Dacha ✿ Stories from Eastern Europe

Garden of Stories

Grace Pundyk, heirloom #7, 2021, vintage Australiana linen tea towels, silk cocoons, linen thread, silk organza thread, beeswax, cornstarch, wire, 20cm d x 150cm

The dacha is a country house found across Eastern Europe where families can enjoy being close to nature.

On this poor, indigent ground
I shall sow flowers of flowing colours;
I shall sow flower even amidst the frost,
And water them with my bitter tears.

Lesia Ukrainka Contra spem spero

Lehenda: Many hands make feet fly - Natalia Moravski takes us behind the scenes in a Ukrainian dance company, where a team of volunteers make complex costumes that sometimes envelop the whole stage.
Upside-down: The land is the limit to the sky  - Salome Katamadze records her residency at the Domaine de Boisbuchet working with landscape to bridge sky and land.
Vginmary: A Madonna of street art - Emma Cieslik documents Vginmary's project to re-sacralise the vulva in Poland's religious iconography.
Hugs and Bugs: Everything is on the street - In response to the horror of war in her Ukrainian birthplace, Sveta Dorosheva immersed herself in the absurdist theatre of her Tel Aviv neighbourhood.
The sense of clay in the Anthropocene - Attracted by its smell and feel, Yuliya Makliuk has taken up clay as a cause for good in the world.
The Krolevets towel: A new focus on Urkainian weaving - Anna Kovbasiuk reflects on her Ukrainian roots and the key role of weaving in the continuing struggle for identity.
Roksana Makieva ✿ A vyshyvanka for the spirit of peace in wartime - Our October laurel goes to a Ukrainian embroiderer who sustains tradition despite the war around her.
A spoon a day - Ana Sincu reflects on how making spoons helps her form a deep connection to the trees she loves.
The black gem of Ukraine: Forging fragility in Donetsk - We share a poem from Carbon: Song of Crafts by Svetlana Lavochkina that reflects the place of blacksmithing at the heart of Donetsk, Ukraine.
Sveta Dorosheva ✿ Two worlds, one brush - Our October laurel, Ukrainian-born illustrator Sveta Dorosheva, captures the collision of traditional and modern worlds in Shanghai.
Veronica Gritsenko ✿ A lacquer journey from Ukraine to Myanmar - Susanna Pang follows the journey of Veronica Gritsenko who found a way of fusing Ukrainian folk scenes with Myanmar lacquer craft.
Heirloom: a celebration of herstories 🇵🇱 - Grace Pundyk re-creates a traditional Polish wianek headdress to sustain a matrilineal thread across generations and continents.
Polina Matveeva ✿ The girl with a kitten (after da Vinci) - Our October Laurel comes from the town of Gzhel, about an hour's drive from Moscow. Polina Matveeva's work transforms an iconic Renaissance painting into contemporary ceramics.
Thanks giving in Australia: Eva Heiky Olga Abbinga’s Rajah Quilt - Kevin Murray describes a project that makes connections across time to the beginning of settlement and space with Aboriginal and craft guild collaborations

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