a sculpture she completed several years earlier titled “Free to Be” which has since become the official nickname for the award.  To learn more about the fascinating genesis and coincidence involved with this unique collision of circumstances please click the following link…

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Fine Art, Poetry, Cooking, Ranting and Inspirational Messages…

Fine Art, Poetry, Cooking, Ranting and Inspirational Messages…

Introduction to the New JB Berkow Blog:

I am very excited about launching the new JB Berkow Blog.  It is my intention to create something fun, informative, helpful, community outreaching, and perhaps even a little controversy.  The latter is more for the purposes of getting your juices flowing and to instigate some quick-witted repartee and serious responses from my readers.

Because I have a lot of passions I don’t think the blog will be boring.  Anyone who knows me already knows my first love is art.  I’m a full time painter and sculptor.  I have been painting seriously since I was fifteen, had my first one-person show when I was twenty-one, and have been exhibiting and selling my work for the last forty years.  I plan to start each week by sharing a lot of helpful hints and tips on painting and sculpting not only through my blog but also as part of my video channel, RosettaStone Fine Art Videos.  Some of these video portions will even be interesting to non-artists because they will be able to see the actual processes involved in creating a painting or sculpture.  In some instances you will see a work of art progress from its inception to its completion.

It has never been enough to produce and sell only my own work.  I have always been interested in helping promote my fellow artists’ work as well. This has led me to establish and run several galleries starting when I was only 26 years old.  You can learn more about this from visiting my gallery website and hitting the ‘About Us’ button.

Gallery View I

My current gallery/studio is housed in a 3,200 square foot warehouse-storefront in Jupiter Commerce Park.  Here I share my studio with Philadelphia color-field artist, Rita Shapiro, and sell art that I bring in from all around the world including some fine local talent.  I specialize in finding extremely talented mid-career artists who are incredibly talented but who have not yet skyrocketed in their prices.  I am not interested in carrying blue-chip art or dead artists’ work, even though, if that’s what someone wants, I can definitely get it for them.  Fridays will be devoted to introducing my readers to some of these new and exciting rising stars.

Gallery View II

My second passion is writing.  I’m a published poet since 1994.  My most recently published book is “Painted Poetry.”  This is a monograph with poetry written for each one of the paintings pictured in the book.  It is a collection of some of my best work from the fifteen years when I painted European landscapes.  Thus, you could also consider a travelogue of sorts.  I have also published a how-to book titled “What They Didn’t Teach You In Art School.”  This is a great book for the artist who wants to become more professional and take their career to the next level.  Both can be purchased emailing me.

Tuesdays are reserved for poetry and other inspirational thoughts that I wish to share with to share with my readers.  Hopefully they will also share with me as well.

My third passion is cooking.  There is so much to talk about here that I don’t know where to begin.  I am currently working on a book called “Presto Pasta Plus.”  It is not your average recipe book because it goes into a lot of actual cooking techniques and teaches rather than just putting a list of ingredients on a page and telling you how to put them together.  It is geared towards the busy professional because most of the dishes take only a half an hour to prepare.  I will devote Thursdays to helpful cooking tips and advice that will lead to some very good meals for your friends and family in time for the weekend.

My fourth passion is politics, however, I have been told by my blog advisor, Craig Berry of NuVision Media, not to delve too quickly into this arena as I may tick a lot of people off.  So instead of writing about politics outright, I have decided to create something called “Rants.”  This will occur every Wednesday and I want anyone out there who wants to get something off their chest to write in and share their gripes with your fellow bloggers. I’m hoping that this will make the ‘hump of the week’ a little less humpy and grumpy.

My fifth passion is educating the public on the importance of art in our everyday lives.  To this end I have started a 501c3 tax-exempt foundation called the “Living Art Foundation Fund” or L.A.F.F. for short.  My dream is to one day establish an art center in Palm Beach County that will include a museum featuring only living artists, a world-class foundry, a stone-carving studio, a glass-blowing studio, a print atelier, a sculpture garden/plein-air painting park, art instruction, and low-cost housing to house the craftsmen who will run and operate the various studios as well as visiting artists who will come from all over the world to give seminars or simply work on the premises as part of a fellowship program.  Of course, I will be very anxious to keep everyone up-dated on the progress of this venture.

Blog Schedule:

JB in Hot-Tub with Friends

Monday: Art Matters

Tuesday: Inspirations

Wednesday: Rants

Thursday: Cooking

Friday: Artists

I hope that you tune in often!

Artfully yours,

JB Berkow


Discover Great Artists by Visiting my Friday Blogs

Discover Great Artists by Visiting my Friday Blogs

My Friday blogs will sometimes feature my own work but most of the time will feature themany hundreds of artists

that I represent. On many Fridays I will augment the blogs with videos that will show up here as a link to my video channel at www.rosettastonefineartvideos.com. Next week I will have my first little video featuring a wonderful local artist, Dennis Aufiery. His work will be the featured work at the one show that I plan on having this year. It is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, April 20th, from 5:30 to 7:30 in the evening. [Be sure to check back in next Friday to discover this artist’s great work]

At that show I will also be featuring three deserving female graduating senior High School students from The Dreyfoos School of the Arts, the Benjamin School and various public schools. These students will each be receiving a scholarship of One Thousand Dollars that will be funded by my 501c3 organization, the Living Art Foundation Fund and awarded through the outreach program of the Executive Women of the Palm Beaches. I hope you will tune in discover these rising stars from our own local of Palm Beach County to as far away as Australia and all points around our globe.

My expertise as a gallery and dealer is to find extremely talented artists who are still reasonable in their pricing. Hopefully, this will give you the opportunity to invest in these many talented artists while they are still affordable. Or, if you are not in the market for art yourself, you can recommend these artists to your friends who are looking for artwork. It is so very important to support the arts, not just by giving money to your local art institutions, but also by purchasing art from living artists. This ensures that great art will continue to be produced.

Great art takes time to create. If no one purchases living artists’ work, then these artists must look elsewhere to make a living and that means that their creative time will dwindle away significantly. It is not enough to give artists verbal encouragement in the form of compliments. Because no matter how sincere your compliments may be, they don’t pay an artist’s bills.

I always question why so many of my clients will spend an unlimited amount of money on a chair in their living room (where no one sits anyway). And yet, when it comes to a pivotal wall in that same living room (the wall everyone sees the minute that they enter the home) these same clients will go out and buy a mass-produced piece of ‘c_ _ p’ from China just to fill up that very important wall. Art should be the soul of your home, not a chair!!!

Introducing: Artist Kate McCavitt Who Combines East and West Sensibilities With Seamless Perfection:

Introducing:  Artist Kate McCavitt Who Combines East and West Sensibilities With Seamless Perfection:

Kate McCavitt

Kate McCavitt is an Asian informed Mixed Media Abstract Painter. In her work, East meets West in the fusion of contemporary experimental water media and ancient Asian brush work influences. Kate truly creates her original art “Between Two Worlds”.

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In her previous lifetime this time around, about four years ago, she owned a corporate Project Management company for about sixteen years and stressed over enterprise voice and data installations which were hot beds of things busting and going wrong. Enough! She decided one day to do something she actually wanted to do. Risking her reason for it, she took her art to a full time adventure.

Trained as a Sumie artist, often called “Chinese Brush”, and self-taught in other genres, Kate lavishes all of her colorful, textured abstract paintings with the subtleties of Asian tradition. Rich layers of fluid acrylics, gloss mediums and metallic gesso capture between them both the random events of experimental techniques, and ancient icons of Zen Circles, delicate chrysanthemum, circling yin/yang figures, and representational foil spheres hand embossed by the artist.

Colors, ratios, numerological philosophies, polarities and sequences all dance together within Kate’s unique abstract style. No two pieces can ever be the same. McCavitt’s titles for her work are often “Untitled” for she believes the observer will create their own through how they connect to the work. Many of her long “SuiteStickS” pieces also can be hung any way the orientation pleases the viewer.

A Marvelous Life Change

Kate McCavitt, a native of New York, lives next to a wildlife conservation corridor in Oceanside, California with the love of her life, grandchildren nearby, a resident hummingbird family, and bunnies, egrets, coyotes, bats, crows and hawks. Her studio is in her home and her home is her Catharsis Gallery for showing her work in a beautiful setting. She finds joy in the Artist’s Way, in writing and creating art journals, in being a grandmother, in long walks, scuba diving, teaching art and inspiring others. She tries to live by Martha Graham’s advice, “You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.”

“Up until age 40, all my art was practical. Today I look at the delicate crochet work my grandmother did, and I see exquisite art and pattern. I want to use it as a stencil for powdered gold against rich purple. Maybe this IS where my inspiration came from to do embossed foil spheres. All of my art is born of this attention and an awareness that everything in the world is immediately available for me to witness and that allows me to find the extraordinary. My inspiration is the infinite and the infinitesimal and mostly the Ordinary. How lucky we are to know they are all one and the same.”

Symbol Hunting

 

“Symbol Hunting is an avocation for me, found in life’s small synchronicities. Standing inside the centuries old ritual tomb at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley of Ireland, the spirals carved thousands of years ago in the standing stones, become embedded within me. I can’t help it, it just happens and they will inevitably show up in some painting. Diving at 60 feet, floating effortlessly just a foot above iridescent purple tube sponges where neon orange cleaner shrimp and glowing yellow wrasse play around the openings, using only my breath to change my depth, I find my mind expands. It will manifest in my next artwork. Stunning sunsets, sleeping children, light through cobalt or ruby glass, a lover’s laugh or shoulder muscle, sea horses, colored sand patterns on a deserted beach all become part of my interior visual library and Iconography. I am very blessed.”

Spheres

 

“The Spheres that are everywhere in my art, started as simple rounds of foil or gold, copper or silver leaf and evolved into a myriad of icons. My hands were familiar with the Zen Circle or Enso and the Sphere became it’s solidified counterpart. The Enso is the place where the heart and the mind have become one. The Spheres are planets, mandalas, suns, moons, and parallell universes. They are Sacred Circles of all kinds; medicine wheels, sweat lodge, spinning chakras, and the eye of the Witness the Tao speaks of. Lenses on the subconscious; portals into my creative spirit and process. Black holes, bubbles, my grandmother’s doilies, galaxies and conduits to other places. They are the calm in the center of the chaos. Look closer; they contain the particle and the wave, the egg and the seed. They are the expression of the manifest and unmanifest potential.”

To See More Of Kate’s Work Visit www.RosettaStoneFineArtVideos.com