The walls of Ruth Kazez’s State College home are adorned with art — self-portraits drawn with charcoal, colorful collages, watery images of fish, a painting of three rats. Some span several feet wide: like her 84-inch painting of two cockroaches, or a camel that covers the wall by her kitchen and stands beside a self-portrait.
“That’s me,” Kazez pointed to the picture of herself.
“That’s not me,” Kazez pointed to the camel.
She’s not your typical 89-year-old. Kazez is an athlete. She’s completed six Ironman Triathlons, which includes a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run. The Ironman is considered one of the most difficult races there is, but to Kazez, “It’s just a pleasant day,” – easy compared to her best, but most challenging, event: the 50-yard butterfly swim.
Her wall decked with dozens of ribbons and race bibs attest to a lifetime of athleticism that started in grade school, when Kazez recalls enjoying co-ed gym classes that gave her a chance to outperform her classmates.
“I was a very good wrestler. And there were the boys to wrestle, and I beat them.”
More than an accomplished competitor, Kazez has been painting for most of her life and has the pictures to prove it — a painting of snowy Chicago, where she grew up, hangs near the entrance of her home. She said she painted it when she was 12. Her more recent paintings feature watery landscapes or animals, or both.
Many showcase unconventionally aesthetic critters: a long-tailed skunk, three rats, cockroaches, a pig, insects. But Kazez doesn’t name her pieces, and prefers to let others do the interpreting.
“It’s just what it is. Like pig. Turtle. Fish. More turtles.”
Although Kazez said she likes to let viewers extract meaning from her work, she read from an email on her iPad from someone who described her art as having “a subdued palette and dreamy style, a taste of the romantic and bucolic.”
“I think that was nice,” she said.
Ruth Kazez at her painting of three rats. Photo by Maddie Biertempfel | For the Gazette
Her art has been featured in numerous exhibits, and one of her camel paintings is even displayed at Penn State’s School of Visual Arts’ Hump Day Gallery. Most recently, 10 of Kazez’s paintings were on display during the First Friday event at Kish Bank on Allen Street.
There, dozens of mostly State College residents gathered to enjoy wine and cheese, and appreciate Kazez’s art.
Another local artist and State College resident, photographer Chuck Fong, attended the first Friday and described what he liked about Kazez’s work.
“I look at it as seeing life through a soft-focus lens,” Fong said. “She paints and draws in a soft technique, and a lot of it is not sharp, it’s not anatomically correct, but that’s her expression. She sees it that way, and I can feel it.”
Ted Liberti is another State College resident and art collector who attended Kazez’s exhibit. He said he’s collected roughly 50 paintings and enjoys seeing the local talent being showcased.
“The topic — nature — and the beauty of birds and the opportunity that gives an artist to show their talent, it’s a really good subject,” Liberti said. “It’s quite impressive in terms of color and composition.”
While the locals seem to like Kazez’s work, she said she usually finds a way out of going to her own shows. She’d rather the paintings have the attention than her.
“But there’s no way I can get out of this one,” Kazez lamented, adding that she tried to make an excuse.
“I said ‘Well I have a dog, so,’ ‘Bring the dog,’ they said. But I’m sure they’d want him on a leash and I don’t do that,” Kazez said. “But I’m not going to get dressed up for it.”
Kazez’s energetic 11-year-old Jack Russel Terrier, Punkin, doesn’t use a leash, and follows her everywhere.
Yet for all her accomplishment, Kazez keeps out of the limelight. She’ll be 90 in July, but would rather not disclose the date, to avoid attention. Her art is frequently displayed at exhibits, but she rarely attends herself. And on her 70th birthday, instead of a trip to Marrakesh, Morocco, as suggested by her husband, Emil, she decided on Muncie, Indiana.
“He said, ‘What?’” Ruth recalled.
Ruth wanted to go to Muncie to compete in a half-Ironman: 70 miles for her 70 years.
“I couldn’t resist that. It was really just a fun thing to do,” Kazez said. “What a way to spend a day.”
Kazez loves opera and painting, practices the flute and recorder, bikes an hour daily, paints, cooks, takes care of her dog, Punkin, and stays connected to her family. She doesn’t plan to slow down anytime soon.
“The idea of stopping seems strange,” Kazez said. “That’s what I do.
