Eye of newt and toe of frog

Not long ago, the governor of St. Petersburg issued an order exempting all gifts received in honor of the city's 300th anniversary from customs duty. Legally, the order was to become effective in 12 days. Meanwhile, the governor's office drafted another document in which St. Petersburg's ethnographic museum was charged with taking in a certain work of art "for safekeeping" until the first one took effect.

The work of art in question is a sculpture donated by Ruslan Sergeev on behalf of the State of Israel: a lion studded with semi-precious stones, bits of glass and colorful mosaics. The sculpture had reached the port five days earlier, and despite the efforts of Igor Sarni, Ruslan's partner, the customs authorities had refused to release it. The governor's intervention solved the problem. On May 18, officially declared "Israel Day" in St. Petersburg, the sculpture went on permanent display at the ethnographic museum. That same day, an Israeli delegation that included Minister Natan Sharansky posed for photographs beside it. "But the governor approached Ruslan first, and only after that, Sharansky," Sarni said this week at their studio in Jerusalem.

Ruslan Sergeev is one of Israel's most productive and original artists. Over 50 of his outdoor sculptures dot the Israeli landscape - interactive works that sit beautifully in their surroundings. But few of the residents know who created the starfish (11 x 12 meters, 3 meters high) in Jerusalem's Nayot neighborhood, or the whale (18 x 16 meters, 9 meters high) in one of Bnei Brak's few public parks, or the lizard (8 x 3 meters, 3 meters high) in Be'er Sheva, or the colorful benches in Eilat.

Grandiose plans

Ruslan and Sarni's studio overlooks the desert and the Dead Sea. It is located behind the Diplomat Hotel, which has known better days and is now a hostel for new immigrants. Ruslan and Sarni leased a dunam and a half (a little more than one-third of an acre) at the foot of the hotel and set up what they call an "open studio" there, on a flat stretch of land on the edge of Jerusalem, bordering on the wilderness.

On the property is a large cabin where Ruslan stores dozens of sketches - plans for sculptures he has already made and plans for the future. The room is also full of small plaster maquettes and metal armatures - when fully assembled they can be up to 25 meters long - that are eventually covered in concrete and decorated with colorful mosaic chips to create the finished piece.

Sarni and Ruslan have been working together since 1996, and the partnership has been good for both of them. Ruslan first sketches his wild ideas on paper. Then the two of them try to interest local authorities, private companies and nonprofit organizations around the country. When they get an order, they hire a team of four to 10 people to build the sculpture.

The grandiose plans of these two can leave professional committees gasping for air, but sometimes they do infect committee members with their enthusiasm. One sketch in Ruslan's notebook is a proposal for covering the ugly gray water tower in Jerusalem's Kiryat Menachem neighborhood with a stunning rainbow of mosaics. Antonio Gaudi did it in Barcelona, and Friedensrich Hundertwasser in Vienna. But in Kiryat Menachem, the authorities are still hemming and hawing, in no hurry to say good-bye to the "traditions" of water-tower construction.

Ruslan also has ideas for a new nature museum in Jerusalem, to replace the old, rundown building now in use in the German Colony. His design, like all his sculptures, takes its inspiration from the animal world: an amusing giant bird that combines an office building and museum space.

It's hard not to fall in love with Ruslan's work. The parents of kids coasting down slides in the shape of a giant frog's tongue may not be aware of it, but everything in his playground sculptures is meticulously planned with an eye to accident prevention: A maximum of nine centimeters between the metal bars prevents legs, arms and heads from getting caught; slides that are over 2.5 meters high are fitted with safety nets; and the sculptures are surrounded by sand or spongy rubber matting to soften any falls. All of them meet European safety standards.

Ruslan, born in Nzhniy-Novgorod, Russia, in 1954, completed a master's degree in industrial design in Minsk. He worked in the profession and also taught at an art academy. He immigrated to Israel with his wife and two daughters in 1992.

"He was told there were no jobs for Russian artists in Israel and he'd have to be retrained," says Sarni. "Ruslan said he'd rather work as a porter than give up his artistic career."

And so it was. After working in haulage for a year, he was accepted to participate in a project sponsored by the Jerusalem Municipality and the Joint Distribution Committee, which employs top-notch artists to beautify Jerusalem. Ruslan was asked to design four kindergartens in the Gilo neighborhood. "That's when he really got his fingernails dirty," says Sarni. "Ruslan did everything: He drew up the blueprints; he dragged the materials; he did the plastering and the welding."

The lion project

Sarni, who lives in Gilo, saw Ruslan every morning working on a kindergarten near his own home. Their two families became friends. Sarni was already an "old-timer" in Israel. He was born in Kiev in 1954, but unlike Ruslan, immigrated in 1977. Both sport well-trimmed beards. As a young man, Sarni's beard was a symbol of his rebellion against the Soviet regime. He also angered the authorities by applying for a visa to immigrate to Israel in 1975. He was turned down, and went through hell over the next two years because employers weren't anxious to hire him.

"At that time, if you didn't work for four and a half months, they sent you to jail," he says. "In my case, sitting in jail for `idleness' would mean a 10-year delay in reviewing my application to immigrate to Israel." Sarni traveled all over the Soviet Union in search of employment so that he could produce the papers he needed for his probation officer. He also worked as a porter. When he came to Israel, he settled in Haifa with his wife. In the end, they divorced and Sarni moved to Jerusalem, where he remarried. He and his second wife have three children.

Ruslan recently moved to Tsur Hadassah, a community outside Jerusalem, but he says that for work, he needs to be in Jerusalem. Together, Ruslan and Sarni hunted for a place to set up shop and eventually wound up in East Talpiot. Visitors to Jerusalem a few months ago could see three gigantic colorful animals on the hilltop there, peering out from beneath a blanket of snow. These sculptures were made for a park in Nahariya.

The finished pieces are transported to their permanent location by truck. Two years ago, 18 trucks were needed to move a giant grasshopper sculpture from Jerusalem to a park on the main boulevard of Modi'in. This week, the playground was crowded with children. Ruslan's grasshopper provides endless play opportunities for kids of different ages, but there is no sign indicating the name of the artist.

The Modi'in municipality couldn't find the budget for it. A new neighborhood on the edge of town has another Ruslan sculpture: a frog with its tongue stuck out, which doubles as a slide.

"When the projects in Modi'in were done, we received an urgent call from the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens in Jerusalem," says Sarni. "They wanted us to do some repairs on the Nikki de Saint Phalle sculptures. They didn't meet the safety standards, and the artist, who was living in San Diego at the time, would only let Ruslan touch them. She sent a crew over, and after working out some complicated issues, we upgraded safety features on about 20 of her sculptures."

The name Nikki de Saint Phalle is well-known in Jerusalem on account of her "Golem" sculpture (popularly called "The Monster") in Kiryat Hayovel. She died a year ago. Ruslan and Sarni are now planning a large sculpture garden in her memory to be built in Europe.

Six years ago, two Ruslan sculptures were erected in Jerusalem, in the Jewish National Fund forest opposite the biblical zoo: a praying mantis and a snake wrapped around the trunk of a pine tree. Both are visible only as one enters the forest. The garbage strewn around indicate that the place is a picnic site, but no one has harmed the sculptures - or even scrawled graffiti on them.

Recently, three sculptures were erected in a forest on the outskirts of Kiryat Gat, financed by the JNF and the National Insurance Institute. Ruslan was asked to design a playground for children with physical handicaps. He insisted that there be no distinction between target populations: He designed a grasshopper, an ant and a lizard that will delight both children in wheelchairs and healthy youngsters. Children can make use of the play equipment incorporated in these sculptures whatever physical level they are at.

At the moment, Ruslan is working on four sculptures that are part of the "lion project" in Jerusalem, now in its second year. Around 120 white plaster lions - there are two models - have been given to different artists to paint or decorate as they see fit. The artistic significance of this project is questionable, and noble intentions aside - i.e., providing a livelihood for artists - it may have done more harm than good. Last year, the lions were displayed around the city, and some were damaged in acts that veered between ordinary vandalism and protest against lousy artistic taste.

Ruslan decided to take part in the project again this year. The sale of the lions abroad will finance several other ventures, among them Ruslan's sculpture installation in the section of Gilo that overlooks Beit Jala. In the wake of all their suffering during the first year of the intifada, it was decided to boost the residents' spirits with a new sculpture garden. Now that the shooting has died down, the promises of the politicians and the sources of funding have slowly evaporated.

"It's a challenge to work with standardized plaster casts," says Ruslan, trying to defend his participation in the lion project. "But the important thing is that it will raise money for Gilo. The neighborhood kids deserve a little fun."

The children of Rahat deserve some fun, too, so he made them a large scorpion sculpture. "The way they live, running into scorpions is not uncommon, and they're pretty scared of them," says Ruslan. "I wanted to show them a scorpion that wasn't threatening."

Even the children of the settlers in Beit Arieh have a sculpture to call their own. "As long as they're living there, they deserve a little happiness," says Sarni. "But when the place is evacuated, we'll be glad to move the sculpture back inside the borders of the State of Israel."

	Ruslan Sergeev (foreground) and Igor Sarni in their studio. All kids deserve some fun.
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