`Artist sees Comforts Arts Gallery as service to peers, community`

By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer

Brian DeMoss has worked with many art media since he was a boy, and he calls opening an art gallery his dream come true.

“If God strikes me dead tomorrow they can put on my tombstone, ‘He owned a gallery’,” said DeMoss, who recently opened Comforts Art Gallery in Greene Township.

And while his wood carvings are on display at the gallery and are likely to be regularly shown there, he doesn’t want Comforts to be a vanity enterprise. He hopes to use the gallery to promote art in the area and give back to the community.

Ten percent of the sale price of every piece sold goes to an area church, a thank you for when churches aided him in down times, said the non-denominational Christian.

DeMoss also hopes to start programs for school students to encourage them the way Devon Thomas lit a fire for art in him, he said.

“God gave me this talent,” he said of his rationale for using the gallery for community service. “Any moment he can take it away. When God gives you a talent and you use it to pay the bills, you have a bill to pay back to him.”

DeMoss doesn’t earn his living from art — he’s a laid-off union steward for Trinity Industries, Greenville — but he hopes to someday.

DeMoss, who has a wood carving studio at the gallery, said he will show works by artists without agents and will display only one-of-a-kind originals. “I’ll show them if they produce quality work and don’t want a fortune for it,” he said.

Works will sell for $15 to $500, he said.

DeMoss is returning the favor to Thomas for support by showing his work in the gallery. DeMoss said he was 16 and thought he had reached a mature drawing technique when Thomas, of Williamsfield, Ohio, saw his work.

“He said, ‘If you get rid of that Scooby Doo (expletive deleted), you could be an artist some day,” DeMoss said. “That burned a hole in me.”

DeMoss said he reapplied himself to art and started studying many different media. He draws, paints, sculpts, molds and works in brass, copper and steel. But he found his artistic calling a year ago, when he fell in love with wood.

“I call it non-traditional relief,” he said. “In traditional relief they don’t get that in-depth. My doors even have little knobs. I try to make it as real as I can.”

DeMoss’s favorite subjects include light houses, nature scenes, animals, firearms and Indian crosses.

Tony Pasquine of Girard, Ohio, who works in glass, also has agreed to display works at the gal-lery and DeMoss said he is looking for other local artists.

Gallery decisions are made by DeMoss, his wife, Tawnya, and Thomas, but DeMoss hopes the gallery will become more of an artists collective, with other artists involved in operations.

Comforts Art Gallery is on Jamestown-Kinsman Road (Route 58) at McElheny Road. Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. to dusk Saturday.

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Updated June 5, 1999
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