SAFEKEEPING: The Art of Val Polyanin
The Artist
For the first time ever, the doors to the former Bank of America building will be 
temporarily opened to display a retrospective exhibition of local artist, Val Polyanin. Polyanin was born in Ukraine and remained there until 1986. At this time, Soviet rule required artists to conform to socialist realism standards. Unwilling to be creatively stifled and feeling like he would rather die than not make art, he escaped his home country by jumping off a cargo boat and swimming to the Japanese island Honshu. All the artwork he left behind was destroyed by the government. Undeterred by this loss and his arduous journey, Polyanin resettled in Crescent City, California, where he has continued to prolifically create art for the last 35 years.
Polyanin recently donated his collection of over 900 pieces of art to the City of Crescent City when he was no longer able to house the work himself. The City has accepted the gift and safely secured the art in a former Bank of America building, currently slated to be the next City Hall. The City has since decided to open the doors to the public, while the City Hall project remains in the design phase, for a timely, yet temporary exhibition of the work. The collection demonstrates a wide range of artistic ability and includes painting, sculpture, assemblage, and more created from an array of materials in sizes ranging from 2 to 10 feet tall. The work on view was created between 1988 and 2023, and much of it was displayed in Polyanin’s art gallery that he housed in shipping containers along US Highway 101 until 2022.
Viewers will be invited into the former bank to share in our appreciation of Polyanin’s incredible creative practice and celebrate Crescent City’s safeguarding of his artwork –a powerful and articulate expression of freedom, as the war in Ukraine rages on.