Jane Meryll held up a sculpture of a fish done by her mother, Evelyn Raphel, 90, at her mother's assisted living facility. Meryll and brother Stephen Kaplan, left, coordinated the program.
(Globe Staff Photo / Pat Greenhouse)
90-year-old sculptor's art aired anew
Siblings honor mom at hospice
Jane Meryll held up a sculpture of a fish done by her mother, Evelyn Raphel, 90, at her mother's assisted living facility. Meryll and brother Stephen Kaplan, left, coordinated the program.
(Globe Staff Photo / Pat Greenhouse)
Several of the 60 people who filled the common room at Chestnut Park, an assisted living residence in Brighton's Cleveland Circle, parked their walkers beside them, and another half-dozen left them folded in the corridor outside. The 90-year-old guest of honor - dressed impeccably in a white blouse, black and white beads, black vest, and black slacks - sat in her wheelchair.
For an hour yesterday, the years melted away as Evelyn Raphel's two children hosted an exhibit of 14 sculptures she created over almost a quarter of a century in Florida after she retired from the clothing business. In an event as much about family as about art, her daughter and son introduced her work: the face carved in a block of onyx, the pink alabaster swan, the elegant woman shaped from black stone that reminds Raphel's daughter of the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.
Playing piano and guitar, they led their mother's neighbors in some of her favorite songs, including "You Are My Sunshine," "Mack the Knife," and "If I Had a Hammer," which Raphel's son remembered leading for his Jewish youth group back in the 1960s.
"I'm just overwhelmed," Raphel said when it was over. Life returns to normal today, with Raphel expected at Chestnut Park's weekly current events discussion group.
The twice-widowed Raphel had hesitated when the chaplain of the Hospice of the Good Shepherd, which provides her services, suggested the exhibition. "Now I'm beginning to feel good about it and think it's so wonderful that I'm beginning to feel proud of myself," Raphel said in an interview.
Raphel moved to Chestnut Park in 2004 after the death of her second husband, and enrolled in the hospice program last summer to minimize hospitalizations. "She wants to die in her home," her daughter, Jane Meryll of Mamaroneck, N.Y., said in an interview. Raphel suffers from arthritis and the overall decline of old age; the medication she takes to manage pain has weakened her voice.
Yesterday's exhibit capped - and encapsulated - a lifelong interest in the arts that began when Raphel, who grew up in Roxbury, accompanied her mother to the Museum of Fine Arts. Raphel took art classes there and as an adult studied painting at night. She loved decorating the windows at Ernstein's, the Uphams Corner clothing store she inherited from her parents, and at the Dainty Dress Shoppe she and her first husband bought in Mattapan Square.
Shortly before she retired, Raphel tried working with wood and chicken wire in adult education courses at Brookline High School. When she and her second husband moved to Florida in 1975, Raphel took up sculpting with a passion. "I always felt that I was able to copy what I saw," Raphel said. "The minute I started working with stone or clay, I felt altogether different. I was working from the inside out."
Raphel set up a studio and taught sculpture. She sold pieces to her neighbors in Boynton Beach, Fla., one of whom now lives in Chestnut Park and who stood up yesterday to say that she owned a beautiful piece of a couple embracing in ecstasy. "I did a lot of that kind of thing," Raphel said, eliciting laughter from the group. "They sold very well."
Many years have passed since Raphel used to sneak cigarettes outside Girls Latin School. Many years have passed, too, since Raphel and her teenage daughter clashed in their Newton home. That daughter is 65 now. Meryll sees in her elderly mother's gnarled hands the once nimble fingers of the expert seamstress who 58 years ago showed her a piece of blue velvet one morning and asked what kind of dress she wanted. "In the afternoon I had a dress," Meryll said.
If yesterday was cause for celebrating a long life, then it also provided an occasion for healing. Meryll and her brother, Stephen Kaplan of Needham, were estranged from each other for a decade for reasons neither explicates. "There was a painful decision many many years ago to excommunicate ourselves," said Kaplan, 61. "It wasn't the right thing to do."
The two siblings have been rebuilding their connection for the past half-dozen years. Yesterday marked the first time they've played music together. "This is a momentous moment for the two of us," Meryll said. "It's almost like a God moment."
Raphel's children attribute their musical abilities to their late father, who played piano and participated in shows at Temple Shalom in Newton. Meryll is a professional singer and pianist who teaches music and coaches people through performance anxiety. Kaplan, an attorney, played in a rock band with friends in the 1970s.
Raphel heard in her children's performance the promise that their relationship will outlive her. Asked what she'll remember most about the event, she said, "That it brought my children together."
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