Native New Orleanian ready to exhibit her art in Scarsdale

By ALAN SMASON, EXCLUSIVE TO THE CCJN

The last time Rebecca Berins Schwarz was preparing for an exhibit of her art to be shown, she was finishing undergraduate school in 1998. That was just prior to her launching a career as a graphics art designer and advertising director in New York.  But the grind of Madison Avenue and the constant pressure was less than rewarding for her. Within a few years she had opted for a career change, returning to college, earning a master’s degree in art and becoming an art teacher and graphics instructor.

“Seder on Rue Octavia” shows a New Orleans Passover seder with family members dreaming about things other than the seder. (Courtesy of Rebecca Schwarz)

Schwarz, the daughter of Lenny Berins and Reva Lupin, first received success as an artist while a student at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) and Benjamin Franklin High School. She later refined her craft at the Fashion Institute of Technology as an undergraduate, receiving a bachelor’s of fine arts degree and later received her master’s degree from Columbia University. Since 2002, she has been a teacher.

While teaching middle school students has been much more fulfilling for Schwarz than the deadline-driven and sterile world of advertising, she always felt an emotional and spiritual vacuum within her that could only be filled by making her own art.

With the support of her attorney husband Matthew and the understanding of her two daughters, she began to paint a number of pieces in oil, acrylic and watercolors in anticipation of mounting an exhibit of her art. “Now that my kids are a little bit older, I’m trying to make it a little bit more of a priority,” she says.

She began “Zelda,” a series of women’s portraits dedicated in name and spirit to Zelda Fitzgerald, the bold, complex and troubled wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Several of the pieces she describes as quirky or cynical. There are a number referencing New Orleans Jewish themes too. Schwarz wants to create a different kind of Judaica that bears little resemblance to the needlepoint or religious figure portraits of the past. She describes them as “old-fashioned and irrelevant to some people.”

A detailed artist’s statement on her website relates the dichotomy of feelings she experienced as a divorced child of an assimilated New York Jewish father and a “southern belle” observant mother and the way she felt marginalized as a Jew.

“Laissez les bon temps rouler le dreidel” shows three children playing dreidel within their home with the temptations of the city showing through the window behind them. (Courtesy Rebecca Schwarz)

Consider the provocative “Seder on Rue Octavia” in which a New Orleans Jewish family assembles for a Passover seder meal. All of the family members are thinking about forbidden foodstuffs (e.g. bread, cake, beignets and crawfish). The title is spelled out in familiar blue and white tiles similar to those found on New Orleans streets in sidewalks, while a “Geaux Saints” poster bearing a fleur-de-lis is hung on the dining room wall.

Another piece – “Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler Le Dreidel” depicts three children playing dreidel within the confines of the family home while the temptations of New Orleans culture are seen in the picture window behind them.

She is interested in approaching a community that is not 100% sure of their feelings of Judaism, she says. Often, this will create an opportunity for humor. A painting of a gallon plastic jug filled with milk sitting next to a plastic bear full of honey bears the title “Jewish Dream.”

In addition there are several pieces dedicated with love to New York and its culture of delicatessen food and mammoth skyscrapers.

Regardless of faith background or lack thereof, Schwarz hopes to break down traditions by examining them through her artistic lens, showing the imperfect and sometimes the hypocritical nature of being a minority.

“I’m hoping to develop an art practice,” Schwarz said. “I’ve devoted my entire career to art and a large piece of it to art education. Now, I’m becoming an artist on my own.”

Because she is not dependent on her art for her income, she feels fortunate. “It’s something I feel very lucky in that I can continue to grow and explore. In the process I feel like my skills have grown every day I do it,” Schwarz continues.

She hopes to add another quirky New Orleans painting to her repertoire, one that is sketched out but not finished as a painting. In “Lagniappe,” she will show a Jewish Klezmer band with a second line following it and the word emblazoned in a font that resembles Hebrew.

“I’m just going to see where it’s going to take me,” she confides about the piece and her career.

For more information contact the artist at her website or by emailing her here.