Artist and nurse Nathalie Halbout stands in front of the Ukrainian flag signed by wounded soldiers she has treated in the country’s war with Russia. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
And over in the kitchen, on the table where she greets a visitor with cabbage dumplings and tea, sits another item that tells a different version of the same story: a porcelain hydrangea flower she made in her upstairs studio.
Flowers, she explains, symbolize a refuge from the “brutality of reality.” And the porcelain material, like her native Ukraine, she says, “is beautiful, seemingly easy to break, but impossible to destroy.”
Halbout’s work serves as a refuge from the horror she’s seen her patients endure amid the war in Ukraine. As the war has raged on, her art has also become a product of those experiences.
“There was so much destruction, what I saw in Kiev,” Halbout said. “That I felt like I had to make something to counterbalance.” Her art, she says, is also a way to “keep Ukraine in the information space.”
Moments later, she adds with a look of astonishment: “People ask me all the time, ‘Is the war in Ukraine still going on?'”
The Middletown resident (but rockin’ that Red Bank zip code) is one of three Ukrainian artists living in New Jersey whose work will be featured in an exhibit opening this weekend at the Art Alliance of Monmouth County.
Nathalie Halbout’s porcelain hydrangea flower.
The show is entitled, “The Nightingale Sings: Three Ukrainian Artists.”
“Each January, the Art Alliance mounts an invitational exhibition designed to amplify the voice of an under-recognized artistic group,’ Eileen Kennedy, curator of the exhibition, said in a press release. “As the war in Ukraine continues, we wanted to shine a light on artists here in New Jersey who may be impacted.”
Halbout moved to the US from Ukraine in the late 1990’s, when she was her 20’s. It was the nation’s economic struggles that first pushed her into art.
Growing up in Ukraine during the post-Soviet era of shortages and economic struggle, she said, “You had to learn to make things if you wanted to be relatively well dressed.”
That got her started on knitting, sewing and, eventually, felting. She eventually expanded into clay and porcelain.
“Since the war began, my focus has shifted,” her mission statement reads. “Creating beauty has become an act of resistance.”
All sales of her art go to buy more supplies for wounded Ukrainian veterans. There’s also her ongoing sales of works of traditional painted egg art, called Pysansky, by Ukrainian artists.
And, in the art-as-respite category, there’s a knitting circle she’ll be leading this winter at the Red Bank Public Library.
This spring, she will return to Ukraine for another few months treating the wounded. It will be her third multi-month stint working in overburdened in Kyiv hospitals.
(There’s a GoFundMe drive here to help her raise money for supplies).
“For me, that’s more important than my art,” she said. “But if I have to go do the art, I’ll do whatever needs to be done to draw attention to Ukraine.”
Also showing at the Art Alliance show opening Saturday is Elena Samarsky, of West New York. Growing up in Ukraine, Samarsky was exposed to the Eastern European avant-garde art that influenced her abstract paintings. Working in acrylic, she builds many layers of texture modified by dents, bulges, gouges, and scratches, seeking a balance between movement and stillness. 
The show also includes works by Melanka Coppola, of Howell, who grew up in the US under the influence of four Ukrainian grandparents.
She learned Ukrainian dance and cooking and developed an appreciation for vyshyvanka (Ukrainian embroidery) and other traditional art forms. These traditions inform her abstract, acrylic paintings, as evidenced by their strong graphic sense, vibrant color selection, and use of pattern.
There will be an artists’ reception and panel discussion from 6 to 8 pm Saturday. The show runs through Tuesday, February 3.
This exhibition is free and open to the public Tuesdays through Saturdays, from noon to 4 pm, at the Art Alliance of Monmouth County, 33 Monmouth Street, Red Bank, NJ 07701. Learn more about the Art Alliance at www.artallianceofmonmouth.org.
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331.
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