Dream Works: Gerry Bernhardt
When Gerry Bernhardt retired, she didn’t wind down. Instead, the Canton resident fervently pursued her lifelong dream of becoming an artist, creating thousands of sketches and hundreds of paintings over a decade.
“She had the time and the wherewithal to be very prolific,” says her daughter, Susan Paparella.
See a retrospective of the late artist’s works in the Canton Museum of Art exhibit, “Lessons and Landscapes: The Legacy of Gerry Bernhardt” through Oct. 30.
Growing up during the Great Depression, Bernhardt faced many obstacles, but her desire to create was strong. She got a glimpse of her dream when her brother helped her pay for one year at the Cleveland Institute of Art, but those dreams were dashed when her brothers and then-fiance fought in World War II. She married, later divorced and became a working single mother of five kids, but art remained a passion.
Paparella recalls that when she was young, she would curl up in her mother’s lap as she read art books aloud, and she would catch her exhausted mother sketching late at night. Upon retirement, Bernhardt went into a frenzy of artmaking, with sketchbooks and pencils always laid around her house.
“All day, it flowed out of her,” Paparella says.
The exhibit, which features watercolor landscape and still life paintings, goes behind the scenes of Bernhardt’s process with about 20 works, including sketches, meticulous notes and vignette mock-ups. Bernhardt often drove around Canton or small towns in southern Ohio and pulled over to sketch or paint roadside in the open air.
Christy Davis, the curator of exhibitions, is struck by Bernhardt’s resolve and mastery of challenging details, including shadowy gaps that capture a farmhouse’s deterioration as well as its original character.
“Her personality comes through with the whimsy in some,” Davis says, “and the different landscapes she was drawn to.”
A painted still life of a vase of gladiolas that Paparella and her husband planted for her mother is her favorite for the beautiful way it represents that meaningful family memory.
While Paparella worked for the Cultural Center for the Arts in Canton, Bernhardt saw Canton Museum of Art exhibits, spent days sketching in the galleries and took art classes. Bernhardt cherished those experiences and hoped to one day help others pursue art. That’s happening thanks to the exhibit that is being displayed in an educational gallery renamed in Bernhardt’s honor and a gift from Paparella to finance scholarships for museum art classes and education for local students. If Bernhardt could see her wish come true, Paparella thinks she would laugh and smile from the joy of helping others.
“It was her true love, and she got to finally embrace it,” Paparella says. “It’s never too late to pursue your goals and artistic dreams.” KP
At Cultural Center for the Arts, 1001 Market Ave. N, Canton,