First published: Winter 2024/2025
Migrating from the Soviet Union to the USA, a couple decided to create a new life for an old Boston building and a whole new world for themselves
At 115 College Avenue in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts, stands a former Unitarian church, its facade painted brightly with a stylised sun, roosters and fish. A cement relief of a grotesque face with bulging eyes stares out from above the double doors. Built as a church in around 1910, the building later went on to serve as a lodge for the Odd Fellows fraternity organisation, and then as a Masonic Temple until 2002 when Nicholas Shaplyko and Ekaterina Sorokina bought the property and began to transform it into their home and the Museum of Modern Renaissance. In a neighbourhood of churches and Victorian painted ladies, near Tufts University, the building stands out and possesses a mysterious air. This may be because the doors to the museum are only opened occasionally – during each spring’s Somerville Open Studios art event and for occasional concerts of classical music and opera arias – and so, while the exterior is familiar to locals, most are unaware that the building’s interior is almost entirely covered with dazzling murals in what the couple describe as an “esoteric, mystic” style with roots in Eastern Orthodox iconography and the boldly decorative folk painting of Eastern Europe.
Shaplyko and Sorokina in their kitchen, looking out into Festivity Hall; courtesy: Ted Degener
“Me and my wife created a single piece of art so you can go right inside of it and kind of experience some sort of energy going from every corner of this place,” Shaplyko says. “We call this place a museum because the original meaning of the word museum is “house of muses” , not a warehouse for artworks. It’s a house of muses. And different muses, they are kind of living together, and making fun and creating harmony. That was our goal.”
In the Grand Hall, murals evoke Eastern Orthodox iconography and Eastern European folk art; courtesy: Ted Degener
Shaplyko and Sorokina met in their native Soviet Union (now Russia) in the early 1980s. Shaplyko was studying architecture and art. Sorokina dreamed of becoming an architect too, but her family was in construction and pressed her to study engineering.
Creatures of mythology and legend feature in many of the murals; courtesy: Ted Degener
By GREG COOK
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #121.
