He Loves to Medal : Designer-Artist Leon Kawecki Fashions Commemoratives for Pleasure

To mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in 1973, he designed a commemorative poster issued by a chapter of the Polish American Congress, another poster commissioned by the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and a commemorative bronze-cast plaque for the Griffith Observatory.

To salute the 175th anniversary of the birth of Polish composer Frederic Chopin in 1985, he designed and personally issued a commemorative medal in silver and bronze.

To honor Pope John Paul II, he designed a commemorative medal issued by the Polish American Numismatic Assn. and painted a stunning oil portrait of the former Cardinal of Krakow that now hangs in the library at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

And to do his part for the American Bicentennial, he designed and personally issued a commemorative medal featuring George Washington flanked by his fellow “freedom founders,” the Polish-born Generals Thaddeus Kosciuszko and Casimir Pulaski.

Given all that--and that is just a sampler--it would seem only a matter of time before Polish-born artist and designer Leon Kawecki of Garden Grove would get around to creating an artistic tribute to one of Poland’s greatest actresses of all time: Madame Helena Modjeska, a Polish emigrant and pioneer Orange County resident who became the leading Shakespearean actress in the United States in the 1880s.

The time has come.

Commissioned last year by the California chapter of the Polish-American Historical Assn., the limited-edition commemorative medal that Kawecki has designed captures both Modjeska the woman and her century-old house on her estate in Santiago Canyon, which the actress named Arden after the Forest of Arden in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”

“In Poland, she is considered the greatest lady of the theater,” said Kawecki, who retains a rich Polish accent even after 38 years in this country. “There was no one greater than Modjeska. In Poland, we say, ‘Mode-ju-yev-ska.”’

The Polish-American Historical Assn. plans to issue the high-relief, 2 3/4-inch-diameter medal in April. (It will cost $35 in bronze, $230 in silver. For details, call the Polish-American Historical Assn. at (213) 670-1090.)

Proceeds from the medal will help pay for the publication of an updated version of the nonprofit organization’s 1977 book, “Polish-Americans in California and Who’s Who.” The new book will be dedicated to Modjeska.

“She is a towering figure of the Polish community of our past,” said chapter president Henrietta Simons, who has seen Kawecki’s charcoal drawings for the medal and deems it “gorgeous.”

“It is so striking,” she said. “I like Leon’s work, but I love this medal. He really, to me, captured her.”

The obverse side of the medal features a portrait of the actress with long, flowing hair. Using artistic license, Kawecki has her wearing a broad-brimmed, Western-style hat with an art nouveau diamond-shaped decoration on it that matches her earrings. The bottom of the medal is adorned with the coat-of-arms of Krakow, Modjeska’s birthplace, which is flanked with laurel leaves. The circular legend reads: “Helena Modjeska--First Lady of the Theater.”

The reverse side of the medal shows Modjeska’s celebrated Orange County home surrounded by lush vegetation. In the distance are the twin peaks of Saddleback Mountain (Modjeska and Santiago), and in the center of the upper part is a stylized mask, symbol of the theater arts. The legend on top reads “Pioneer Actress of Two Continents--Born in Krakow, Poland Oct. 12, 1840. Died at Balboa, California, April 8, 1909.” And on the bottom: “Arden--Modjeska’s Home in Santiago Canyon.”

The challenge of designing a commemorative medal, according to Kawecki, is to convey an historically important event in a condensed space. A commemorative medal, he said, is art in miniature, “so therefore certain elements have to be exaggerated to bring out the beauty of the medal.”

As is the case with his nine other commemorative medals honoring Polish historical figures, Kawecki donated his time and work in designing the Modjeska medal for the Polish-American Historical Assn.

“I wanted to donate something of my own to Modjeska,” said Kawecki, a longtime association member. “It gives me a specific pleasure to produce a token of my own admiration for a Polish emigre who has contributed something not only to Poland but the world at large.”

To research the Polish actress and her home, Kawecki consulted with Modjeska historian Ellen K. Lee of Laguna Beach and viewed old photographs and paintings.

He did not, however, visit Modjeska’s house, which is being restored by the county as part of a 14.5-acre historical park.

“No, I’m ashamed,” he confessed in a mock whisper, then boomed, “I’m so occupied, my friend! Every day I have something else.”

As Western region art director for Meade Packaging in Buena Park, Kawecki spends the workweek designing packages for 7-Up, Pepsi, RC Cola and various fruit juice and water companies.

That, he said, is “my bread and butter. Everything else is just for my pleasure and for my ambition to release my creative energies.”

His Garden Grove apartment is testament to his considerable creative energies.

The living room is a virtual art gallery, its walls filled with strikingly colorful oil paintings that he has executed in a variety of styles. The spare bedroom that serves as his studio is packed with examples of his medals, posters and some 20 commemorative envelopes he designed for philatelic societies to commemorate everything from the Berlin airlift and the American Bicentennial to the millennium of Christianity in Poland and the 100th anniversary of the death of Chopin.

Kawecki is now working on the design for a commemorative medal that will be presented to VIPs at a banquet at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel before the 54th annual Pulaski Parade in New York City next fall.

“Mind you,” he noted while showing a visitor his work, “I do this in my spare time--Saturdays, Sundays and evenings. I’m a very compulsive man.”

Much of Kawecki’s creative time is spent pacing around his studio, or having a cup of coffee--all as mental preparation for sitting down at his drawing table.

For him, it’s time spent “trying to embrace the spirit of the muse of the fine arts.” And when he does embrace the muse, he exclaimed, “I embrace it as if it is ecstasy!”

The son of fish and produce merchants, Kawecki has been embracing the muse since he was a boy growing up in Chojnice, a small Polish town near Gdansk.

At 8, he began studying with one of his parents’ customers, a well-known German artist who ran a private art school in Kawecki’s hometown.

At 12, he entered an all-Poland scholastic competition, winning a top medal for his watercolor landscape featuring his town’s centuries-old church.

And at 14, he became the youngest student ever admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland.

Kawecki’s artistic ambitions, however, were derailed in 1939.

Having just completed a cross-country bicycle trip, he was about to begin his post-graduate studies at the art academy when Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1. Kawecki, along with other civilians fleeing the advancing German army, linked up with Polish Army troops on a road heading east toward the Russian border. “We felt the Russians were our saviors,” he said. But on Sept. 17, the Russians invaded Poland and on the 23rd, Kawecki and other civilians were taken prisoner along with the soldiers. “No one in the West knew the Russians and Germans had signed a mutual military pact,” he said.

After spending time in a succession of Russian prisoner-of-war camps, Kawecki was sent to a camp in Siberia. Noting that “everyone in such trying circumstances tries to make his existence as good as possible,” he let it be known that he was an artist.

“The Russians always admired the arts, be it music, literature or the fine arts, and they took me as their own,” he said.

Kawecki was provided with office space and, using hospital linens for his canvases and paints obtained on the black market, he spent his days copying old Russian masters for the Russian officers.

“Periodically, when we went from one camp to another, the Russians, of course, didn’t know who I was and it took me a while to again get them to know I’m an artist,” he recalled. “So I worked in brigades, a detachment of prisoners of war. There were about 12 people to a brigade, and they sent you to a factory here and there or into the forest to cut wood. I stayed with them for a while, until I got noticed again (as an artist).”

The fact that he also spoke Russian helped. “You have the immediate communication with your captor: You speak his language--you reach his spirit, you see--and it alleviates so much of the hostility.”

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and the Russians joined the Allies, Kawecki joined the Polish Army under British command. He served in campaigns in North Africa and Italy and was wounded three times.

After the war, he returned home to Poland, but his stay was brief. “My family wasn’t there anymore because they were afraid of the Russians,” he said. “They went to Germany and Austria and France.”

He followed suit, living mostly in Germany and traveling extensively in Austria and Greece. He found jobs working in graphic arts and took whatever other jobs he could find. He also resumed his fine arts studies, a practice he continued after arriving in the United States in 1951. With a laugh, he said, “I was never done with school. The last school I had was 8 years ago.”

Upon arriving in the United States, Kawecki initially lived with a Polish family in Cleveland. Unable to get a job in the graphic arts, he took the first job he could find: a punch-press and brake-press operator for a steel-manufacturing company. Evenings he attended classes at John Huntington Polytechnic Institute. “I never worked as hard as my first years in America: I wanted to go to school, I wanted to accomplish so much.”

After a year, he moved to Pittsburgh, where he landed a job as a packaging designer for Fuller Label and Box Co. At night, he attended the Pittsburgh Art Institute and Carnegie Institute.

Kawecki, who was married in 1953 and became an American citizen in 1956, landed his job at Meade Packaging in 1960. Despite his success in packaging design--he has won two major international awards in his field--the divorced father of four children never lost his desire to make a contribution in fine arts.

“My ambition was always to be a recognized artist,” he said. “In fact, on my application when I came to Meade Packaging it states: ‘What is your ultimate goal?’ And I wrote: ‘It is to be a recognized artist.’ ”

And so he is.

Many of his paintings are in museums in Germany, Poland and the United States. And his Bicentennial commemorative medal, for one, is in more than 30 major collections, including the Smithsonian Institution Museum and the private collections of former Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Kawecki said his extracurricular artistic endeavors are not only motivated by his “love for the arts” but also, through his Polish themes, his desire to educate people about Poland.

“The West is very poor at acknowledging, or even having the knowledge of, what contributions Poland has made in the world in the sciences, the arts and history in general,” he said. “For instance, for the American Bicentennial, there were many books issued crediting many generals for the victories in different areas. However, there was not even mention in some of them of the great contributions of Kosciuszko and Pulaski, who were great heroes of many battles.”

Although he declines to say which medal is his favorite, he has a particular affinity for his medal commemorating the birth of Chopin, who also happens to be his favorite composer. “His music,” he said, “has such great longing for Poland; he wakens up the sentiments and all the compassion for our motherland.”

In his own way, Kawecki expresses his own sentiments for the motherland.

Through his art, he said, “I want to pay homage to the country of my birth.”