Creative Renewal Plans

(5min read)

It is with great pleasure that I can announce that I was one of 50 artists selected to receive the Creative Renewal Fellowship 2024-2026. I was suggested by friends that this is a good time to break the silence on my one-hit-wonder blog and write a little about my plans. (You can still definitely expect a full report on year 2024 shenanigans)

When I was applying for the grant, I knew, in theory and from experience, that I am about to start burning out. I have been creating a lot of new work, while maintaining a full-time job and volunteering for a non-profit. On Nov 19th Ukraine hit a grim milestone – 1000 days of war. By the two year mark we were all already tired of grieving and empathizing, and now I feel like I can’t fully feel anything. After my last trip to Ukraine, as it usually goes, I felt my lowest. The excitement and enthusiasm of the summer evaporated in the post-trip and pre-seasonal depression - fueled by the non-stop massive drone attacks that have been escalating since August, and the knowledge that with winter approaching, the attacks on energy infrastructure will multiply again. Going into the holiday season feels more cynical and trivial than ever. I look forward to January, when the world stops pretending that winter doesn’t suck ass and everybody is more or less equally miserable. (I am hoping that my editor will allow me this one public moment of gloating).

Anyways, the fellowship came at the right time - like a crutch to hold me up, and provide relief from the inevitable mental burden of having to think of where the hell am I going to get money for my next trip home, with my savings running thinner and thinner from the last trip’s expenses. I know that once I overwhelm myself completely - with work, projects and emotional turmoil - I lose the capacity to solve problems and make decisions. I dread those weeks of not wanting to eat, not being able to stand up from bed and just wanting to be asleep most of the day.

But how does one get creative renewal, or any rest, when you are on constant alert? I dunno. But this money does one simple but crucial thing - it allows me to choose me, when I am presented with such an option. Because while the option is always technically there, it comes with a price tag and a “convenience” label, not “necessity”.


So here is what I am hoping to accomplish in the next eighteen months:

1. Spend uninterruped and casual time with my family. With those I care about, I value time spent idling together above all. That can be sitting in a room without talking, standing in a line together, or being in the presence of each other without any particular reason. When the only time you can see your family is two consecutive weeks a year - these two weeks become a chore list (a hurricane of unlocking everyone’s online bank accounts, fixing phones, computers and other electronics, sourcing supplies that I can’t buy elsewhere) and a celebration of our reunion (party-sized dinners every other night by my family, fishing trips and grilling kebabs by the river).

There are not a lot of things I will put above sacrificing seeing my family and my home country. I can’t say that it is in any way affordable - but it’s a choice that I don't feel like I have. I love my family and they love me, not every person has that relationship, and I do not take it for granted.

Now, maybe I’m asking for too much considering my choice to stay in the US, but I hope that in the future I am able to participate in my family’s life like a daughter and a sister, not some distant relative from abroad.  I don’t have access to simple things like visiting my family for their birthdays or during holidays, I can’t bring them soup when they are sick, help my sister with homework, or go out for a tea with my childhood best friend. I hope that my creative renewal will come from doing some of those things. I cherish moments such as my sister asking me to show her how to draw eyes for her art classes, or my grandma asking me to pick something up for her at the store. I love that my parents still parent me, even though I am almost 30. I just want to sit and watch a damn movie together while eating sunflower seeds. Something most people do regularly with their family, without feeling like this may be the last day we will spend together.


2. Save memories. Since I was 12 years old, I have assumed the role of the memory keeper in my family. I am the only keeper of my family’s entire photo-archive, backed up on multiple clouds and hard drives. I have always bugged the elderly for details about our family history, like the dates of birth and death of my ancestors, or loved old photos and the stories behind them. Now, as russians deliberately erase entire regions of Ukraine and repopulate it with russians - to then in 20 years say that russians lived there all along like they did in 2014, 1947, etc etc - it becomes so much more critical to have proof that we existed, before they came, before the soviet union, before the empire. 

Beyond familial memories there is also knowledge. Much of this knowledge was lost before I was even born. My dad’s grandfather was a highly skilled leatherworker and smith, and my great aunts were talented weavers. I even remember my family re-thatching our house roof when I was a child, but nobody in the village remembers how to do it anymore. But some crafts are still alive and I intend to keep them that way. Recipes, for example, are such an underrated piece of culture. In Budjak, which is part of Odes’ka Oblast, where I am from, most families are such an incredible mix of different ethnicities and traditions, which makes for some amazing cuisine. Many old folk songs are still known. Wine making traditions are still alive. Farming, building, gardening… Obviously there is no way I can take on the role of an entire village and keep all this knowledge on my own, but my goal is to meticulously record everything as best I can, so that the next generation of Ukrainians can say - we were, we are and we will exist. 


3. Appreciate places I took for granted as a teenager. I remember, when I first came to the US, and people asked me what my home was like, I’d say “Not that much different from Indiana”. I was so wrong. The inferiority complex, imposed on us long before I was born by the russian empire, ran deep in me. It is quite hard to explain, so best way I can put it is in pictures:

Now, every time I am driving on the bus to or from Izmail, I am trying to catch a glimpse of the vast landscapes, hoping to one day return and take it in fully, take a deep breath as I internalize this thought: we exist.

4. Be a Ukrainian artist. Being a Ukrainian and an artist implies that you are a Ukrainian artist, but if you are not connected with other creatives in the field you claim association to - are you really? It is a rhetorical question of course. I don’t inherently feel like less of a Ukrainian artist because I don’t know many artists in person. I keep to myself and have a small circle of friends no matter where I live. But wouldn’t it be nice to just make new friends and connections for once, to have someone to share related opportunities in the field with? 

In 2022, working on SUA, I met many artists virtually, and kept up with a few through the years. For example, Olena Sharhel is now a contributing artist at my upcoming exhibit, making an embroidered triptych about Zaporizhzhya, in which she challenged herself with learning new techniques. Her work is beautiful and I can’t wait to show it off. 

Of more trivial goals - I am hoping to catch one of the dozens of my favorite music bands, maybe at a festival, I want to go fishing and mushroom picking with my dad, I want to eat so many sunflower seeds that I grow a second appendix and it bursts too. How feasible will all of this be? Time will tell.

That is, of course, a summary of my abstract goals. The first thing to do would be to buy my first ticket, for May 2025. Before that we have to get through holiday markets, NY resolutions, preparations for my show at the Art Center (March-May, reception in April), a couple conferences, the three year mark since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, and, more likely than not, 6 more months of war and losses.

Thank you for reading!

The Art of Biznis. The Biznis of Art. Call it what you want. Here is a recap of all of the things I have done this past 2023 year for my art practice.

(6min read)

The year started off strong, riding the high of making two double portrait commissions in watercolor, on a pretty tight schedule. Incidentally, that was my first and last commission of the year. Not gonna lie - commissions stress me out quite a lot, and by the end I feel that the stress was never worth the money. For some reason, despite being confident in my skill - I always have the nagging feeling that this time it will go wrong. And when it doesn’t - I suddenly become infinitely more paranoid about spilling water on the finished piece or a fire burning down the entire house. I doubt I would have the same problem if the commissions were much more regular. But when an opportunity arises - I still take it, and suffer internally.

In the same month, I had my first watercolor lesson with an adult student - which I prepared for for over a month. We don’t meet very often, but through these lessons I have been able to remember so many aspects of my own learning process, and compartmentalize the process of painting in a new way. I try to always channel discipline and patience when handling watercolors - something I myself have only learned in my 12th year of using it as my medium of choice. I like my student a lot: they are fast at learning, and they are also very patient with me as well, as I am learning to teach.

In February, after being inspired by a great resurgence of traditional Ukrainian clothing brands, I picked up sewing, and worked on learning some new sewing techniques, making a couple of skirts in the process. This ordeal spilled into March - I have gotten really into the idea of collecting and recreating some old Ukrainian embroidered shirts (Vyshyvankas). I had previously cut out all the necessary pieces for a shirt and now I have committed to a design. I wanted to create a shirt with an adult cut, but mimicking the design on the shirt my paternal grandma Mariya had when she was 10 years old. It is a very simple design, but I think it is only fair that I pay tribute to her in my first shirt.

Grandma Mariya, with her father Yakiv, and her grandpa Petrakiy (with the crazy cool mustache).

My current collection, with first from the left being made by me, and the last made by grandma Mariya.

I worked on it to the point where all the pieces were sewn together, and in June I finished the edges. Currently the only things missing are the cuff and neck buttons - but I have already decided that I want to go back and add full sleeves of embroidery. It will just have to wait for another year… I am hoping to be able to gift it to Grandma.

Then, all of the sudden, I shifted gears. Say thanks to Kristin - her getting into block printing and showing off the fun times she was having at Friendsdrawing (occasional Sunday gathering of me and my friends where we make art with no pressure of accomplishing anything really) finally gave me a push to try it too. My fascination with Ukrainian embroidery just started to gain momentum - and I worked on making a series of linocut cards depicting different symbols and narratives, especially from a type of traditional ritual runner, called rushnyk.

The reason I am so unreasonably obsessed with them is because they were so common in Ukrainian households (of yore, unfortunately rarely so in modern days - but I am determined to fix it), that it was always safe to assume there was someone in the family who was proficient in the craft - and usually it was multiple people. Some patterns were shared from one person who received a local newspaper, or copied from piece to piece, but many were as original as they come. The ritual nature of these runners provided much context to be put into the embroidery. From wishes of prosperity, to god’s protection, to love and even silly anecdotes, etc etc. Of course many are also purely decorative, as it is very much in our nature to find aesthetic pleasure in the world and bring it into our home. But everyone did it their own way - making art their daily life, not a luxurious commodity.

The following are vintage hand-embroidered runners I have been collecting - I mention them later in more detail.

 
 

My maternal Grandma Nina told me stories of how in the winter, her dad and mom would embroider rushnyky, ornate pillowcases and bed skirts by candlelight. My great grandpa was a tractor engineer, so to learn that he was also a skilled needlepoint craftsman gave me a warm feeling of really belonging to the family I was born into. I also learned that grandma Mariya’s father was a highly skilled leatherworker, and many of my direct ancestors were weavers. That is something I am very excited to possibly explore in the future. In June I was invited to a very special tour of the Eiteljorg Museum and enjoyed a collection of native weaved garments and stunning beadwork for some inspiration.

 

Grandma Nina’s father (on the left)

But back to embroidery and linocuts. By May I made about 50 printed cards, and a limited edition of larger prints. I participated in a Ukrainian Society of Indiana auction that benefited a children’s cancer hospital in Ukraine, where I also sold a few of my 2022 paintings.

Shoutout to Olivia for agreeing to dress up with me in my Ukrainian garments/jewelry and looking like a beautiful, culturally ambiguous, goddess. If this image can’t start world peace - nothing will.

This was my first time styling a traditional Ukrainian attire for an event, and I made the skirt completely the day prior to the event.

I also completed a painting for the Watercolor Society of Indiana juried show, but it did not get in. As everyone knows, I love painting my family and my siblings as they grow up. Despite me being thousands of miles away - I talk to them almost every single day, but a touch is a touch, and presence is presence. Painting them is therapeutic. It helps me feel like I am growing with them and that I am not forgetting their features. And it makes me happy recognizing how similar we all look.



In June, in an effort to unload some of the artwork I have made in the past two years - I sold some things for really cheap at an Annual Woodruff Flea Market - and had some success, despite selling the pieces dirt cheap. The linocut cards all sold very well at their original price, which made me very happy.

That same month I returned to actual embroidery - determined to learn from professionals. I purchased a few detailed courses on a couple embroidery techniques and started grinding with an audiobook in my headphones. Three audiobooks later, in September, this replica of an old runner emerged.

Prekrasa Studio has absolutely amazing courses in Ukrainian to take.

In July I was invited to give 2 lectures on Ukraine and an art lesson to middle schoolers at the Global Village. I thought that was worth mentioning.

For the rest of the summer I immersed myself in embroidering and learning about it. I have amassed a great collection of vintage runners that I have been slowly shipping to my parents’ house, to then ship to myself in bulk. I have been hoarding literature, digitally and physically, on the topic, I have been watching lessons, listening to lectures on the history of Ukrainian crafts, etc. I also picked up crocheting - as it is a big part of adding the flare to the runners at their ends (see images above). I made a crocheted apron that my mom promptly took for my sister without me wearing it a single time.

 

In October I was in Ukraine for the entire month. I always draw a lot of inspiration from my country for the following year. I had great plans on doing some more research when I was in Kyiv, but since I got sick with a respiratory infection for the entirety of the trip - my activities were limited. Nevertheless, I had the pleasure of visiting a small art gallery and getting a curated tour. My friends and I were lucky to also attend a retrospective of Ukrainian animation, presented by the Dovzhenko Center. That was as much as I could force myself into while being exhausted.

My grandmas and I did some digging for old artifacts that survived the soviet onion times. We found old graves from a cemetery that predated soviet occupation. We visited Mariya’s sister-in-law, who also embroidered quite a lot, and I purchased one of her old pieces that she made in the 1960s. I took pictures of the handmade items around her house - it was my favorite place to go caroling on Christmas when I was a kid, as her house was always so warm and pretty. There is not a lot that survived. Even my memories of Grandma Mariya’s house are full of bright flowers on the rugs that hung on the walls. Almost none of it survived.

The trip in general was not something I wasn’t prepared for. War is hard on everyone, but it is the hardest on people in Ukraine and people whose friends and family are defending them on the frontlines. I got a much needed perspective on what exactly I could do from afar, and what I want to say in my art practice.


Once I came back I immediately started working on a new body of work consisting of embroidery. This has been my main focus for the past two months. It is much more tedious and time-consuming than painting, but nothing ever felt so rewarding than to feel reconnected with my family and my country in this new, material way. Currently this is something I am working on the most and I am nervous to share the results in a few months at an exhibit in Indianapolis I will be a part of.



In November I also participated in a group show at Storage Space with one single painting. Coming back to Indy, after feeling the exasperation of my Ukrainian friends from being misunderstood, dismissed and intentionally misinterpreted on the global arena, I had a bit of a cathartic moment putting up a contextless painting that said in Ukrainian “Some dumbass is about to ask: is this in russian?”.


This was my way of saying that the world sees Ukraine through the lens of russia, as a colony is seen through the lens of an empire. Despite the Cyryllic alphabet being created in Bulgaria, people tend to fall into assumptions that it comes from russia. This is a small example in a great pool of russian cultural propaganda that makes people romanticize russia without admitting that every aspect of their culture is responsible for the success of their bloody imperial expansion. Ukraine is dismissed the same way other countries with a colonial past are: stupid, unintelligent beggars, peasants who had no culture of their own, who needed a savior to civilize them. I am sure this sounds familiar to you.

Ukrainians have had a hard 32 years building up a country from shambles, on top of the always lingering russian influence, yet still persevering in becoming an independent nation, and becoming better day by day. That is something truly inspiring to witness and be a part of.

In the year 2024 I am hoping to deepen that connection, and continue thinking out loud through my art about the experience of decolonization.

It has been an all-over-the-place year for me - but with an overarching theme. Which tracks. I still sometimes have the feeling that it would be easier to find one practice that will define my art, and reproduce it in various shapes and forms. But I have almost come to terms that it just might not be me, and the reason that I make is because I can’t not make, which dictates the media. You can expect more of that in the next year for sure.

Thank you for reading until the very end!