The Sun – San Bernadino County

By: Jennifer M. Dobbs

Her home is her studio.

The laundry room is where she paints in oils and acrylics. The island in the kitchen is her jewelry workshop, where she carefully transforms gems into necklaces and earrings.

"The art is everywhere," said a smiling Galit Breman, artist and professor of psychology at University of Redlands. "The house is filled with it."

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Breman, of Highland, is filled with the desire to create art, and said sometimes it just explodes onto the canvas through a brush or through her fingers.

"Once I get it out, then I have to relax myself down again," she said.

Breman was born and raised in Tiberias, Israel, near the Sea of Galilee.

At age five, she brought her first painting to her father. "He said, 'This is nice, but you need to improve.'

"That haunts me," she said.

In high school, she got in trouble for drawing during class, "My teacher said I shouldn't be doing that during class. But he wanted to keep my drawing."

After serving compulsory duty in the army, Breman moved to Haifa, Israel, where she earned a master's degree in psychology at University of Haifa.

There she met husband Joe Breman, who had come from the United States to Israel to study marine civilization. She encountered him in the donn when he was knocking on doors looking for a mutual friend.

"When I met Joe, my art really burst. It was the first rime I was painting out offeeling happy. It was a 'transformation."

She "followed her love" back to the United States.

"He took my first painting when I met him, and was the first one ever to frame my work.

"He said, 'Galit, this is your art. I love it,' and he framed it and put it on the wall.

"Something clicked inside and changed in me. I saw it in a different light. He appreciated it, and it made a huge difference to me."

That first painting of flowers in a vase, "Tranquil Theory," hangs on the wall of their den.

Most of her paintillgs are flowers, trees, or marine life.

"He kept bringing me flowers, so I kept painting them."

Her signature ofthe flower paintings is a dying flower, a new flower, and those in between.

"One of my greatest compliments was when I was painling the irises on the canvas outside. A hummingbird flew up to it and thought it was real," she said.

Joe was the first one in the family to create jewelry, making necklaces as gifts for his wife.

"I treasure them." she said.

"I felt this attraction to the stones. Joe looked at them and said, 'I can teach you a little bit.'

"He showed me how to bend the silver wire. I made them in the beginning for fun. Then people started saying, 'Would you sell it to me?'"

Then she thought maybe it could be more than a hobby.

In December, she was sc!ling six necklaces a day.

"I tell people to choose with their heart,"Breman said of her necklaces. "People are drawn to the stones with the healing properties they need, they Just don't know it."

In April, the couple opened RippleGems, a small business to sell her jewehy and her art.

"Ripple, because that is my name in Hebrew, Galit means ripple,"

Not wanting to part with her original oil and acrylic paintings, Breman had prints made from the originals to sell.

"That is when the idea with the restaurant came up. I saw the art that was there, and asked if they would be interested."

She has shown in a San Diego cafe, at a gallery on the Crafton Hills College campus, and is now showing at Farm Artisan Foods in the Cope Building on Citrus Avenue in Redlands.

"Galit and Joe were very early customers," said Roberto Argentina, owner of farm Artisan Foods.

"We were looking for different local artists. One of my waitresses pushed for Galit's art after viewing it on her Web site."

"It is a very nice restaurant," Breman said. "And I feel very honored to have my art there."

"People have really enjoyed it," Argentina said, "Nothing has really matched as well in our restaurant as her art. We have asked her to stay on, switching out her art, kind of like an artist in residence."

"I look at these pieces of my soul hanging in the restaurant, and then the people react to my paintings. That is beautiful to see," Breman said,
Each painting has a story.

"It is not just a flower. It is not just a tree. There is a whole drama going on in the painting, and it is interesting to see how people interpret it.

"It is a journey of learning for me, too, how people look at art and what it means to them."

Breman's art dominates the house. But now that sons Joshua, 4, and Jonah, 2, are getting into art, she has to share the display space.

Drawings of happy faces and boats hang on the walls and refrigerator.

"Joshua insists on hanging his feltmarker art on the wall like mommy's," Breman said of her son's masterpieces. "I want to give him the feeling that we are supporting his art. I love it."