(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!