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Profile: Deborah Page
She’s not tall. Or loud. Or outrageously opinionated.
Yet at creative Austin social gatherings, guests gravitate to the conversational orbit of Deborah Page. That’s particularly true when the party lands at the handsome stone house she shares with husband David Schneider, a money manager.
In Tarrytown, during the past few months, Page has hosted lively benefits for LifeWorks, Mental Health America of Texas, Art Divas and the Texas Biennial. Folks coalesced in art-laced rooms, positioned by architect Hugh Randolph like a series of theatrical stages, before filing out onto the hospitable terrace.
Yet she doesn’t hold court. She’s no Auntie Mame. Nor does she erupt into public emotion, like Maureen Stapleton’s character in Woody Allen’s “Interiors,” although Page resembles the late actress in certain lights.
Maybe it’s her innate curiosity, made concrete by her incredibly eclectic art collection.
“In this house, it’s garage sale and great art,” she laughs. Here one can find gems by Ed Ruscha, Mark Bradford, Ken Noland and Barry McGee.
She’s particularly proud of works by Julio Cesar Morales, whom she represented at her former gallery in Santa Monica, Calif. That was before she took up her current, more esoteric profession.
“I love the interaction of the consulting, talking to architects, interior designers,” she says. “I love going into a space and not getting stuck in one genre. You find out what the client wants, put yourself in their position, then maybe elevate their taste.”
Page’s parents were products of the rooted Midwest, yet they made natural migrants to the restless California of the 1950s.
Her father, Dr. Robert Zimmerman, experimented with West Coast variations on psychiatry: Gestalt, hypnosis, bioenergetic therapy.
“He’s a brilliant doctor,” Page says. “And maverick of a man in every aspect of his life.”
The doctor’s unconventional nature to marry several women in succession. He wed Page’s mother, Betty Zimmerman, now living in West Lake Hills, twice.
“He never stuck to anything for any period of time,” Page says. “Always on to the next woman or form of psychiatry.”
Page’s housewife mother was more reliable. And while she may have inherited her father’s insatial curiosity, she admires her mother’s taste in art, interior design and cooking.
“She entertained beautifully,” Page says. “I wouldn’t say she was conventional, but more so than my father.”
Her mother introduced Page to insider world of art as well.
“Mother would go down to a studio to visit an artist named ‘;Persona,’” she recalls. “He was a Laguna Beach figure at the time and she was somewhat of a patron to him. We’d watch him paint. He’d be at our table for holidays. ”
The family — Page has one sister, a retired massage therapist who lives in Napa Valley — moved from Southern California to Napa, Calif., where Page spent her teen years. The customarily studious girl began to act out a bit after her parents split up.
“The other side came out,” she says. “I didn’t do anything horrible. But I was obviously rebellious.”
To cut class, Page mined father’s medical journals for phony excuses. College? “That’s an interesting story. Very interesting,” she says. “I earned 13 credits from three institutions of higher learning. I’m sure there are more (credits), but I’m not going to go find out.”
Instead of graduating, Page, who always worked, moved to San Francisco, taking a job as a receptionist at a law firm. Later, she served as restaurant hostess on Union Street.
“It was fabulous,” she says of the city in the 1970s. “I met my husband on Union Street.”
After dating and marrying, the couple moved around the Bay area. He worked in commerical banking, she for a brokerage firm. When they purchased their first condo in 1979, like so many first-time home-buyers, they needed something to fill a wall.
“I wanted a painting,” she says. “So I went to every gallery and museum. (Art) was always in my head after that.”
Her first purchase was a Linda K. Smith pastel gouache on paper of pale stalks that turn almost abstract. The largish canvas still commands a place of honor in their home.
She says of the freshly sparked passion for art: “It’s been ongoing ever since then.”
Page and Schneider produced two sons with their own opinions about art. Adam Schneider, 26, works as an assistant to a movie producer at Paramount Studios. While studying at Harvard University, he joined the young collectors’ clubs.
“He has an incredible curatorial eye,” the proud mother says. Grant Schneider, 25, is in graduate school at George Washington University, while working for U.S. State Department. He turned out more of a minimalist, compared to his mother’s “horror vacui,” or urge to fill an entire surface with images.
“He used to say: ‘You have the ugliest art, Mom, it’s terrible,’” Page jokes. “But now, I’d say, it’s rubbing off a bit.”
Among her friends, Page can count high-flying Austin art aficiandos David Booth and Suzanne Deal Booth. (Schneider works for Booth’s phenomenally successful Dimensional Fund Advisors.)
Arriving in Austin, Page considered opening another gallery, but, on reflection, had found retail limiting. Previously, she had enjoyed her forays into art consulting, putting in a sculpture garden at Auberge de Soleil resort with former business partner Susan Brandt and independently consulting for Auberge Resorts.
More recently, her company, Deborah Page Projects, has set up a rotating gallery at Scott + Cooner, which sells modern furniture, and she picked out art for some of the sales models at dowtown residence towers and some bold-faced names familiar to readers of this column.
“It all happened organically,” she says. “It goes where it goes.”
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