Pencil Me In

By Elizabeth Scott, Eagle Staff Writer

January 22, 2015 Last Updated: January 22, 2015 09:19 AM Weekend Entertainment

Zelienople woman has sketched gallery of stars

ZELIENOPLE — Jimmy Stewart was Angelina Boccella's first sketch back the 1930s.

That drawing and the one she did of Shirley Temple are her favorites among the stars she has sketched.

Over the course of a few years, the teenaged Boccella sketched out more than a dozen celebrity images from photographs in movie magazines, but she also found inspiration for her art elsewhere.

“I did other things then, too,” said the 93-year-old Passavant Retirement Community resident. “If I saw something in the paper I liked, I would draw that. One time, there was a series of pretty girls, so I drew them.”

Always with pencil. “And I just used art paper from the 5-and-10 store,” she said

Her technique was simple. “You know how you squint your eyes, and you look at one and then the other, and you measure with your pencil, and you draw,” she said.

The artist, who was married to Anthony Bianco until he passed away three years ago, now goes by Angela Bianco.

A unique thing she did with her sketches back in the '30s was to mail them to the stars and ask for them to be autographed and returned. She mailed her requests via the movie studio addresses that were in the magazines.

Mickey Rooney, Bing Crosby, Tyrone Power and Irene Dunne, among others, wished her well and autographed her sketches. James Cagney and Shirley Temple addressed their messages to “Angie.”

“Movies were so romantic in the old days,” Bianco said. “They had good stories. Now it's all violence and sex. I can't stand them.”

Even with no self-addressed, stamped envelope included with the requests, all the celebrities signed and returned her sketches, Bianco said, except for one: Billy Halop.

Halop became famous on film in 1937 as one of the Dead End Kids, Bianco said. As a teenager he played on Broadway in “Dead End,” which was brought to the silver screen starring Humphrey Bogart.

Halop sent a postcard that read “Sorry.”

“Either he threw it away or he kept it. I hope he kept it,” Bianco said of her sketch of Halop.

All this she did on the advice and encouragement from one of her cousins. “He lived next door and he used to help me with my math,” Bianco said. “I took Jimmy Stewart over there one time to show him, and he said I should send it to (Stewart).”

In 2000, Bianco started sketching again for the first time since she was a teenager. She had been busy raising children while her husband worked as a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony and professor at Carnegie Mellon University for 55 years. Two years ago, she did a sketch of Mozart for a symphony collaboration.

The Biancos had eight children; seven are living. There are also eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

“I started to draw my grandchildren, and I drew my husband,” Bianco said.

Her artwork, which includes a sketch of her late sister, was displayed Sunday by Mary Hess and her sister Carolyn Riley at the Spring Street Cafe in Zelienople. About 70 guests attended the reception, some from Passavant, which provided bus service.

“More people saw (the sketches) that day than I think have ever seen them since I made them,” Bianco said.

Her sketches can be seen through Sunday at the Bottlebrush Gallery in Harmony.

Bianco said she hasn't sketched for a couple years now, but she's thinking about putting pencil to paper again.

“I'm thinking of doing my granddaughter in her wedding gown,” she said. “I'll try it and see how I do.”