By Tom Tracy
If you were to stroll past Talia Cervetti’s studio on Lucerne Avenue in artsy downtown Lake Worth earlier this year, you might have found her seated low to the floor, listening to an old Sade CD while stitching a design into one of her acrylic paintings.
Or she might have been drawing one of her abstract figurative series in black-and-white using pencil, graphite or pen and ink.
If it was a Friday night, you might have been invited in for a wine-and-cheese open house. From there you might try on some handmade garments and shawls, another part of her art output.
Although she’s moved on from her Lucerne Avenue spot, Cervetti, a fine example of an emerging artist locally, would love for as many people as possible to experience her mostly abstract, colorful expressions.
“Many of my ideas come from the exchanges and conversations with others that may trigger thoughts and ideas,” she said.
A native of Iowa, Cervetti, 25, earned a degree from the prestigious California College of the Arts after graduating from the equally noteworthy Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach.
“I read about different ideas of spirituality and then configure and conclude some of my own thoughts and beliefs. Not only through reading do I feel a connection and ideas, but also through daily experiences with people.”
A member of the Jupiter Artists Association, a local artists’ co-op, Cervetti is tapping into the wider community for some help at this critical stage in a young artists’ development, when one needs to learn good business practices and how to understand the career side of the art world.
Some of Cervetti’s first influences come from a chance encounter she had while taking in Art Basel in Switzerland, where she saw the photography of Canadian-born Robert Polidori. His tragic landscapes and a series of images of rooms in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina inspired Cervetti in the direction of powerful emotions.
“Within those photos are immense textures, colors, and stories the people and families who have lived in or inhabited these spaces,” she said. “This series of photographs as well as many others tell a story about the past. They also are very attractive in the sense that they create a stillness and a silence so that you are almost physically be in the same room and capture its essence.”
Enter the mentor, JoAnne Berkow, owner and founder of Rosetta Stone Fine Art Gallery in Jupiter and author of three books, Shades of Love, What They Didn’t Teach You in Art School, and Painted Poetry.
In the 1970s, Berkow created a highly celebrated art cooperative, the Touchstone Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 1994, she opened Frenchman’s Art Gallery and Studios in Juno Beach. The 3,200-square-foot Rosetta Stone Gallery, which carries some of Cervetti’s pieces, opened in 2004 and has relocated to Jupiter Commerce Park. She said she has discovered and promoted some mid-career artists locally and internationally just before their work fetched inflated prices.
“I don’t find it fun to be a commodity trader for the blue-chip works. I am more interesting in emerging artists and to help expose developing artists,” Berkow said, adding she encourages artists to band together and inspire each other. “Some of the newer artists like Jeff Koons have a whole group of people working with them. They share space, and being around other artists is very valuable in my opinion.”
Berkow thinks Cervetti is a great at drawing and developing as a painter. She discovered her work at Unique Art Gallery, a small cooperative in Jupiter.
“I enjoy being a mentor and Talia is super-talented,” Berkow said, adding that Cervetti’s character studies and overall work has “weight” that will appeal to serious art buyers.
“The combination of drawing, handmade fabrics and cutouts in the paper adds such dimension to her work. Now I am encouraging her to add the material to all her pencil drawings because that is unique, and that is what people like today: unique.”
Cervetti speaks highly of the foundation in drawing and painting skills she took from her years at Dreyfoos, and the encouragement from the faculty there to explore her interests and artistic path, to push past her fears.
Northern California artist and instructor Franklin Williams urged her, for instance, to make a conscious effort to be present all the time in what she is doing in the here and now.
“He creates a space where the environment in which I existed for six hours a week stood still, where absolutely no worries could exist, where no boundaries existed, where in front of me lay a new landscape of exploration,” she said. “The energy I felt in his classroom is something I strive to feel every day. It is a place where I consciously allow for my mind to rest and focus on a specific task.”
Susan Lorenti, founder and director of the 25-member Jupiter Artists Association, is currently hosting three series of Cervetti’s works, including a large color landscape showing a central figure that she believes is Cervetti’s self-representation.
“She doesn’t fit into any particular mold, which is what I like about her. She is raw talent, an artist exploding,” Lorentti said, adding that she was worried at one time that being in the art field might compromise Cervetti’s individual creativity, “but her collaborations with other people and having people tell her what is marketable haven’t hurt her at all.”
“She is definitely a free spirit and that reflects in her work. I adore her personally. She is a very honest and pure person,” Lorenti said.
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Talia Cervetti’s website is www.taliacervetti.com. Her work can be seen at Rosetta Stone Fine Art Gallery and A Unique Art Gallery, both in Jupiter. She also is available by appointment can be followed on her Facebook page for upcoming shows and events.