Two People, Many Talents

By Bob Bumcrot
For the past eleven years the old parsonage at 47 Greenwoods Road East has housed two multi-talented, hardworking artists. Bridgette Rallo, came to Norfolk from Pelham Manor, NY, just north of the Bronx, and her husband Harry, from Arthur Avenue, right in the North Bronx. “For years I treated art as a full time job,” said Harry. “I was in the studio eight hours a day, six days a week.” Bridgette can often be found in her studio behind the main house working with fine silver and semiprecious stones to fashion unique pieces of jewelry.
Bridgette Bruno’s father was a jazz drummer who owned a recording studio, later sold to Longines Symphonette, a record label sponsored by the Swiss watch company. Throughout her youth she was fascinated by the exotic jewelry worn by the female singers, wives and girlfriends who worked with her father’s business. Her interest in semiprecious stones was enhanced by a minor in geology at State University of New York at Cobleskill, combined with a major in physical chemistry, where she was often the lone woman in class. “What you learn is never wasted,” she said as she gave a visitor a deeply informative tour of her extraordinary inventory of cut and polished stones from around the world.
“I’m always trying to figure out how to wear the stones I find,” she said. Most are cunningly set in hand-worked pieces of fine silver. Designs are cast from many sources, for example, computer chips. Pins and brooches may be surrounded by woven or braided designs. Natural intrusions in some of the semi-transparent stones suggest wheat fields, mountains, sunsets and other scenes. In addition to selling at local art fairs and markets, pieces may be found at Gallery 101 in Collinsville and the Jewelry Cafe in Southbury.

From gemstones to buildings to canvases, Harry & Bridgette Rallo practice many crafts at their home on Greenwoods Road East.

Although they grew up only a few miles apart, Bridgette and Harry met at a college watering hole near a prison where she was teaching mathematics to inmates. Harry began to pursue his talent at age sixteen, as an art major at Lehman College. Actually, his career started even earlier when he was chosen in first grade to participate in The Young Artist Scholarship Program at the Brooklyn Museum. He later studied with the renowned portrait artist Nelson Shanks, whose subjects included Pope John Paul, Princess Diana and Presidents Reagan and Clinton. With Shanks he sometimes did “three minute drills,” in which an oil sketch had to be completed during a three-minute pose. Most results were wiped off the canvas before the next pose (Shanks insisted on Viva paper towels), but Harry always brought several canvases so that he could save an occasional effort. One remarkable result remains on display in the Rallo home.
A man of many and varied accomplishments, Harry made sails on City Island, was a gymnast and competitive diver from the one meter board, was a construction supervisor on Roosevelt Island, took a degree in architecture from City College, and is a licensed building official in New York Connecticut and Florida.
His passion is for painting in oils on linen, which he stretches on frames he makes himself. His portraits and landscapes focus mainly on three areas: the Bahamas, coastal Maine and Norfolk. Among other venues, his work can be seen at his home gallery and studio, in National Iron Bank, at the Princess Street Gallery on Harbour Island, Bahamas, and on-line at harryrallo.com.
Like her husband, Bridgette is a person of many accomplishments. Dropped from her high school newspaper for aggressive investigative reporting, she created and published Mind Food, an independent off-campus paper that sold well at twice the price of the school paper. During the couple’s years in Florida, she was a reporter for the Broward County Observer (circulation 165,000), where Harry was a political cartoonist. She also reported for The Sun Sentinel, South Florida’s major daily newspaper and The Miami Herald. Norfolk Now has recently become the beneficiary of her exceptional writing and reporting talents.
The distinguished critic Robert Hughes once remarked, “The art market is to art what strip mining is to nature.” To enhance his regular income, Harry recently took a job with Travelers Insurance in which he travels the nation using his architectural and building inspection knowledge in connection with claims for damages. But whenever possible, he can still be found standing (never sitting) before the easel. “It enriches your life so much, it’s worth it,” he said. “We both love the old quote, ‘Art is the beauty that lies within that can no longer be contained.'”

Photo By Bob Bumcrot