Born and raised in Israel, Reich is the quintessential Israeli woman (or man, for that matter): opinionated, direct, warm, self-possessed, ambitious, strong and very, very honest. It does not hurt at all that she is immensely attractive and that this comeliness got her started on a career in modeling. However, unlike any number of models you might perchance meet at a party or at some sort of fashionable soirÈe or function, Reich’s attitude is anything but self-absorbed or superficial. Whatever pretensions one expects from a woman whose earnings come from being a pretty face or a lithe body on a glossy magazine cover, Reich does not exhibit them. Even though Reich admits that she entered into this career on a lark—having a mother who was and still is involved in fashion design—she claims she always had a certain disdain for the culture of beauty as presented in popular magazines and advertisements.
    “I was almost ashamed to call myself ‘beautiful’ because maybe people would think I’m stupid,” offers Reich. “Now I understand the power that is my inner self,” she continues. “I do not have to be ashamed of the fact that I am beautiful because my inner self is strong enough to bring out the message.”
    So, there it is: a beautiful face that comes to terms with a gift and decides to develop and project a personality apart and detached from her physical attributes.

    It seems rather incongruous and even absurd that a woman who has been as successful in the modeling world as has been Reich, would think negatively about the enterprise. Even though she has no compunctions about selling her looks, Reich does not take the view that she has prostituted herself nor does she believe that she is meant only to be a pretty face. Reich speaks of her thoughts about bringing something more than her looks to her shoots.
    Reminiscing about her first days as a top model in Paris, Reich recounts how she felt she needed to be a revolutionary, not in any political sense, but in a more personal way—finding a way to add brains to the equation of beauty plus youth equals contentment times satisfaction squared.
    The “myth” of beauty was the first icon that Reich chose to attack, stemming from how people close to her would ask about so-called beauty and dieting tips; what kind of makeup she wore and what kind of eating regimen she adhered to. Her response to these queries, she says, would invariably be, “‘Listen, this is natural’…and they would be angry and they wouldn’t believe me. They like to have some kind of myth, something to believe in.”
    And what, exactly, is the icon? “I realized that it doesn’t matter what the icon is, just give people something that would make them feel good.”
    Thus the emerging insights, leading Reich to shift her thoughts to becoming more of a breathing, thinking participant in the world of fashion, art and design and not just another expendable/interchangeable commodity within the industry. It is the concept of art as industry that Reich deplores, and she is looking to be an active and fully dedicated artist on the side of making industry an art. Even though Reich says, “You don’t have to come up with a message for the rest of the people. It’s not about being [an] intellectual. It’s about doing something for yourself or not, but not for other people,” she makes it clear that she is talking about the need in some of us to create for others what we think they want us to create or what we think they need created for them.
    Perhaps the words she chooses can be interpreted to mean that she is only interested in herself. But that is not the case. Reich is talking solely about honesty in creativity—the honesty of, say, children who are naturally positive in attitude and have no fears of creating their own reality when they are at play. It’s not about finding the “inner-child,” but about being truthful with oneself and, by extension, with others.
    Reich is anything but clueless to the machinations and realpolitik of art, artists and the so-called art world of galleries, design houses and the print media who present the full package to a buying public. Reich does not make the mistake of calling everything produced by everyone calling themselves an artist art. Reich’s desire and determination to just create things from the gut - with no small influence from the prosaic - sounds just fine. However, she has set an interesting condition for this undertaking: Bring along as many people who also want to create something, no matter what else they do in life.
    So, what happens when an articulate, talented and determined young woman decides to use “the system” to further her own ends and those of others less versed in the world of art and beauty? You get Yael Reich and The Collective.

    “Inner creativity contributes to ennoblement of character through personality integration and selfhood unification. It is forever true: The past is unchangeable; only the future can be changed by the ministry of the present creativity of the inner self.”
    —Anonymous

    Reich has decided that she is to fulfill a calling by approaching her gift of creativity by searching for spiritual ideals. And the ideal she has embraced is a form of service to others by ministering to the latent need in all of us to create something wonderful, something good and meaningful, something that represents our true self: the divine spark. “After all, is not God the ultimate artist?” asks Reich.
    The Collective is a nascent project that really has no name but has an agenda. After all the time spent in front of cameras, walking down runways and attempting to bring no small amount of intelligent input to her shoots, Reich has jump-started a tangential career as an artist and designer, among other endeavors. In collusion with her long-time boyfriend and partner in expression, the up-and-coming contemporary artist WK Interact, Reich has begun to devote herself to not only producing her own work in fashion design, but in bringing together people she has known through the years who have creative leanings and yearnings but were either detoured or railroaded into more mundane and pedestrian pursuits. One would think that a person with Reich’s history and portfolio might end up on the screen or in the recording studio careening toward a life not unlike a Madonna, a Britney Spears or some other performer with mediocre music but great T&A. And in fact she was slated to host an Israeli TV program dedicated to emerging trends in pop culture, but for whatever reasons, the project did not come to fruition. This did not stop Reich from pursuing her dream of finding her place in the world as a producer of her own art.
    Reich is enthusiastic about her emerging role of being part of New York City’s subculture of street artists, graffiti artists, guerrilla fashion designers and in-your-face performance artists. Whatever one’s opinion of these genres, one cannot assume that its existence will terminate any time soon or that there aren’t some gifted men and women in its ranks. She and WK Interact have a space down on the Lower East Side on Stanton Street called, simply enough, Studio 101. It is here that they both create their personal visions that are mutually inclusive. To be more precise, Reich points out that “Studio 101 is WK’s gallery/store, other than on those special occasions when it becomes ‘Collaboration 101’—when I had my fashion exhibition.”
    WK’s work are of a stark and Spartan nature; black-and-white with a fair amount of energy and movement. One of WK’s more ambitious pieces is a stylish black and white portrait of Reich that can be seen on the side of a building standing at Prince and Lafayette Streets in SoHo. It captures Reich’s model face—an exquisite face—in absolute contrasts, but the effect is electrifying. In a world full of color, Interact has deftly employed the polarity of absolutes and has given Reich an almost goddess-like visage…another anonymous icon. To Reich’s credit, this huge outdoor portrait has humbled her. She shows me a photo of the work and is sweetly shy about it, as if she cannot believe that it is her countenance filling the exterior wall of a Manhattan tenement building, eyed by thousands daily. It is exactly this humility that makes Reich credible when she speaks about the need to create and her desire to assist others to do the same.
    While she is conscious of the fact that her career in front of the lens has enabled her to do many things and live in different places, she is aware that at any time the tables could turn. Yet, she is absolutely sure that her forward motion in the realm of creativity beckons her to proceed with her objectives in manifesting her own voice. “I want to be a video artist, involved in things visual, things in motion…talk about my experiences as a person, as a woman. I want to create visual art—installation art. For years, I’ve been documenting my experiences...other people’s experiences. I started [taking classes] in video editing at the School of Visual Arts. I mastered Avid Video Editing at SVA two years ago, been editing on my personal computer for a while now,” Reich says.
    Okay. That’s what Reich has in store for her own ideas. The focus now shifts to Reich’s coming to the conclusion that by making her knowledge, time, resources and efforts available to a group of friends she makes herself part of a greater good and this sharpens her outline against the background. Reich is planning on expanding her Collective to her native Israel, where she has more than enough friends and a painter brother who are ready to move forward with their own projects but lack the exposure due to their nonactivity as artists and artisans. Reich’s idea is to aid and abet the up-until-now-silent rebels of fear—the fear that permeates all too much of humanity, the fear of believing in oneself the way a child does. And Reich takes great pains to make it clear that she is not championing the egoistic drive of pride, but the thrill and satisfaction of helping others do something creative. It comes down to having faith not just in oneself, but in a Creator. Admittedly, Reich did not grow up in a religious home. This does not mean that she is not aware of, and chooses to believe in, God. “I did not automatically believe [in God]. I do choose to believe.”
    Reich also believes that it is never too late and one does not have to go to the extremes of walking away from responsibilities to have a creative and happy existence. She speaks of her own father who is taking Reich’s message to heart and is pursuing his own vision for his portion. She does not tell me what her father does or what he wants to do, but she speaks with awe that he and others have come to embrace her outlook regarding the ability and the absolute rightness and righteousness in allowing the free spirit to soar in the form of writing, painting, photography, performing and video-making.
    The absolute clarity of her thoughts and feelings about self-expression as an ideal for spiritual living was achieved, she says, with her brother’s automobile accident. Reich recounts that her brother, who “since kindergarten was supposed to be an artist,” had drifted away from his true nature and his talents and was unhappy and struggling in business. The details of the accident itself are unimportant, but the resulting change in her brother’s outlook about his perceived purpose is the point Reich is making. Her brother has found that spark after a near-fatal incident. There’s nothing like trauma to set a person on a different path from the one they’ve been coasting on. It is almost a clichÈ. But a clichÈ does not become a clichÈ because it is untrue.
    Reich sees these events in the lives of people as being the perfect stimulus for once again embracing the creative child inside us all. They lead to having to make a decision: “Are you going to be a coward, or not?” she asks pointedly. Translated: Are you going to deny your essence? Are you going to pursue the lost or buried gift, the neglected talent? Will you really just stand by as the unused flame burns out and leaves you bereft of having done something you always imagined you should do, but were afraid to do? And Reich is not talking about simple self-gratification. She is talking about embracing any dreams you might still have. It would be appropriate here to remind everyone that we see the world through the eyes of our childhood, and we never altogether let go of our wishes.
    And then there is the fine line between focusing the self on the self for the sake of the self, or for the sake of some other person, thing or idea. Reich realizes that the moment she or anyone else attempting to be creative gets drawn into the seductive ether of being the center of the effort and not being just its producer, the whole thing will reek of self-indulgence and self-absorption. Reich says she sees in so many people what she once saw in herself as an up-and-coming young star in the fashion modeling world: Being caught up in the everyday fabrications and justifications for what we do to survive buries the true self. It would seem that Reich’s actions come from a desire to excel in both the worlds she has chosen: the world of art and creativity and the realm of ideal spiritual creative living. There are two distinct forms of creation happening with Reich.

    “The high mission of any art is, by its illusions, to foreshadow a higher universe reality, to crystallize the emotions of time into the thought of eternity.”—Anonymous

    And so may begin the debate about good vs. bad art. But the debate is not about art but about whether or not art can serve the purpose of uplifting one’s standing in the universe. The dichotomy of thought vs. feelings—rationality against emotion—is always fertile ground for a good argument concerning art and the motivation behind it. Reich is not interested in making any point other than the need to never lose the creative impulse. What is interesting is not that Reich insists that art be made for the sake of art nor that it be made to further a political or personal agenda.
    Reich shows off her recent designs using circular-knitted jersey fabric—commonplace T-shirt material. The garments are flowing and puffy; ruffled and bunched at the arm or by the waist, the effect is somewhere between playful and formal. Without having to explain, it is understood that single- and double-knit jersey is not considered the fabric of high fashion but is the textile of the hoi polloi, unless you count denim and other weaves. Reich is not even concerned that the fabric is pedestrian and her point is not to elevate the knit in the eyes of the world. It is the medium that she required to realize the designs as they were conceived. It is exactly what the artist needed to create her art. Nothing more and nothing less. The designs stand on their own merit, and the actual textile and texture is just a secondary component. The art is in the form and shape of the garment and the way it hangs on the wearer’s torso. The garment by itself is only half the art. The garment on the body is the entire statement: “The main idea behind my designs was to bring together the two extremes—the high fashion (expressed through the physical structure of my design) and the street disposable fashion (recycling T-shirts and collaborating with WK),” says Reich.
    With this attitude, Reich approaches her life and her art. The irony is that from a mere cursory glance, Reich appears to be just another self-indulgent or self-absorbed artiste with all her discussion about the fact that everyone has the potential to create beautiful and meaningful images or objects, as if she were referring only to herself—that her feelings and her thoughts must take precedence over all else. But it is in fact the exact opposite. It is Reich’s unquestioned faith not only in her Creator but in the creativity inherent in all people that drives her to make the most of her fortune as a “perpetrator of the myth of beauty” and use her powers to move others to shed their fears and pursue their dreams whether it is only for a brief time or as a complete 180-degree turn for one’s present situation. To state it plainly, Reich is encouraging others to find the expression of their creative spark and letting this energy be her muse as well.
    Also refreshing is Reich’s total dismissal of the entire establishment that categorizes and judges the work of others. While Reich is not espousing the ridiculous, post-modern notion “everything-is-relative-so-everything-is equal” blather, she feels strongly and is convinced that there can be no “bad” art if it comes from an honest source. One could argue that controversial artists who produce controversial art, e.g., Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” are being honest. This is a debate for another time, says Reich. And Reich neither defends nor deplores these artists and these works. “Who has the right to judge?” she asks. Once again, this is not Reich hiding behind the canard of moral relativism, but more like “who cares?” Reich is intent on getting to the absolute essence of creativity and that is the uplifting of life’s beauty in all its range of size and category.
    The last thing Reich wants is to be limited by any conventional wisdom concerning what makes for “truth” in her or anyone else’s art and creation. Again, she is walking a fine line between “truth” as defined by the arbiters of such, and honesty as the premier source of a creative work.
    Reich talks of “expressing one’s own truth.” And we all know that one person’s truth can be another person’s falsehood. And this is exactly where the problems begin: when art takes a backseat to political discourse, it compromises itself and it weakens the truthful content, to whatever extent there is any. Art for Reich is not about proving anything or about agitating or propagandizing. She would rather leave that to those unhappy and angry who also have the talent to create wonderful icons. For Reich, it is really only about accepting the truth that we are all in and of ourselves blessed creations of a magnificent artist, that we all can and must develop a sense of our place in creation where we can all contribute to the edification of this same creation by imitating the creative impulse.
    It would be unfair to say that Reich is on a mission because that sounds as if she has only a single-minded purpose and is oblivious to the other needs of this life. But part of her deployment, we shall say, in this world is to nourish the creative instinct in others and in turn be nourished by their realizations. It is as the New Testament says about saving yourself by allowing yourself to be sublimated. By putting other would-be or aspiring artists ahead of her own agenda, Reich completes the circle.