Artist colors in the lines of her life

The exhibit hanging in Gallery 239 in Memorial Hall features an assortment of floral and fruit still-life watercolors, contrasted by one fashion design and a lone portrait, both in charcoal.

The collection on the left wall is filled with pink carnations, pink and yellow irises, and purple wisteria.  Rounding the corner reveals blue hydrangeas, pink Japanese magnolias, mauve and purple irises, white peonies, and violets with deep, saturated purples, blues, mauve, and yellows.  Those guide the viewer around the corner to white daisies, white camellia, brilliant red amaryllis and white azaleas, and even a white tulip. Peppered among the floral paintings are renditions of apples, oranges, a thin crabapple branch donned with reddish-yellow apples and a sole mistletoe branch.  An occasional butterfly and bee accent a few of the paintings. Entering the gallery is like walking into a flower garden—without the scents.

The artist is Chadron resident Myra Omelanuk, who celebrates her 90th birthday Friday and whose original works from the past 75 years, are on display in Memorial Hall’s second-floor gallery.

Born Myra Middleton on Jan. 30, 1924, Omelanuk was raised in Augusta, Ga.  Soon after the dust was settling from the Great Depression, she enrolled in art classes at Augusta’s Tubman High School where she often found herself in trouble for drawing portraits during class.

“I drew portraits in school of friends and sketches of teachers,” she said with a laugh. “I just drew all the time; it was just a natural instinct­—since I could pick up a pencil.”

As a high school senior in 1941, Omelanuk designed place cards for her class’s senior banquet. Taking inspiration from David O. Selznick’s production of Margaret Mitchell’s, ”Gone With the Wind,” released two years earlier in 1939, she drew place cards with portraits of some of the film’s characters, including Prissy, Rhett and Scarlet. Omelanuk’s artistic talents include dress designs.

“Dress designing,” she mused searching the deep caverns of her memories. “At one time I wanted to try to do dress designing.  I’d try to design clothes. Cora, my oldest sister that was an artist (too), she could cut out dresses that I designed and made them for me.”

One of Omelanuk’s fashion sketches—of a thin model in what appears to be a swimsuit—is among the pieces on exhibit.

The sisters even created a replica of their mother’s wedding dress, but modified the design slightly by lowering the high-neck of the original gown to a sweetheart neckline in their new creation. They also added triangular inset panels on the skirt, and decorated the seam lines with delicate frilly edges. Afterward, Omelanuk wore the dress to an ROTC dance.

After high school Omelanuk was sent to work in an elite decorating department store where she acquired an appreciation for furniture design and architecture.  Shortly afterward, she met Michael Omelanuk, her future husband. The two were married in 1945 after he served three years in the Army during World War II. Shortly after the end of the war, Michael Omelanuk returned to civilian life, but not long after he chose to make the Army a career and he returned as a Chief Warrant Officer. His military service led to three overseas tours, which took the Omelanuks to England for three years; Munich and Ogsburg, Germany, for three years; and Sendai, Japan, for two-and-a-half years.

Michael Omelanuk arrived in Japan ahead of his family because prior to being stationed there, he spent six months in South Korea and his family was not permitted to join him there.  That left Myra Omelanuk alone in Georgia with their three children to undertake the cross-country journey to the west coast—the jump off point for Japan.

“[I] traveled across the United States with 15 suitcases and three children—Joy was nine months old, Kathy was six years old and Michael was eight years old,” she said.

Myra Omelanuk said each overseas tour presented unique opportunities and memorable experiences influenced by the changing times.  She and her family witnessed history when they watched Elizabeth’s ascension to queen following her father King George VI’s death in 1952, and her coronation that followed a year later. In Germany, they saw the construction of the Berlin Wall and the birth of the Cold War.  And in Japan, they experienced a country still undergoing reconstruction even though 10 years had passed since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II.

Through it all, Myra Omelanuk took advantage of the cultural opportunities each foreign city offered.

“We were encouraged to take advantage of school programs and surrounding opportunities,” her son Michael Omelanuk remembered. “I went to a Kabuki play in Japan, roamed art and technical museums as a teen in Munich, saw operettas in German in Augsburg, and generally grew up exposed to a broad range of art. We explored Ludwig’s palaces; saw St Mark’s in Venice; Juliette’s balcony in Florence; and more.”

Myra Omelanuk immersed her home with music and her children with an appreciation for it.

“I was a failure at piano but excelled as a soprano,” son Michael Omelanuk said.  “Overseas, we had no television. I grew up with music—records and radio—eclectic styles of music. She always had music on.”

After her husband Michael Omelanuk retired from the Army, the family moved to Augusta, Ga. In the 1970s where they lived well past the time each child graduated from high school. Once the children left the nest, she returned to her painting, learned piano and wrote poetry. It was then that painting classes caught her attention. Her bother-in-law, Freeman Schoolcraft, a retired college art professor who spent the majority of his career teaching at an extension of The Art Institute of Chicago in Kalamazoo, Mich., and his latter years at Augusta College and the Gertrude Herbert Art Institute, also in Augusta, taught the informal sessions in his backyard.  Her classmates included friends, family, and occasionally one of Schoolcraft’s former students from his Augusta College days.

From the early 70s to now, Myra Omelanuk has painted. In Myra Omelanuk’s sunlit studio, a painting in progress sits on a work table.

Next to it rests a small basket and an image of an orange butterfly, which she plans to add to the painting.  She said she prefers to use original objects as subjects instead of using photos. Those include flowers from her garden or that others have sent her and occasionally branches from neighboring crabapple and orange trees.  In all cases she draws freehand, a technique she learned from her high school art teacher.

Although she uses original flowers and branches, which do not move, she does use images for objects that move, and move quickly, like butterflies and birds.

She gained her fondness of flowers from her mother, who grew them in her garden and then later arranged them into beautiful bouquets.

“I remember early on, that her favorite flower subjects were pansies and violets,” her son said.

Myra Omelanuk’s early pieces are less defined, softer around the edges, and possess a more delicate overall appearance.  The greenery in the piece titled, “Carnations,” has an intricate, lacy appearance.  Later works are more defined, sharper around the edges, with colors that are more vivid.

Myra Omelanuk moved to Chadron 10 years ago to be closer to two of her three children – her youngest Joy Omelanuk, who is Project Coordinator for the Dean of Liberal Arts here at Chadron State College, and Kathy Bahr, who is a professor of English, also at CSC.

Since moving to Chadron she has entered her pieces each year into the annual juried art show at the Carnegie Arts Center in Alliance. Last year she earned an honorable mention. In addition to her Memorial Hall show, Myra Omelanuk has exhibited her work in Augusta and Wayne Ford, Ga.

Memorial Hall’s second-floor gallery is open 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday or by appointment. The show runs through Feb. 5.