FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Edward Drapkin’s Creative Sculpture and Puppets
By Michael Chatfield
Magic happens in a tiny, airy, light-filled building in the backyard of the Carmel home Edward Drapkin shares with his wife Natasha. That’s where he transforms lumps of ordinary clay, wood, and fabric into whimsical, life-infused sculptures and puppets. He’s a diminutive, charming man, with eyes that fairly sparkle with a love of mischief and fun. Drapkin has the soul of a storyteller and the tales he relates tell of a remarkable life that began on the opposite side of the globe, in a markedly different cultural and political climate than the one he enjoys today. To paraphrase the Grateful Dead song “Truckin,’” it was a long, strange trip that brought Drapkin to Carmel. His early years were spent under the hammer of the Soviet Union in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) where he graduated from the Leningrad Theater, Music, and Cinematography Institute.
“I failed at being a dramatic actor,” Drapkin says. “An instructor asked me why I looked so sad, then told me that upstairs there was a department of puppet theater that had some openings.”
He entered that program and after six months knew he’d found his calling. “In that world, I found a combination of fantasy, art, drama—everything was in there,” he says.
He learned not only how to design and create puppets but how to bring them to life through the ancient art of hand puppetry. For the next 16 years, he worked in professional theater, film, and television as an actor, assistant director, artistic director, and artist. Along the way, he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree as well and his work was recognized by the Union Internationale de la Marionette (UNIMA). That organization, founded in 1929, is dedicated to furthering and nurturing the art of puppeteering worldwide. His work won several awards at the 1975 UNIMA Festival in Bulgaria.
As it did for many creative people before and after him, Drapkin yearned for the freedoms of the West and in 1977, applied for a visa to Israel as a first step to finding his way to the United States. “My brother was a software engineer and had been living in the US for a couple of years at that point,” he says. “First in Milwaukee, then in the Bay Area of California.” When the veteran, honored Russian puppeteer arrived in California, he naturally looked for work in his field and found it. Sort of. “I took a job in a puppet factory for $3 an hour,” he says. Military service was compulsory during the Soviet era, and Drapkin did his time as an electronics technician at a radar installation. That service gave him experience with electronics and he was able to use that knowledge to obtain positions with Silicon Valley startup Lexel Laser, then Stanford University’s SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), contributing to the computerization and automation of the Klystron, the device that produced the electron beam used in the accelerator.
Around this time, Drapkin’s creative muse came back into play, and he began experimenting with clay sculptures. These are transferred to bronze using a technique known as the lost wax process. After the artist retired and he and his wife relocated to Carmel, he has been able to devote more time to his sculpting. The magical results of his labors are depicted on these pages.
Some of Edward Drapkins’s works are on display at the Carmel Valley Art Association in the Center Street Marketplace in Carmel Valley Village. Edward Drapkin is the husband of Rotarian eClub member Natasha Lipkina.
Learn more at www.edwardssculpture.com.
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