Valerie Sobel graces the cover of this magazine,and the pages of two books on style and originality. She is an Instagram phenomenon as the “Diva of the Ceremony of Dressing”. She is also a philanthropist providing rapid assistance to parents of terminally ill children. Trying to describe Sobel puts one in a word salad of superlatives in which all of them are accurate.
As a girl, wth her little brother on her back, she and her family fled Communist aggression in their native Hungary. On foot for miles and miles, they at last reached what she describes as ‘the most rotten, dirtiest refugee camp” in the world. Ultimately the family emigrated to Canada where she completed her academic education and embarked on the education provided by Life itself. . Following a series of careers (actress,married woman, interior designer, mother) she is at this moment an artist, a world traveler and a compassionate philanthropist.
Sobel did not choose to be a philanthropist. It is what life, death and grief demanded of her. Her world stopped turning on the day her teen-age son Andre was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She was able to be at his side throughout the 417 days that elapsed until he died. While this loss was sweeping through her life, she was confronted within a year by the suicide of her husband followed by the death of her mother. In Virginia Madsen’s documentary “I Know a Woman Like That” Sobel was asked how she survived this universe of grief.
“God is definitely in the mix; not in a traditional, ritualistic ceremonial way. It’s a different God. You know you’re not alone. The sorrow is so deep that if He has created it, it is just part of it all. You feel this is a plan that no one shared with you. Some get very angry, I did not. I thought that it is so beyond me to understand any of it. If I am okay with the mystery I am okay with God and I’m okay with a destiny that I didn’t call upon.”
She was privileged to be at the bedside of her son all the days he lived from the moment of his diagnosis until he was taken from her. Her experience was in sharp contrast to the experience of the mother of the child in the bed next to her son. This child had no one at his side. The boy explained that his mother couldn’t be there because she was in another state working at a job to support his care and his three siblings at home. Sobel’s haunting, indelible memory of that child having to endure painful tests and loneliness with no one at his side provided illumination for a path in which Andre’s life did not end on the day he died.
With the ten million dollars she inherited when her husband died Sobel created “The Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation” to provide assistance for grieving single parents of terminally ill children “when compassion can’t wait”. Working through social workers in hospitals across the country, the foundation is usually able to respond to an appeal within 24 hours. The foundation doesn’t waste a lot of time on lengthy questionnaires. In the years since she suffered her own losses, the foundation has now given away more than four and half million dollars. Sadly, she notes:
“This is a population which the health care system we have is not set up to recognize or to which it is able to respond.”
More than twenty years later the foundation is still fulfilling its mission. Sobel has become an advocate for those grieving parents and a sought-after motivational speaker.
Sobel has been described as a “walking work of art”. Her distinctive public appearance has landed her on the pages of two books: Tziporah Salamon’s “The Art of Dressing: Ageless, Timeless, Original Style” and Ari Seth Cohen’s book “Advanced Style” where her photograph is its cover. In a quote from the book she shared her thoughts on living a long life:
“Life is partitioned into distinct stages. The first part is for the acquisition of knowledge; the second, they call the “householder” years. These are the “noisy ones” of creating and tending to family. And the third, most magical, belongs to you. It makes perfect sense; you have earned it, you just need to claim it”
What she has claimed for herself, at this time in her life, she describes this way:
“Personally I am blessed to be in a state of returning, expressing and sharing my given talent through the gifts of art and beauty, as well as the most meaningful philanthropy.”
She explained further that within the last two years:
“My spirit lifted from the deep sorrow of my losses nearly twenty years ago and somewhat mystically, at the same time, creating art has possessed me.”
Sobel is currently engaged in exploring the art of “Assemblage”. As evidenced in the photographs of her art in this article, what she creates incorporates the work of many people.
“There is a lot of workmanship in there that isn’t mine. I relate it very much to Interior Design, in which you use other people’s furniture and juxtapose it against negative space with one’s own sensibilities and reflect it against a golden ceiling. Or you create a jewel box for someone who likes space, who has an ocean as the extension of their living room. It’s all magical and it’s all from the same mindset, yet with different skills. I can’t paint, I can’t sing, but I certainly appreciate the work of others. We can all partake in all that has ever been in creation; in whatever has happened before. In very short order I created of a body of work of twenty eight pieces. I was truly on fire, even though I realized I don’t know anything about the world of art.”
Philosophically, Sobel believes:
“We are the result of of our own past experiences, good or bad. Nothing is as exciting as making sense out of the present time and yet having the ability of the looking glass— to look back to see how it all works. That, I think is the privilege of age.”
In her art, as in her life, Sobel herself is an “assemblage” of joy, grief, survival, artful expression and triumph. She is indeed, a “Singular Woman”.
Creative Credits
- Written by
- Elaine Madsen
- Photography
- Kimble Hookstraten
- Photography
- Nick Holmes
- Image courtesy
- Michael Arazi
- Image courtesy
- Nicola Tallarico
- Creative Credit
- Michael Arazi
- Creative Credit
- Nicola Tallarico
