By ELIZABETH LITTLE/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – Coco Chanel is one of the most influential fashion designers in history. She is credited with popularizing drop waist dresses of the 1920s, women’s suits, and her fragrance, Chanel No. 5. Dr. Jack Devine was inspired by all things elegance and class when he decided that June’s gallery in Ocean City Arts Center would take on a timeless, rosy theme: Chanel No. 5.
The show is on for the month of June and all of the artwork is for sale. Devine, president of the center’s board of directors, hand-selected local artists to make and showcase their work for this invitational.
“This is our 15th show in which we’ve invited artists to paint according to a certain theme. This year I chose the theme of a scene or image of the making or marketing of Chanel No. 5,” Devine said.
He was inspired by the way Chanel’s signature fragrance is created. The magic of the perfume starts with the flowers – hundred petal roses from a family-owned 50-acre farm in Pegomas, France.
“I had read an article in The New Yorker which described the process of the women in France who pick these roses. They’re Turkish women, actually, who come in their beautiful dresses to pick these flowers. I was very impressed. I thought the whole thing would make a marvelous theme,” Devine said.
Artist Marilyn Brent tapped into the harvesting process. She explained that she did some research before starting on her creation, and looked at photographs of the women harvesting the roses. She drew inspiration from the burlap sacks the field workers use to put the flowers in before sending them off to the factories to make Chanel No. 5. Her piece, “La Terre, L’amour, L’illusion” was done with oil on canvas.
“I just wanted to have a little bit of imagination and a little bit of surrealism,” Brent said. “It’s such an iconic perfume, and I didn’t want to just make it look like an ad advertising the fragrance. I wanted it to have something like the dreams that come with the perfume.”
Longport resident Adele Governatore has two paintings in the show. She said for her first piece, “Coco,” she drew inspiration from France. The painting depicted Chanel’s iconic double “C” logo, Eiffel Towers, the fragrance Coco Noir, and silhouettes of women in high fashion.
“I loved her [Chanel]. She was such an innovator for women. I looked through a lot of different things and I read the history. It was very interesting, the history of it, because I didn’t know it took that many flowers to make one Chanel No. 5,” Governatore said. “It’s very thrilling, and I hope people like it [the paintings].”
Governatore’s other work was a painting of those hundred petal roses in a vase of Chanel No. 5, called “Fragrant Harvest.” She said she has been painting as a hobby off and on for a majority of her life, and she even had her own show at the Longport Library.
Cheryl Matthews found painting as a hobby early on in life. She explained how there is a community within the artists who paint at the Ocean City Arts Center.
“You start art when you’re young, and then you leave it. Then you come back to it, and you leave it, you know. But when I got ill with cancer, I really got into it. I painted with Lance (Balderson), who did the big piece in the back. I know a lot of artists here. We’re all local, most of these people,” Matthews said.
Matthews’s painting, “The Body of Chanel,” is a semi-monochromatic piece that features the partially covered face and body of a woman wearing a Chanel look, overtop of an image of the Chanel No. 5 bottle.
Marian Talese, vice president of the arts center board, joined Devine in judging the best of show contest. She said that when Devine approached the board members with June 2021’s gallery theme, she was excited to see what the artists would come up with.
“Some of them were very direct and presented the bottle, and others suggested it but the bottle isn’t there. It’s a wonderful show,” Talese said.
The winners of The Chanel Invitational Theme Show were announced the night of June 11 during a reception. First place went to Ellen Gavin for “I Dreamed I Saw the Number 5 in Gold.” Second place went to Gloria Moyer for “Bedtime” and honorable mention was given to Marilyn Brent for “La Terre, L’amour, L’illusion.”
All of the art is for sale, but Devine said that the exhibit will remain in the arts center for the entirety of June. For information, call the center at (609) 399-7628. The center is on the second floor of the Ocean City Community Center at 1735 Simpsons Ave.