Olga Maryschuk's "My Neighborhood" on exhibit in New York City (07/04/04)

Olga Maryschuk's "My Neighborhood" on exhibit in New York City

NEW YORK - New York artist Olga Maryschuk's oil pastels and prints titled "My Neighborhood" were on view at the Tompkins Square Gallery of the New York Public Library during the month of June.

The exhibit grew out of Ms. Maryschuk's involvement with East Village Parks Conservancy (EVCP), a community-based organization committed to the maintenance, restoration, enhancement and expansion of public parklands. Last year, Ms. Maryschuk donated an art work - a unique block print of the Flatiron Building as seen through the branches in Madison Square Park, to the EVCP to raffle off during its spring fund drive. Ellen LeCompte, a Conservancy Board member urged the artist to work on something site specific, i.e., Tompkins Square Park.

Ms. Maryschuk, who was born in Greenwich, Conn., in 1928, grew up and attended schools on New York City's Lower East Side, graduating from Washington Irving High School and The Cooper Union.

The artist, who recalls "many pleasant memories of playing in [Tompkins Square] park as a child," says that she "had not done much serious artwork since 9/11 and took Ellen's [Ms. LeCompte's] suggestion to heart. Last summer I began to sketch the two black locusts near the Seventh Street entrance. The locusts are old and gnarled. One appears to have been struck by lightning but continues to grow sprouting new branches; the other tree's branches serve as a hiding place for a homeless man's backpack."

"By September I was drawing the elm trees. I was especially intrigued by the curving branches of the tree near the Avenue A playground. I thought of the EVPC volunteer elm watchers who walk around early Saturday mornings with binoculars checking the tress for Dutch elm disease. I was grateful to them for their efforts!"

Ms. Maryschak's exhibition at Tompkins Square Gallery also included a series of prints of the sculptures made from recycled materials which adorn the fence of the community garden at Ninth Street and Avenue C; pastels of 14th Street tree shadows; as well as seven prints of the Con Ed Towers.

In appreciation of the work of the East Village Parks Conservancy in the neighborhood in general, and in Tompkins Square Park in particular, the artist donated a percentage of all sales to the Conservancy.

A permanent exhibition of Ms. Maryschuk's work may be seen on www.paintingsdirect.com.

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Ms. Maryschuk's prints, drawings and paintings frequently use botanical or architectural motifs as subjects.

The artist often works with water-soluble printing ink, using a technique that is a combination of reductive block printing and painting. This method enables her to show how changes in light spanning diverse weather and atmospheric conditions transform the appearance of landscape and architecture.

New York art critic Diane Morris praised Ms. Maryschuk for having "an eye for stirring colors and forms; a deep love for the land as a living fertile entity that grows and changes; and an encompassing vision that sees urban civilization as being as much a part of the natural world as a farm or a flower."

Ms. Maryschuk's work has been exhibited in eight one-person exhibits, and numerous group shows in the United States, Canada and Ukraine.

Among her recent solo exhibitions are: "Paintings Direct.Com Presents Olga Maryschuk" (2000); "Selected Works: 1981-1988," traveling exhibition (Ukraine, 1989-1990); I. M. Pei & Partners, Architects & Planners (New York, 1984); Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation (Toronto, 1980); "Monotypes: North Carolina Landscapes" and "Kyiv Prints/New York Collages," Ukrainian Artists Association in USA (New York, 1979 and 1974, respectively); and Peter Cooper Gallery (New York, 1968).

The artist's recent group exhibitions include: "New York Contemporary, Old New York Gallery" (New York, 2000); "New York City Rooftops," Tenement Museum ( New York, 1999); "Flowers as Muse," Ukrainian Institute of America (New York, 1999); "Beyond Countries, North American Printmaking," Richmond Art Center (Richmond, Calif., 1997); "Wall/Paper," Chicago Center for Book and Art - Permanent Installation (Chicago, 1996); "Magnetic New York, Cast-Iron Soho, Michael Ingbar Gallery (New York, 1994); and "Vidrodzhennia" - Biennale Lviv '91 (Lviv, 1991).

Ms. Maryschuk was long-time curator for in-house art exhibitions at I.M. Pei & Partners, Architects & Planners in New York. On the Ukrainian American cultural scene, she was co-curator and curator, respectively, for the Yara Arts Group's productions "Poetry: Installations and Performances" (1999) and "Changing Landscapes" (1995). Ms. Maryschuk also worked as volunteer instructor at The Ukrainian Museum in New York.

Ms. Maryschuk's work is included in the collections of AT&T, C&S Sovran Bank and United Way in Atlanta; Carter Wallace and Kohn Pedersen Fox, Architects, New York; I. M. Pei & Partners, Architects, Dallas; the Ternopil Regional Museum; the Ukrainian Museum of Fine Art, Kyiv; and in numerous private collections.

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Ms. Maryshcuk earned a BFA degree from The Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture (1979). She also studied at the Pratt Graphic Center and New York Studio School.

A recipient of fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts she was also artist-in-residence at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, Ore. (1993)

As a young artist, Ms. Maryschuk had the opportunity to visit her family in Ukraine in 1967, one year after her mother's death in New York. Through a chance encounter with a Soviet cultural official in a New York City art gallery, she was able to return to Ukraine in 1971 to study at the Kyiv State Art Institute on a one-year scholarship.

In September 1989, Ms. Maryschuk Kandel became the first U.S.-born artist to have a traveling exhibit of her work in Soviet Ukraine, upon the invitation of the Ukraina Society (Tovarystvo Ukraina) and the Artists' Union of Ukraine/USSR.

During the course of her visit to Ukraine, Ms. Maryschuk was elected an honorary member of the Artists' Union of Ukraine and was artist-in-residence at the Artists' Union in Sednev, Chernihiv region.

About Tompkins Square Park

Originally part of the largest salt-marsh on Manhattan Island, the area now occupied by Tompkins Square Park was once used as a native American (Lenape tribe) hunting and fishing ground.

When Peter Stuyvesant was forcibly removed as the last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam in 1664 he retired to his bouwerij estate which encompassed these wetlands, where he harvested the lush marsh grass for his cattle.

During the War of 1812, the governor of New York, Daniel D. Tompkins, filled in and fortified the swamp to better defend against a possible British landing.

The park was later named in Tompkins' honor to commemorate his freeing of the slaves in New York state in 1827.

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