Fashion designer creates online art initiative
Berks County resident is encouraging her fellow artists to share their work on social media on April 30 .
Stephanie Rado Taormina thinks big — real big. Visions come to her, and she gives them life. That’s just the way it’s always been.
She does it with her artwork, and she does it with the designs for her incubator clothing and accessories company.
And now, during times the likes of which we’ve never seen, the Wyomissing, Berks County, resident is envisioning a worldwide online exhibition that showcases the creative power being unleashed in sync with the coronavirus quarantine.
It all started with her Facebook post on March 31, which read, in part: “During this time of crisis many of us are looking for ways to express our emotions and thoughts; we are ‘creating’ and that is incredibly healing. I had the idea, ‘what if we all shared something we made during this time in the spirit of heightening the level of love and healing energy worldwide?’”
She concluded by encouraging her fellow artists — anybody who creates anything, be it visual art, music, poetry, fiction, cartoons, designs — to share their work on social media on April 30 with the hashtag #globalreset.
“I know that’s not sexy,” Stephanie said of the name Global Reset, “but it was the first thing that came to my mind when I was thinking of a hashtag. And I googled all these hashtags and then thought, ‘I’m just going to go with my gut,’ because I think that’s what this time is partially about.
“It’s a time to rethink where you’re going and what you’re doing, and it’s an opportunity. And if you can look at it as an opportunity, it’s a way for us to press the reset button, because no one is not affected by this.”
Stephanie said the quarantine has given her a chance to lose herself in painting for the first time since she launched her company, Have Some Fun Today, five years ago.
In that time, her onewoman operation has taken on a life of its own, helped along by celebrity sightings of the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Halle Berry, Kate Hudson and Brooke Shields sporting Stephanie’s wares. High-end resorts like Fountainebleau and Mandarin Oriental in Miami have hopped onboard.
Last year, she entered a QVC and HSN contest called “The Big Find,” and was among the 70 winners (out of 654 entries) whose companies were chosen for nurturing by the shopping networks. It was a gamechanger for her start-up. She received a big purchase order and was supposed to go live on QVC last week to pitch her merchandise, but those plans got scrapped due to the pandemic. Her line instead was launched Friday on the QVC website.
As all that was getting sorted out, Stephanie found she had some unexpected free time for the first time in a long time, so she and her quarantine housemate, her 23-year-old daughter Allegra Taormina, broke out the paints. And they found the artistic expression to be invigorating.
“To me, inspiration is such a huge thing, and as I was painting and having this really lovely time, I was inspired,” Stephanie said. “Like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if, during this time, all the people — and I think big, so, yes, all the people in the world — were to share what it is that they are making or creating or writing?’ I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be a powerful statement, a powerful energy to put out there?’”
Stephanie, who studied design at such prestigious institutions as the New School and Parsons School of Design, both in Manhattan, has cast a wide net with her social media posts about Global Reset, sharing it with her friends across the United States, who are in turn sharing it with their friends. There’s no telling how far and wide it will reach.
She sees it as a way to raise the vibration of a community during a time of confusion, angst and isolation.
“That community could be Berks County, that community could be Pennsylvania, that community could be the Northeast, it could be the United States, it could be the world,” she said.
A glass half full
Stephanie is a glass-halffull kind of person. She thrives on positivity. It’s a trait she inherited from her father, Joseph Rado.
She gets emotional talking about it — how, for as long as she can remember, dating back to her childhood, instead of saying goodbye to people, he would say, “Have some fun today.”
“My dad was a big part of my life, and he was a very positive human and great person,” she said, the words catching in her throat.
A long stretch of declining health landed him in hospital after hospital the last two years of his life. By the end, he was a double-amputee, yet his spirit remained unbowed. Every time Stephanie left his bedside, he’d repeat his fourword mantra, and she’d be awed by his resolve to remain upbeat.
When her father died in April 2014, Stephanie was devastated. But even though he was gone, a part of him lived on through her. His saying took on a life of its own, going viral locally.
“And actually,” Stephanie said, “the funny thing is, when I look back on it, the way I spoke about it at first on social media, my post was: ‘The words of a great man will always stay with me.’ Then I put in quotes, ‘Have some fun today.’ ”
She said a couple of months later, while she was doing her morning meditation, she got a vision. It was of a painting — a painting that had her father’s catchphrase on it.
“The way I do my art, my design work, I get visualizations of what it should be,” she said. “I always have, and that is how my art comes to me. So I had this vision. And then it went from a painting to a tote bag to a T-shirt . ... So in that five minutes, I designed the core pieces of my line.”
‘Creativity feels good’
Stephanie views artists as providing the fuel that drives the engine of society. The way she sees it, this period of quarantine serves as a golden opportunity for creators, no matter their medium, to look inward and see what they have to offer the world.
“There’s always that need for artists,” she said. “To me, creativity should be more important in life, because that’s how we invent things, and make breakthroughs, and (develop) culture, and find better ways of doing things. It’s through creativity.”
On top of that, she said, creativity feels good and promotes healing.
“We all have our own type of medicine,” she said, “and for me it’s being creative. And as an artist, we just share. That’s how we are. We share what we make because that’s the point of it.”
Participating artists who can’t wait to share their work can do so now on the Global Reset Facebook page Stephanie started last weekend, and then again with their hashtagged posts on April 30.
How it all turns out, she said, is anybody’s guess. She hopes it will grow organically.
She’s not looking to get anything out of this for herself, but she does see its potential for helping others.
“Who’s to say we can’t have an event where we auction off the stuff and a portion of it goes to a charity?” she said. “Maybe it’s in Berks County, or maybe it’s in Berks County and Philly and Lancaster. And that could become a global thing. We could even make a T-shirt and proceeds from that go to a charity.
“There’s a lot of possibilities; it’s just whether or not people are looking for ways to feel better and have some hope.”