Enid Bell

Enid Bell Palanchian (December 4, 1904 – 1994), known professionally as Enid Bell in her early career and later on as Enid Bell Palanchian, and began her studies at the Glasgow School of Art, then at the St John's Wood Art School as well as studying with fellow Scot Sir William Reid Dick in London. Then after moving to the United States at the age of seventeen at the Art Students League in New York City. Essentially a figurative, direct carving in wood artist, she was based in New Jersey where she became the head of the sculpture program of the Federal Art Project for that state and was herself the creator of several FAP commissions. This is Bell - Palanchian's sculpture "Birds" that was donated to the Leonia Public Library that was donated in 1979. In 1932 she married Armenian-American businessman and painter, Missak Palanchian, though she retained her surname as Bell for professional purposes.

She taught at Miss Chaplin's School of Arts in New York City from 1929 to 1931 under the role of an art teacher. In 1940 until 1941 she was the Sculpture Supervisor for the New Jersey Arts & Crafts Project, W.P.A.

Bell-Palanchian donated her sculpture "Little Indian Dancer" to the Englewood Public Library Children's Room in 1981. Furthermore, she also donated her sculpture "Birds" to the Leonia Public Library where it is hanging on the rear wall of the stairs.

Bell was a member of the National Sculpture Society.

Bell died in 1994 in Englewood, New Jersey.

Art style This sculpture entitled "Dancers" was created by Enid Bell Palanchian in the 1940s. Bell's art style can be described as "growing". Nearly all of her sculptures are made from wood and a few that were made from ceramics. As it was described, her larger sculptures tend to "grow" from the ground and expand and widens as the sculpture builds up. Many of her sculptures that feature two people tend to be shown in so0me sort of embrace. Her sculpture "Dancers" which is made from plaster shows a man and a woman who is standing in front of the man in some sort of dance with a skirt in her left hand and her head tilted back towards the man. This piece was created in 1926, when Bell was about 22 years old, but the piece was unfortunately destroyed. She tended to create sculptures that were "twined" around one another, meaning that were wrapped up in one another as is in shown in her bronze sculpture entitled "Dancers" that was created in the 1940s.

She took inspiration from the material (different types of wood, plaster, ceramic, and bronze) including its natural form as well as nature and geometric patterns in the world around her. Her theme in the creation of her art is seemingly growth, not only in the style of having larger more expanded base and then funneling up towards the top. Furthermore, a large part of her art includes bodies that are intertwined with one another that suggest connection. Her art has been connected to earlier movements such as the art deco movement that got started in the 1910s and gained momentum in the 1920s and 1930s. As this time period would have been the time where Palanchian would have started her education in the arts and have begun to have gotten exposure, seeing these art deco elements in her own art is unsurprising.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Ferargil Galleries, New York City, December 9 – 29, 1929, exhibited 22 pieces including hazel wood “Pause”, Madonna”, “Trio” cherrywood “Duet” & “Harvesters”, bronze “Pavlova”, “Summer” & “Liza”, white oak “Negress”, whitewood “Negresses” & “Mexicans” and portrait panels and screens. Arden Gallery, New York City, NY, November 5–19, 1934, exhibited 26 pieces including metal panels “Oriental Dancers”, “Flute Player” and unnamed “Two Figures”, a mahogany screen, ebony “Africans”, “Negress” & “Nocturne”, marble “Seated Figure”, “Sleep” & “Pigeons”, white pine “Mother and Child”, mahogany “Dancer”, Japanese wood “Cyclamen”, several carved chests, hazelwood “At the Window” and cherry wood “Harvesters” & “Composition”. 1933 - "Women Who Won" Newark Ledger by Agnes Fahy "Adaptability is an indispensable attribute of the artist. Specialization too often spells death for him.' Enid Bell, the attractive young sculptor who has recently come to Newark and is living at...was surrounded by evidence of her own adaptability as she talked of art, artists, and their training. The conversation took place in the Contemporary Gallery of the Kresge's Department Store where last week an exhibition of her sculpture and of the paintings of her husband Missak Palanchian was held. There were figures in bronze, plaster, and terra cotta, plaques, screens and bas-reliefs carved from wood and her remarks revealed that she also paints in oil, etches, has done mural decorations, maginze illustrating, and so on. 'An artist must have a variety of experience at his hand, ' she said 'Think of the mediums used by the great masters such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo who could carve, paint, design a cathedral but to mention a few of the things they did.' Specialization may be all right in time, but the artists should first have a comprehensive knowledge of the whole field of art. There is danger too, in specialization in that the artist may lose his creative sense and become merely a mechanical producer. For another thing, there is the eternal practical side of the question. The artist's market is small enough at best. If he cannot sell his paintings, he should be able to turn his hand to something else. It was Miss Bell who last week was awarded first prize at the third annual state exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum for a wood carving called "Composition". Wherever displayed her wood carvings are displayed have attracted special attention. There is something exceedingly charming about her about the half figures which rise out of a flat background under her skilled hand. The finished sculpture is a work of art that really looks as if it had been created to give pleasure..."

Awards

Sculpture Medal, Newark Art Club, Newark, NJ, 1933 Tackle, Private collection, 1950 5 Arts and Crafts "Filmstrips" Series, published by Encyclopædia Britannica, 1954 "Tin Craft as a Hobby", Harper Brother Publishers, 1934, favorably reviewed by the World Telegram and N.Y. Times in 1934 "Practical Woodcarving Projects", Harper Brothers Publishers, 1940 "Signs and Symbols in Christian Art", Oxford University Press (Illustrator only) "Christian Symbols in Italian Art", MacMillan Publishers (Illustrator only) "Forsaking All Others", Alice Duer Miller, Simon and Schuster Publishers, 1931, illustrations only, drawings of N.Y. scenes Various Articles in National Sculpture Review Various Articles in American Artist Magazine, including March 1965, "My Wood Sculpture" & June 1968, "Sculptors Hartwig & Glinsky"