Ambassadors of Folk Exhibition Gallery
Date2010-2011
Mediumborn digital video - MTS file
DimensionsDuration: 55 Seconds
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.274.2
DescriptionVideo showing the exhibition, "Ambassadors of Folk: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists." The video begins with an overview of the exhibit gallery, then close-ups of objects in the exhibit made by Paul Luniw, Marek Czarnecki, and Eldrid Arntzen.
NotesSubject Note: "Ambassadors of Folk: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists" was an exhibit presented at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, Connecticut, from June 10 through October 2010.Curated by the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program, the exhibit showcased the artistry of Connecticut folk and traditional artists who have achieved recognition on a national or international scale. The exhibit brought to wider attention the mastery of local artists who are highly respected exemplars of ethnic traditions within their communities. The eight visual artists and two performers featured represent a wide variety of artistic genres and ethnicities and share a high degree of technical skill and sophistication. The artists’ accomplishments represent entire lives spent serving their communities through cultural production.
Artists included Aldona Saimininkas, East Hartford; Romulo Chanduvi, East Hartford; Jampa Tsondue, Old Saybrook; Eldrid Arntzen, Watertown; Paul Luniw, Terryville; Valentine and Aili Galasyn, Canterbury; Shengzhu Chen Bernardin, Torrington; Marek Czarnecki, Meriden; performers Negrura Peruana, East Hartford and Daniel Boucher, Bristol.
Art forms exhibited drew from roots in Lithuania, Peru, Tibet, Norway, Ukraine, Finland, China, and Eastern Europe, but were all made and used here in Connecticut and beyond. One unifying characteristic is that these pieces have been created for use in a community’s traditional practices. For example, the Buddhist thangka paintings and the Byzantine Christian icons encourage active veneration, they serve a purpose beyond being paintings to be viewed. Other forms on display include decorative containers, cloth, commemorative pictures and rugs, wood carvings, and important seasonal decorations such as two types of dyed and etched Easter eggs. Performance traditions originate from African Peru and Québec. All of the art forms are beloved in the artists’ communities in Connecticut, where they serve as important expressions of cultural identity and heritage.
This exhibit celebrated the twenty years that the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program has worked with these and other remarkable traditional artists and their communities across the state.
Biographical Note: Master pysanky artist Paul Luniw was born in Halifax, England in 1951 to a Ukrainian immigrant family. He learned to “write” Ukrainian pysanky, decorative and symbolic Easter eggs, from his mother as well as friends and relatives from the Ukrainian community and in Ukrainian school. The Ukrainian art form of pysanky takes its name from the verb pysaty, to write, reflecting the way that lines of decoration are inscribed in beeswax on a white unblemished egg, dipped into dyes several times (once for every color), and then revealed by melting the wax. Pysanky is a beloved Easter tradition in Eastern European Catholic and Orthodox communities. Father Paul moved to Connecticut in 1994 and currently serves as parish priest at St. Michael’s Ukrainian Church in Terryville.
Pysanky require patience, concentration, and precision; for Father Paul, the process of designing and writing eggs becomes like a prayer, a meditation, and a service to the world. His pysanky designs are based on the traditional ones that go back hundreds if not thousands of years and represent the natural elements of the universe, such as the moon and sun, stars, flowers, and animals. With the advent of Christianity in Ukraine in 988, symbols such as fish, churches, and crosses blended in with the pagan designs. Ukrainian embroidery has many similar designs. Colors play a symbolic role as well, with red signaling happiness and love, yellow as prosperity and fertility, green promoting abundance, and blue for health. Father Paul works with several types of egg, including ostrich, rhea, duck, goose, quail, chicken, and finch.
People from Eastern European communities as well as others commission eggs, and Father Paul also gives pysanky as gifts, including a series of twelve eggs symbolizing the twelve apostles presented to Pope John Paul II in Rome while studying there. He has given demonstrations in England, in Rome to seminaries and ecclesiastical institutions, and in the United States to church groups such as Our Lady of Czechostowa in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, and at events such as the Old Deerfield Museum Eastern European Festival. Father Paul demonstrated at the Lowell Folklife Festival in 2006. During a two-year apprenticeship in 2004-2006, Father Paul Luniw taught Carol Kostecki advanced techniques of Ukrainian egg decoration including more difficult ways of dividing the egg for designs, figurative designs (especially icons), etching designs, new color schemes, and varnishing techniques.
Father Paul’s eggs have been collected and exhibited in the Ukrainian Museums in London and Manchester, England; in Rome at the Holy See, St. Sofia’s, St. Sergus and Bachus, and at St. Josaphat’s Seminary; and in the U.S. in Philadelphia at jewelry shops and churches. He has been featured on the BBC program Blue Peter, and WTNH/Channel 8 News in Hartford twice. An hour-long program was broadcast about his pysanky by Nutmeg Television in 2005. In 2008, Father Paul won a prestigious Fund For Folk Culture Individual Artist Fellowship. Father Paul was awarded a Connecticut Office of the Arts Folk Arts Fellowship in 2015.
Biographical Note: Marek Czarnecki began writing icons in 1990 for his home parish of St. Stanislaus Kostka in Bristol, Connecticut. It was appropriate for this first generation Polish-American that his first icon would be of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the Black Madonna of Poland. Leaving behind a contemporary art education, the icon became his sole interest as an artist. Iconography is a fundamental liturgical art form that provides authentic, meaningful and dignified images which exemplify the larger consciousness of the Christian Church. Icons carry a patrimony of both theology and art, conveying essential dogmatic and biographical information and embodying the presence of the holy ones depicted.
After studying with several iconography teachers, Marek began a life-long apprenticeship with master iconographer Ksenia Pokrovskaya in 1999 until her passing in 2013. He has translated her teachings into an English language technical manual for iconographers, and taught workshops with her at several national sites, including St. Tikhon's Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania. Following established tradition, Marek’s icons are made with natural materials; the foundation is linen glued to a wood panel and primed with a marble-based gesso. Painted with egg tempera mixed with natural earth and mineral pigments, the halos and backgrounds are gilded with 22 karat gold. The icon is then varnished with copal resin.
Marek’s icons can be found in in the homes and chapels of individuals, as well as churches across the country, including the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield, Illinois, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, St. Thomas More Chapel at Yale University, and Sean Cardinal O'Malley. His icon of "Christ the Eternal High Priest", originally written for a seminary chapel, gained him international attention when it was chosen by the United States Council of Catholic Bishops as the image to represent "The Year of the Priest". This icon was widely distributed; more than a million copies were printed, reproduced and used in dioceses as distant as London, Stockholm, Singapore, and Sydney. Marek is also a skilled restoration artist, working with statues from churches across the country, and he creates ornaments and installations to mark festivals and holy seasons in his parish church of St. Stanislaus in Bristol, Connecticut.
Marek has helped edit the book, "Hidden and Triumphant: The Struggle to Save Russian Iconography in Twentieth Century Russia" (Paraclete Press, 2010). He continues to teach and write icons out of his studio in Meriden, Connecticut. He has won a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Painting Fellowship in 1996 and 2004, the 1998 American Council for Polish Culture Award, the 2006 Polish American Historical Association Outstanding Achievement Award, and a Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Grant to teach an advanced student. He continues to teach many students in his Meriden studio. Articles on his work have appeared in the Hartford Courant, St. Anthony Messenger, Catholic Digest, Our Sunday Visitor, and New York Times.
Biographical Note: Eldrid Arntzen was born in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn in 1935, which had a Norwegian immigrant population of around 50,000. She has been painting various styles of rosemaling, decorative painting on wood, since the age of ten, studying with rosemaling masters in Norway and the United States. Her work has received recognition from members of the Norwegian-American community by being chosen as the Gold Medal winner in 1987 and the People’s Choice Award in 2003 at Vesterheim, the Norwegian-American museum in Decorah, Iowa. In April 2004, Eldrid was an invited panelist and teacher for the first international symposium on rosemaling, organized by Vesterheim. This significant honor situates her among the leaders of this folk art form such as Nils Ellingsgard and Sigmund Aarseth from Norway.
Eldrid has traveled all over the country to demonstrate and teach rosemaling. In addition to her classes at Vesterheim's Handverkskole, she was a regular summer teacher at Fletcher Farm School in Vermont and Land of the Vikings in Pennsylvania. She has taught American rosemaling in Norway and conducted workshops for the Sons of Norway in Fairbanks, Alaska. As a master traditional artist in the Institute for Community Research's Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, Eldrid taught rosemaling design to three apprentices from Massachusetts and one from Connecticut. Eldrid’s house is full of boxes, chairs, bowls, cabinets, trays, and containers that she has painted for her family to use.
Rosemaling on wood furniture, household objects, and even walls flourished in rural Norway during the mid-17th to the mid-19th centuries and was transplanted to America by immigrants. There are numerous styles within rosemaling, requiring different designs, colors, and brush techniques. As well as the Valdres style, Eldrid paints styles including Hallingdal, Gudbrandsdal, Vest Agder, Aust Agder, and her favorite, the asymmetrical Telemark style which itself has several variants. A hallmark of Eldrid's skill is that she is one of only a few in the United States who are excellent painters of rosemaling styles from so many districts.
In 1996, her paintings were selected for an exhibition "Norwegian Folk Art: Migration of a Tradition" that traveled throughout the U.S. and Norway. She was one of three American painters to participate in the 2004 international symposium, The Art of Rosemaling: Tradition Meets the Creative Mind. In 2005, Eldrid was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) with its National Heritage Fellowship Award, the nation's highest honor in traditional arts. NEA bestows this award to only twelve artists nationwide each year, chosen for their artistic excellence, cultural authenticity, and contributions to their communities.
Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for these artists
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
Jampa Tsondue
2018 March 10