What Artists Dream Of

An exhibit of contemporary artists at the Michener gets inside the heads of Bucks County visionaries.

By: Ilene Dube

"It is not like movie time. I need to find the right time, I have just one shot, one pose," says Valeriy Belenikin of the inspirational moment. "It’s like love. If a man and a woman have that feeling, they will get physical. But without that feeling, nothing happens." Above, "Sink or Swim" by Mavis Smith.

   Ever since painters Edward Renfield and William Lathrop settled in Bucks County in 1898, creative people have been drawn to the region. In line with its mission to preserve the heritage of these artists, the James A. Michener Art Museum continues to nurture talents in Bucks County today.
   "The continued vitality of the creative community in our area is part of what makes it a unique and nourishing place to be," says Museum Director Bruce Katsiff. The Contemporary Eye, on view at the Michener’s New Hope, Pa., branch through May 8, surveys the work of 12 artists who have not previously exhibited at the museum.
   The 12 include photographers Ricardo Barros and Ann Lovett; painters Valeriy Belenikin, Alan Lachman, Robert Ranieri, Charlotte Schatz, Mavis Smith and Valerie Von Betzen; mixed-media artists Marilyn C. Gordley, Judith Heep and Susan M. Twardus; and woodworker David Ellsworth.
   Valeriy Belenikin, who has a gallery and residence in Lambertville, is a Moscow native who studied classical technique at the Moscow Academic Institute of Fine Arts. His work is in cultural centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vienna.

"Eight Dogs," mixed media by Judith Heep.

   He met his wife-to-be, Ildico, in New York City in 1998; also a Russian, she had emigrated with her family 15 years earlier. It was love at first sight and a week after meeting, the couple married. Mr. Belenikin sold everything to make a new life in the United States.
   Accustomed to the broad streets in Moscow, Mr. Belenikin found living and painting in New York City, on the fifth floor of a building at Jones Street and Broadway, too noisy. "At 4 a.m., I could hear Harley Davidsons and people talking," he says, with interpretive help from his wife. The couple was lured by the serenity of Bucks County.
   Mr. Belenikin’s allegorical paintings come largely from his dreams. He has trained himself to construct in his sleep, says Ms. Belenikin. He sleeps some, wakes up and makes sketches using pens that light up in the dark. He returns to sleep, then wakes and sketches. Ms. Belenikin says her husband does this by the hour.

Valeriy Belenikin’s painting, "Mirror."

   Mr. Belenikin can spend years working on the idea, but once he starts transferring it to canvas, it goes quickly. He uses Old Masters’ techniques, layering the paint with varnish. "It’s possible to do it easier but he wants to do it harder because the harder you work, it thanks you back," says Ms. Belenikin. "When intellectual people who appreciate music see his work, they know it is deep."
   One of his paintings, "Garbage Dump," shows a heap of old treasure piled up in the attic surrounded by stacks of money. The artist says he is offering a spiritual alternative to materialistic things.
   The materialism theme continues in "Gold," in which three men bathed in the golden glow of sunset are panning for the treasured ore. One of them sees hope and the fulfillment of dreams in the gold; another becomes paranoid and his expression shows fear that a dangerous situation is looming, that the others might steal from him. The third man, overcome with greed, seeks to have it all.

"This Old Man" by Susan Twardus.

   
   When he paints, says Mr. Belenikin, "it is not like movie time. I need to find the right time, I have just one shot, one pose," he says. "It’s like love. If a man and a woman have that feeling, they will get physical. But without that feeling, nothing happens."
   The charcoal drawings and paper sculpture of Hamilton resident Susan Twardus focus on society’s disenfranchised. Although she was born in 1960, the works have a Depression-era aura. Her sculptures are made of old blackened newspapers and wax, adding to the feeling.
   "Crutch and Burden" is such a piece. An older man holding a shopping bag or suitcase in one hand supports himself on a cane with the other. Stock quotes can be seen in the bag. "Consequence," a charcoal illustration, has three old men walking in a semicircle, all carrying their baggage, or burden.
   "These are not necessarily Depression-era people, they are based on local people I’ve seen," says Ms. Twardus. "They start from a photograph I’ve taken at the flea market, in Trenton, Philadelphia or Manhattan. They still exist today."
   Ms. Twardus describes herself as a painter who uses her hands. To develop her paper sculpture technique, "I relied on a recipe from grade school for paper clay," she says. While working as an events planner at Merrill Lynch from 1994-1997, she acquired Wall Street Journals to grind up. "(The sculptures) started out as maquettes but were so wonderful I left them as they were."
   While the inner surfaces are made from ground-up newspaper, whole sheets of newsprint are draped over the surface. The bane of her existence is that The Wall Street Journal has added color, she says. "The color is ruining my artwork." Ms. Twardus is especially fond of those gray financial pages and stock reports. "They give me an interesting palette of patterns."
   She likes to give her subjects hats or suitcases because "these are significant of the things we possess. They are symbols of humanity."
   Suitcases, baggage and aging became themes for Ms. Twardus when she had to put her grandmother into a nursing home. "We had to condense her life into four suitcases," she recalls.
   Another paper sculpture, "Danny Boy," depicts an old, bearded man in blackened newsprint, holding out his arms to sing. Ms. Twardus had been descending into the New York City subway when "I heard this beautiful rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ on the escalator. The acoustics in there made the sound magnificent. When I got to the bottom, there was this frail African-American man in a raincoat belting out the song. I was so moved, I worked on the piece as soon as I got home."
   The subjects of Trenton native and Solebury, Pa., resident Mavis Smith’s paintings have a different kind of baggage. Using egg tempera that lends a luminous color glaze to the work, her paintings imply an unfinished, somewhat elliptic narrative. We see a girl lying on a cobblestone street, her head resting on a pillow, while in the background an archway leads to a cerulean sea with mountains rising from it. In "Specks of Dust," a woman has a white rope wrapped around her breast that turns orange as it coils past her neck and onto the doorway behind her, where we see a balcony, a sea, mountains and a cloud-filled sky. These portals to another world seem Mediterranean.
   Ms. Smith says that although they do have a Mediterranean quality, they are not of any specific place. "I am trying to create an atmosphere from my mind," she says. "I like the fantasy environment gleaned from years of travel. I’ve been everywhere but Africa and Antarctica." The woman with the rope, for instance, was influenced by a trip to Thailand, Cambodia and Laos three years ago.
   "My main focus is on the individual in the painting, but a little glimpse of the rest of the world out there is a tie to the big beyond," she says.
   The faces of her subjects are smooth, the eyes almond shaped. "I think what gives them that Botticelli quality is the medium," says Ms. Smith, who studied egg tempera at the Seattle Academy of Fine Art in 2002. (She received a bachelor’s degree from Pratt Institute in 1977.) "I’ve always been fascinated by the technique, having seen it at the Metropolitan Museum and at the Uffizi (in Florence).
   "Unlike oils, with egg tempera, you have to build up hundreds of translucent layers. It’s very detail-oriented, and each layer creates that quality," she continues. More durable than oil, the egg tempera, made from powdered pigment and egg yolk mixed up fresh daily, dries quickly, so 50 to 100 layers can be added in a day. "Each layer is pure color, and every layer affects the one beneath."
   Ms. Smith’s ideas — a woman who grows gills while facing a fish, a naked woman holding a saw, a seated woman whose one hand has started to grow fur and claws — come to her while she is working with a live model. "The background elements usually evolve after I start painting," she says. "I don’t start with a firm concept. Your mind is open and you go into a trance and the ideas come in."
The Contemporary Eye is on view at the James A. Michener Art Museum, 500 Union Square Drive, New Hope, Pa., through May 8. Gallery hours: Thurs. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission costs $5, $4 age 60 and up, $2 ages 6-12, free under age 5. Self-guided Artists Studio Open House Tour April 16, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tickets cost $20, advance registration required. For information, call (215) 340-9800. On the Web: www.michenerartmuseum.org