Art Talk: Live from Ukraine
ADMISSION: Free
To attend in person, no registration needed
To join via Zoom, register here to receive the link
LOCATION:
In person at BMAC (10 Vernon Street, Brattleboro VT 05301)ACCESSIBILITY QUESTIONS?
Email office@brattleboromuseum.org or call 802-257-0124 x101
Folk art curator and ethnographer Sophia Sushailo leads a hybrid online and in-person panel discussion with several Ukrainian artists about the exhibition Contemporary Ukrainian Folk Art: The Matrix of Resilience. Participants are encouraged to join Sushailo beforehand, at 1:30 p.m., for a tour of the exhibition. During the panel discussion, which begins at 2:30 p.m., Sushailo will be joined via Zoom by Ukrainian artists Tetyana Konoval, Hanna Oliynyk, and Rustem Skybin.
Sophia Sushailo grew up in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine, which is renowned for the arts and culture of the Hutsuls, ethnic mountain highlanders. She is a passionate advocate for folk art and artists. Sushailo lives in Claremont, New Hampshire, and has curated and designed cultural and educational exhibitions and workshops throughout New England.
Tetyana Konoval, a pysanka egg artist, was born in Donetsk and lived in Lugansk in eastern Ukraine most of her adult life. She was forced to leave her home in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and eastern Ukrainian territories. She settled in Kyiv, where she continues to create pysanka art. Konoval has been teaching pysanky to others, especially children, all her life. She established a pysanka school/group in Lugansk, the first one of its kind in eastern Ukraine. Konoval pioneered new styles and techniques in pysanky creations, held multiple exhibits, and her works are part of a permanent collection of the Ukrainian Pysanka Museum. Her pysanky eggs were featured on stamps issued by the Ukrainian Post Office in 2023. Konoval has published several books on pysanka egg making and founded an online educational channel.
Hanna Oliynyk is a Petrykivka painting artist from the Dnipro region in central Ukraine. Oliynyk’s motherland is the birthplace of the centuries-old Petrykivka painting style, which employs the “kotyachka” brush—made from cat fur—to enable the finest intricate strokes. Oliynyk knew that she wanted to be a folk artist from an early age. She is also a folk art teacher and volunteer. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Oliynyk and her family have experienced ongoing air-bomb alarms and aerial shelling, due to their proximity to occupied territories. In contrast to the reality currently surrounding her, she continues to create the vibrant and joyful future that she sees, proclaiming, “Petrykivka art is my life.”
Rustem Skybin, a Crimean-Tatar artist, was born in exile in Uzbekistan, because his family, along with other ethnic Crimean Tatars, was deported by Soviet authorities in the 1940s. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Skybin returned to his homeland, where he founded the art studio and school “El Cheber,” studied with recognized masters and historians, and created his signature style of polychrome glazed ceramics. He revived a plethora of cultural symbols and meanings and pioneered a new ceramic technique in Crimean art, “Quru Isar” (dry border). Skybin’s works became an integral part of the Bakhchysarai Museum collection in Crimea, now under Russian control. When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Skybin fled to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. He is an international advocate and volunteer focusing on preserving Crimean-Tatar cultural identity.
