September 2011

 MISSOURI: Sarah Williams

It is my belief that art should originate through a painter’s personal experiences in her home environment. This body of work is closely focused on my roots in the rural American Midwest. Being raised in a small town and then moving to an urban setting has made me aware of the seemingly mundane, anonymous scenes existing on the periphery that tend to be ignored.

Strong emotions can be prompted by place. Over time, ways of life shape and define the people and the spaces in which they live. I am drawn to areas and structures that show character acquired from the history and memory of the people that formed that environment. I like the idea of bringing paintings of small town life to the contemporary art scene in urban settings. I hope my work allows people to think about where they come from and take pride in the collective identity of their home region.

BLOOMINGTON, IN: Betsy Stirratt

The colors in my paintings are drawn from natural things–plants in my garden, animals in the neighborhood, the sky, a friend’s eye color–and not natural things–clothing of people close to me, a significant object or artifact from an experience. These colors can depict a place more accurately than a photograph because they hold the essence of a place, an exact description of my home and my community.

LEHEDZYNE, UKRAINE: Naomi Uman, Agitsa Bo-Gi, Bozena Hrycyna

I came here a few years ago to make a film or two. I never expected that I would fall in love with life in a small Ukrainian village. The preponderance and variety of light blue used to adorn houses in this part of Ukraine affected me deeply. Each year, everyone repaints their home with whitewash, a paint made from limestone, inexpensive because it is found locally in the soil. Called “vapno” in Ukrainian, whitewash (which is also anti-bacterial) can be altered with a cheap and widely available blue powder, creating light blue paint. For many years white and light blue were the only colors of paint available here in a place that modernity eschews. The abundance of light blue somehow affected me, and made me want to play with color myself.

The house that I purchased (with friends from the USA) in the village is intended to be an artists’ residency, Echo Luna, a place that invites and attracts creative people to come and appreciate village life, as well as enriching the lives of villagers by making music, showing films, teaching, talking, making projects and sharing ideas. “Luna” in Ukrainian language means “echo.” Our hope is that these cultural interactions will resound and return to enrich village life and help guarantee that, despite the flight of young people to the cities in search of jobs and modernity, village life and customs will endure.

These three paintings grow organically out of these efforts. A Ukrainian woman, a Canadian woman of Ukrainian descent, and an American woman largely living in Ukraine, we all worked together on these paintings, playing, talking and exchanging ideas as we sat together all day concentrating and surprising one another. And like whitewash, rubbing off on each other. –Naomi Uman

Naomi’s house in the village of Lehedzyne is a place that is full of peace, simplicity and the quiet joy of being. There my soul gains the strength to recover. Life in a Ukrainian village is simple and unhurried – it is a time capsule,  and Naomi’s personality is very positive and true (both of which are rarely seen manifested in one person, particularly in Ukraine)– this is the content of this place and the feeling that it creates. Although I am a professional artist, I do not always enjoy painting, but in this place I really like to draw because you do not feel any pressure– socially (economic classes and prestige rest far away from the city) or professionally (no need to answer to aesthetic, intellectual criteria). These small paintings were made just for the sake of playing together, creativity, and communication, and we did not worry about the results. I must say that it was a pleasant surprise for me that we, Naomi (who usually works in quite different styles) and Bozena (whom I barely knew) and I, could do something together that we all three enjoyed. –Agitsa Bo-Gi

As a Canadian of Ukrainian descent, I “returned” to Ukraine- my ancestral homeland, as an adult. I came pulled by the strong psychological ties to that place that had been nurtured by my diaspora community.  Visiting Ukraine and eventually living there brought me into direct contact with living folk traditions that I had always observed through the distorted lens of displacement.  I came seeking a more direct experience of folk culture and an immersion into the world that gave birth to the motifs and patterns I have grown to love in Slavic folk art. Although I was born and raised in a very different land I feel my spirit and my imagination is fed by the physical and cultural space of the Ukrainian village, the quintessential Ukrainian place. In painting, I seek to work within the traditional style and emulate the liveliness and beautiful simplicity that is so much a part of village life in Ukraine. –Bozena Hrycyna

Explanation
One person begins the painting, working on the background. We flip a coin to determine to whom we pass our work. The second person then begins to work forward on the painting, being careful not to worry about “ruining,” appropriating, or changing the previous person’s work. Then the last person finishes the painting in any way they like. The only rule is to not be afraid.

Artist Bios:

Sarah Williams grew up in Brookfield, Missouri and currently lives and works in Denton, Texas.  She received her MFA from the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas in Denton and her BFA from William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri.  Her work is exhibited in Dallas, Houston and Galveston, Texas as well as Columbia and St. Joseph, Missouri.  Sarah currently teaches painting and drawing at the University of North Texas and several colleges in the Dallas area.

Betsy Stirratt received her MFA from Indiana University in 1983 and her work has been exhibited in over a hundred solo and group exhibitions, including shows at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, and at White Columns and Art in General in New York. Other venues include the City Gallery at Chastain in Atlanta, the Indiana State Museum and galleries in Houston, Los Angeles and Mexico City among others. She is the recipient of several grants and awards, including a Visual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and awards from the Indiana Arts Commission, Arts Midwest and the American Craft Council. Her work is represented by Packer/Schopf Gallery in Chicago and Ruschman Fine Art in Indianapolis.

Naomi Uman is a filmmaker/visual artist who lives and works in Mexico City and Legedzine, Ukraine and places in between.

Agitsa Bo-Gi was born and lives in Ukraine. She is 37 years old and was educated in the textile arts. She works as a fashion designer and as a painter. She has a family and two children.

Bozena Hrycyna grew up in Thornhill, Ontario. She graduated from York University in Toronto with a BA and BEd. She worked teaching English abroad, first in the Czech Republic and then at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. She has travelled extensively and on her trips she has sought to understand local sustainable practices and folk traditions. She dreams of the village life but lives in the city. She is one of the founding members of Kosa Kolektiv, a folk art collective based in Toronto. They aim to revitalize folk culture in the urban setting. She exhibited her visual piece “this is not a Tymoshenko braid!” as part of the travelling exhibit Organic Streetscape Projekt (2010).