A painting she started 30 years ago just won an award for Larene St. Gabriel-Dargay of Columbia Heights. It’s just one of many in her collection.
The lifelong visual artist and Columbia Heights resident was recently given top honors at an art exhibition produced by the Minnesota Artists Association at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Her acrylic painting “Veteran of WWII, My Father, Out of Algiers, Almost a Death Mask” won the Award of Excellence blue ribbon, the highest award at the exhibition.
St. Gabriel-Dargay was artistically inclined from an early age, and by her 1969 graduation from Columbia Heights High School, she had scholarships and grants that took her to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). After her first year, she was chosen as the most outstanding student in the foundational Fine Arts Division. An offer to study in Brighton, England the following year followed. She declined, bowing to the wishes of her father, who worried about her traveling alone.
She remained at MCAD for a while longer, but then took a four-plus-year sabbatical to join a full-time Christian youth ministry based on the charismatic renewal movement, living, for a time, in the Aleutian Islands. She called that period, “A really enriching part of my life, and the group I was with had had very strong, structured ministry.” She eventually returned to MCAD and got her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Hedging her bets, she enrolled in a secretarial school, and worked as a secretary, and later spent more than two decades as a part-time Macy’s sales associate, receiving 53 recognition awards for her service there. But art was the primary concern of her professional life, and her artwork showed up in many exhibitions.
For 12 years, she was part of the Fine Arts Committee for Central Lutheran Church, and had a similar duration as a revolving exhibitor at Byerly’s Restaurant in Golden Valley. She said she has had, “An inspiration and vision to start an academy of fine arts at Immaculate Conception Church and School (where she is a eucharistic minister) for the study of the scriptures in conjunction with fine arts, with emphasis on sacred arts in painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture.” She would also add poetry and creative writing to that list.
St. Gabriel-Dargay’s winning entry is a painting she began almost three decades ago, then set aside. She had begun drawing portraits of her father, Frank Maxmillian Slonski, she said, “because of some of the stories he told me about what he experienced in North Africa as a U.S. soldier during World War II, and how he survived. I cherished what he had gone through and that he was such a wonderful father.” She said she had made changes to the portrait over the years before finally showing it to the world. She said her father, who died in 2010, received an honorable discharge (medical) for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
St. Gabriel-Dargay said she loves traveling, and has visited 15 countries, most recently France and Italy, “Enjoying the arts, culture, people and beauty of each country.”
Columbia Heights resident Larene St. Gabriel-Dargay’s painting, “Veteran of WWII, My Father, out of Algiers, Almost a Death Mask,” won the highest award at an exhibition sponsored by the Minnesota Artists Association. (Photos by Mark Peterson)
