"Cultural Connections: Eastern European Artists from the Greater Trenton Area” is a two-month Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie exhibition highlighting the work of regional artists with Eastern European backgrounds.
The exhibition, featuring the work of 10 artists, opens Saturday, April 5, with a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. It will be on view through June 8, with an Artists Talk scheduled for Saturday, April 26, from 2 to 4 p.m. Also related to the show is a Pysanky Ukrainian Easter egg workshop Thursday, April 17, 6 to 9:30 p.m., led by artist Basia Andrusko of Yardley, Pennsylvania.
The artists of “Cultural Connections” are:
A watercolor by Marina Ahun of Nassau Hall/FitzRandolph Gate at Princeton University.
Marina Ahun is a Princeton-based artist known in part for her watercolors that explore the architecture of Princeton, Trenton, and New York City. She was born in Soviet Russia, studied at the Imperial Academy of fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and is the licensed and commissioned artist for Princeton University.
In a 2021 artist’s statement written for the installation of her painting of the Trenton Makes bridge in the new Department of Health building in Trenton, she noted, “I was fortunate to have grown up in Russia and been educated at The Imperial Academy of Fine Art in St. Petersburg. There, I studied hard and learned much about techniques in both art and architecture which have given me the tools to create the work I do today. I do move back and forth between the two styles and two mediums.”
In a 2016 interview with U.S. 1, Ahun explained that she had been living in Uzbekistan when she came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2002. In 2005, she was granted political asylum. “As a Russian Orthodox Christian and a woman living in a (Muslim) country, it was difficult to do things even though I was married at the time to a local man,” she says. “Doing my art wasn’t really an option under the circumstances, and so it wasn’t until I came to this country that I really began my art career in earnest. I was rusty at first, but my style and technique came back with practice, and I have gotten better and better, I think.”
“My work is not pure realism but maybe it’s more like a ‘creative reflection’ since I do manipulate the images to suit me,” Ahun said in the 2016 interview. “When someone sees my work for the first time it may look like ‘realism,’ but when (they) look closer they can see that I have embedded elements that bring the viewer closer to a ‘feeling for the building.’”
Artists Leonid Vayn, left, and his wife, Irena Gobernik, with her marionette portrait of him.
Irena Gobernik is a wood and mixed media sculptor in Princeton. She was born in Kazakhstan and studied mathematics at Novosibirsk State University in Siberian Russia during the Soviet era. The former co-owner of the Dalet Gallery in Philadelphia, she specializes in small wood sculptures reflective of her Jewish heritage and marionette portraits.
Her journey in world of puppetry is chronicled in U.S. 1’s January 11, 2023, article, “Magic of Puppetry Meets a Mission to Help Ukraine.” In that story, she notes that her work with wood started when she was a teenager in Kazakhstan, working with pine tree bark and a surgical knife.
“I didn’t call it art,” she said in an interview for that story. “I never thought of myself as an artist. It was something I loved to do in my spare time. I had a close friend who was a real wood artist, so I saw what he did.”
Her work on marionette portraits is a new passion discovered while traveling in Prague in 2018. “Puppets are definitely something that I have to plan,” in contrast to her wood sculptures, Gobernik noted in the 2023 article. “I cannot just follow ideas. I need to follow the proportions, or I won’t be able to make them play. There are more limitations.”
‘Invasion,’ one of a series of works by Olga Gobernik-Kon dedicated to the war in Ukraine.
Olga Gobernik-Kon, the daughter of Irena Gobernik, was born in Kazakhstan and is a resident of Princeton and Israel. Her art is in several private international collections, in the recent Smithsonian Craft Show (2024) and American Craft Made in Baltimore (2025), and in an exhibition with noted Philadelphia Magic Garden creator Isaiah Zagar at her mother’s Dalet Gallery in Philadelphia.
In a biographical statement on her website, she writes:
“An architect-designer by her first education, Olga has remained faithful to a special, architectural style of drawing, which, transformed into glass, acquired an additional dimension — light. Unlike the wall panels created by the majority of mosaic artists, Olga’s mosaics, like stained-glass windows, work ‘in the light,’ these are glass collages on a glass basis. In her art, Olga takes the sun’s rays as co-artists, which, refracting at different angles, passing through many fragments of multi-colored glass, create a lively, changeable radiance, emphasizing the emotional saturation of the works.
“She calls this art form ‘painting in glass.’ Olga Gobernik’s art always reflects her state of mind, her perception of the surrounding world, events and phenomena to which she, as a human being, cannot remain indifferent.”
Adriana Groza is a painter known for vibrant, fluid, and organic works that capture natural rhythms. Based in Hamilton, the artist is a native of Transylvania, Romania. A participant in art festivals in the Middle Atlantic region, she has exhibited in group shows in Trenton and is a member of the Princeton Arts Collective.
Adriana Groza in her studio.
In a statement written for U.S. 1 in 2021 ahead of an exhibit at Small World Coffee, Groza explained her approach and her connection to her art:
“My art is a means for my self-healing, introspection, and a way to reach into an understanding of time and matter. I step inside my studio, shedding the constraints of daily schedule and routine, with a deep confidence and trust in my process.
“A blank stretched canvas, different color paints that I thin, with mediums, to a consistency of my liking, and several unconventional instruments and techniques for moving the paint around; these are my tools. I apply my foundation color, and then allow my feelings and imagination to wander free with the fluid pigments. I am not dominating or restricting.
“The recurring views in my art most often connect to time and matter seen from antagonistic perspectives. It might be a timeless and calming beach scene where I capture the split and irreplicable moment of a foamy wave splashing the sands, or a snapshot in the fleeting existence of a flower or a creature.
At start, I might have had an idea or concept in mind; I might be preoccupied with my thoughts or just be present in the moment. Gradually, I find myself captivated with the flow that falls into place before me. There is no demanding or forcing, just freedom to be aware of the present moment, and evolve with it, disconnected from any pressures of the outside world.
“Time suddenly loses its everyday life meaning and I invite the possibilities. I am unlocked to bring to light what arises on the canvas before me. In that sense, I am as much a spectator as a creator as my paintings take shape.
“The realization of physical grounding in a space that has been here before me and will continue to live on after I am gone allows me to center myself in living precisely within that moment, and living it in its entirety.
“My best works are active and imply movement across the space, or they emerge from, or descend into space for the observer.”
"Sunset at Sea" by Jadwiga Jedrzejczyk.
Jadwiga (Heidi) Jedrzejczyk is the Polish-born member of a family of artists working in oil. The Trenton resident has exhibited at Mercer County College, Trenton City Museum, Adam Styka Annual Competition in Pennsylvania, and with the Trenton Artists Workshop Association in New York City. Her studies include classes at the former Druch Studios in Trenton.
A painting by Tatiana Oles.
Tatiana Oles is a Moldova-born artist living and working in Princeton. A member of the Princeton Makes artists collective, she began her career as a decorative and pictorial artist but now works in a variety of approaches and mediums, ranging from watercolors to fabric, wood, and glass. She studied at the Academic School of Fine Arts in Moldova’s capital city, Chisinau, and in a 2023 interview with Community News Service noted that “All the schools I went to had a special place for the visual arts.”
She came to the U.S. after her parents’ deaths, following a sister who had already made the move. She lived first in Minnesota and found her footing in the art scene there before ultimately settling in Princeton.
In the 2023 interview she explained, “I am inspired my many things including nature, music, and traditional European art. I studied all the artists and copied all the masters. I studied Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, all the Old Masters and all the Impressionists. I used to paint a lot of Russian icons. People really liked those in Europe, and some do here too.”
“I do not know if Americans know much about traditional Eastern European styles,” she added. “I don’t think of it like that. I just see it as my style. I paint with energy feeling in the moment and find that I am always inspired by something.”
Asia Popinski with one of her works.
Asia Popinski, a native of Poland, is a painter, photographer, and trained psychotherapist based in Pennington. The subject of a solo exhibition at Trenton Social, she has also exhibited at the Philadelphia Sketch Club, Pennsylvania Center for Photography, and the Arts Council of Princeton. She is the recipient of first place competitions sponsored by Princeton Magazine and Mercer County.
Popinski’s first love was photography, beginning when she was nine years old as she followed in the footsteps of her father, who was also a passionate photographer. She abandoned that hobby when she got married but picked up the camera once again following a divorce. She started painting during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Self-trained in both media, Popinski draws inspiration from the natural world. “I lived by the Baltic Sea and was influenced by Jacques Cousteau documentaries and my dad’s love of scuba diving, which he shared with me and my brother,” she said in a 2024 interview with Community News Service. “Many of my paintings and photos have some element of water in them, and it’s because of the nostalgic feeling painting water gives me that I continue to include it in my works. To me, it is like playing with my memories. Even when I don’t paint water, the colors I use put me in that nostalgic head space.”
Jacek (Jack) Szymula is a Trenton and New York City photographer and painter from Gdansk, Poland. A member of the Polish American Photographers Club, he has displayed his work at the Dominican Monastery in Gdansk, Polish Consulate in New York, Artists of Yardley Arts Center, Philadelphia Sketch Club, and the Trenton City Museum, and the New Hope Arts Center. He is married to artist Ewa Zeller.
Leonid (Leo) Vayn, a Princeton photographer and documentary filmmaker, spent his early life in the Soviet Union during World War II. After business successes in the United States, he has dedicated himself to photography and to the Tsal Kaplun Foundation, created to preserve Jewish Culture and Heritage in the former Soviet Union. He and his wife, Irena Gorbernik, actively present exhibitions and concerts featuring work by Eastern European artists in Princeton.
"Polish Landscape" by Ewa Zeller.
Ewa Zeller is a Polish-born painter living in Trenton. She studied in both Warsaw and New York and has had solo exhibitions at the former Druch Studio Gallery in Trenton, PII Gallery in Philadelphia, and the Skulski-Polish Art Center in Clark. Her work can be found in several public collections, including the Vatican’s Foundation of John Paul II and Trenton City Museum. In addition to being a painter, she is a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In a biographical statement on her website, she writes of her style: “Ewa paints natural subjects in a combination of representative styles. The composition and color relationships are the drivers of each piece. All of the natural subjects can offer the opportunity to show off relationships of color, which is special for her. She takes into account the inspiration from her favorite polish artists of the ‘Young Poland’ movement such as Alfons Karpinski, Jan Stanislawski, Stanistaw Wyspianski, Konrad Krzyzanowski and others.
“Nonetheless she does not hide equal appreciation for non-polish artists such as Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt. Ewa is an artist with old European background, searching for her original style among the modern realities of the New World. While having a concentration on the classic styles of Europe, Ewa evolves from these with a renewed sense of self.”
The exhibition was developed by Trenton Museum Society exhibition committee members Liz and Dan Aubrey. Liz Aubrey is an active state artist and exhibitions curator. Dan Aubrey — former U.S. 1 arts editor — is a journalist, playwright, and arts coordinator. Currently living in Bordentown, the two are known for their longtime involvement in creating art projects in New Jersey’s capital city. The exhibition was designed to highlight the existence of artists active in aesthetic traditions outside those of Western Europe and to build awareness and artistic dialogue.
This “Cultural Connections” show will launch a series of exhibitions highlighting various artistic traditions and practices in the region.
Cultural Connections: Eastern European Artists from the Greater Trenton Area, Trenton City Museum in Ellarslie Mansion, Cadwalader Park, Trenton. Opening reception Saturday, April 5, 2 to 4 p.m. Artists talk Saturday, April 26, 2 to 4 p.m. Pysanky Ukrainian Easter egg workshop Thursday, April 17, 6 to 9:30 p.m., $65 with registration required. Exhibit on view through June 8. Museum open Thursdays through Saturday from 12 to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. Museum admission is free; donations welcome. ellarslie.org or 609-989-1191.
