The Creative Energy of Elena Orlova

Elena Vladimirovna Orlova is an Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation, a member of the Union of Artists of Russia, a member of the International Association of Art — AIAP UNESCO, a poet and a teacher. She is the founder and director of the Volgograd Regional Children’s Art Gallery — the first museum of children’s creativity in the country. Since 2010 she has been Director of the I. I. Mashkov Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts. She has been awarded the Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland,” II degree, for achievements in culture and art; the “Elite of the Women’s Business Community” medal; the honorary badge of the Volgograd Region Administration “Care for Childhood”; the honorary badge “Best People of Russia”; and the honorary badge of the Volgograd Region Administration “Keeper of Traditions.” She has repeatedly won all-Russian and regional competitions including “Best Manager,” “Best Organization,” “Director of the Year,” and “Woman Director.”

The Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts is 50 years old. For a museum, that is not an age, yet it has confidently entered a stage of strengthened youth with a solid collection, painstakingly assembled and carefully preserved by more than one generation of staff. The character of a museum — its face, mood, temperament and health — depends only on people, or more precisely, on one person: the director.

What makes any of us share with others that inspired state of mind which sometimes takes form through drawing technique, sometimes through the talent to persuade, sometimes through outer and inner beauty, charm, or the ability to lead? Perhaps it is the romantic artist who sees beauty where it is hidden from others. Sometimes a striking appearance lays the foundation for stable optimism; sometimes an extraordinary mind makes it easy to master hard-to-reach spaces of new ideas. One way or another, each person has something of this separately or all at once; but not everyone is given the ability to possess and use the full fighting charge of their inner nature for peaceful purposes and solely for the benefit of others.

There is no escaping her direct gaze. Under her convincing words, any “institutional” abscess begins to heal smoothly and painlessly. Her charming friendliness disarms the most inaccessible officials and brings them down from royal heights. Her refined taste tactfully and unobtrusively requires those around her to match the high standard of a certain beautifully correct style. Her painting is pleasantly unhurried, as if resting after a stormy day; it is meticulous, painstaking, filled with memories and warm breath, and, shimmering like crystal, it rings in a light breeze. Her poetry is natural, impressionistic and “watercolor-like,” written in one pass, wet-on-wet.

Elena Orlova is a bold experimenter, a responsible teacher, a creative professor, a strict yet charmingly fair director, a talented and original artist, a steady romantic, a mother to the world, and simply a wonderful, easy-going HUMAN BEING.

Inside a fragile outer shell there is a volcano of inexhaustible energy, whose flashes are aimed at their targets with sniper precision: planning meetings, events, plein-air sessions, conferences, accounting, family, theatre, friends, dancing, creativity, estimates... And again — reports, plans, meetings, projects, painting, poetry, repairs...

The previously unhurried order of a state cultural institution, reluctantly and unaccustomedly, echoes her with optimism and energy gradually gaining strength. In places it resists, yet it still yields under the pressure of the museum director’s creative, scholarly, businesslike and always fresh ideas. Everyone is actively involved in raising the cultural level of the city’s residents and guests: staff members, right down to drivers; children and parents; elderly people and young people; officials and veterans; philosophers and scholars; artists and actors; singers and dancers; brides and grooms; architects and builders; cafés and restaurants; the media and the Internet; members of her own family...

Under her leadership the museum goes out into the streets of the city, works by candlelight, plays with the Soviet past, draws on asphalt with children and invites passers-by to paint, goes “virtual,” enters into ART debates with visitors, calls in newlyweds, and brings its exhibits to life. And who knows what else is still to come!

And now, side by side with original works of Russian and foreign painting, graphics and sculpture, the creative potential of talented young people is being realised in support of those very young people. For several months “MolFest. Museer” thundered through the city — and it never quite managed to stop. The inertial force of talent belonging to several dozen participants brought the festival of young artists to a qualitatively new stage of development, expanded its geographical boundaries, and poured a fresh, bright stream of young creative energy into the traditional museum format.

Evening... Silence... Fatigue... The departing day peers into the studio through square, glowing, half-asleep window-eyes. Paper, brush... As one well-known artist said, “inspiration comes when you work constantly and fruitfully...” It came, and a mosaic of watercolor strokes began to play — friendly, united strokes. They fit together clearly and truly into diverse, whimsical forms of objects; they turn into tender, delicate flower petals, glow with sunlit highlights, rustle like light tulle on a window, and lead the eye into the bluish, unreachable depth of what had previously been a flat sheet. What else can be created with the touch of a brush? How can one convey “yesterday”? How can “today” be translated into the language of color?

Everything has merged into one — work, creativity, responsibility, anxiety, love... the life of Elena Orlova.

Varvara OZERINA

Student Meridian, 2012, No. 12