Around 6 weeks ago, before the war came to Europe and to my home city, I planned a trip to Paris to enjoy impressionists’ works at d’Orsay, the sunny weather (it was a snow storm when I left Denmark) and just wander around Paris’ streets. The trip was great and showed how much one can misses travelling.
”A walk around Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty and the point of life”. Thomas Jefferson
I also wanted to meet some creative locals, so I contacted Mai, who makes jewelry. I found her profile just by searching designers in the area and was amused by the elegance, style and the amount of work she puts in her products. Mai couldn’t meet with me on that particular weekend, but we agreed to talk online with her and her business partner.
At the moment, together with ”Creative women’s club Aarhus”, I organize an art exhibition with the theme ”WALKING” at the local library Dokk1, as part of working on UN’s goals of sustainable development.
Kari Gale
As the topic can have various angles, I wanted to interview people, who hiked long distances and hear their expiriences.
So today I present you an artist and illustrator (with Danish roots😆) Kari Gale from Portland, USA.
Camino de Santiago
Kari took some hiking trips in her area, but never thought seriously about walking long distances. In 2013 she divorced her husband after 10 years of marriage. Kari felt the need to change her surroundings and after talks with her sister they decided to take a pilgrimage walk to Santiago de Compostela.
Today I am happy to present my first guest in 2022, Cecilie, one of the newest participant of the exhibitions at ”Creative women’s club Aarhus”.
Participation at the exhibitions
Cecilie participated at our exhibition at Aarhus Arab Film Festival in 2021, her painting was inspired by a trip to Marrakesh, where she was completely captivated by the beautiful vaults all over the city. ”These magnificent shapes and colors are infinite, representing perspectives, possibilities and inspiration”.
During this week in Aarhus a light festival takes place. It is called ”Aarhus Festuge” in Danish and this year’s topic is ”In it together”. It is magical to walk in the dark in the streets and experience a silence light disco near City hall, hear chilling Turkish music at the Turkish tent near Aros and enjoy in silence huge floating butterflies at the harbor near the public library Dokk1. The art work ”Butterfly effect” by Masamichi Shimada brings piece and gratitude for the nature’s beauty.
Such cozy events inspire not only me, but other expats in Denmark.
In today’s post I am happy to present a jewelry designer Elizaveta Sørensen.
I started to follow her instagram during lockdowns and the jewelries’ brightness really brought a bit of sunshine to my day.
Elizaveta lives also in Denmark, 300 km from Aarhus, in a Danish capital Copenhagen.
During lock downs at ”Creative women’s club Aarhus” I started to organize online weekly art challenges with different topics, mostly inspired after the interviews with my blog’s guests.
It got me occupied and gave motivation to paint more.
When I knew I would travel to Porto, I wanted to get in touch with the artistic life in the city.
I learned about watercolor workshop at Hugo do Lago’s art gallery.
It looked like a fun activity, and I booked a place.
In this post I would like to share experience with you.
Because of known events in the world, my husband and I didn’t travel for 2 years, but this year it looks more optimistic with vaccination in Europe, so we decided to take a chance and book a trip to Porto.
It was an unusual experience to have face masks all the time, but we manage to have some good times in Porto.
I really enjoyed amazing views on the city and the felling of the breeze from the river Douro, while listening to live concerts at the cafes and my favorite song ”Knocking on heavens door”, with the seaguls as back singers. I also took a nice watercolor workshop, that I will describe in my next post.
But one of the back sides of tourism is – garbage. Unfortunately some tourists are not responsible and garbage is floating in the rivers and seas, damages wild life.
Surely you saw awful images from garbage islands in the oceans.
Luckily there are conscious people who try their best to help to fight this problem.
According to safety4sea”in 2017, about a total of 800,000 volunteers in more that 100 countries gathered and collectively removed more than 20 million pieces of trash from beaches and waterways worldwide”.
At a local café on the square on Largo de Alberto Pimentel street I met such volunteers, Marta Simoncini and her friends. We shared some beers and Sangria, and talk about their beach clean ups.
I am so thrilled to present you my new guest Mazen Haj Kassem, a film director and actor, who lives in Denmark.
Mazen is an organizer of ”Syrian Film Festival”, ”International Women’s Film Festival – Dk”, ”Arab Women Film Festival”, ”Aarhus Arab Film Festival” and ”Arabiske Film Fest” in Denmark.
It’s been awhile since I met my blog guests ”offline”, so it was extra lovely to drink some ice coffee with Mazen in a café in Aarhus and hear his story.
Life in Syria
Mazen experienced many tragic events in his life, and it is amazing he remains a person with a big smile on his face, who follows his dreams.
During his teenage years Mazen moved a lot with his family, he was born in Syria, and they lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. When he was 15 years old, they had to move back to Syria.
They moved to Latakia, an ancient city, known from the Roman times, situated just a bit more than 100 km from Cyprus, the city has a hot – summer Mediterranean climate and still is a popular vacation destination for locals.
In the city Mazen fell in love with the movies, specially with the moment when the scene starts and all eyes are on the screen, people are quiet for 90 minutes till the movie credits starts. Mazen dreamed to be part of the movie world.
To achieve this dream he started to go to theater school, and when he was 17 years old he even started to sneak out of the apartment at 4 a.m. to take a bus to drive 348 km to Damascus and to take part in auditions. He came back the same day, so the mother wouldn’t be suspicious.
Later he started to work as a voice actor, for the job he even needed to learn to speak Damascus accent.
In 2013 Mazen got his first major role in a series, but then.. the war started.
Mazen was forced to move, first 10 months he stayed at the refuge center in Lebanon, after he took to Turkey. There with other 100 people they took risky 6 – days boat trip to Italy, where they were met by police and Red Cross.
Mazen managed to travel to Denmark, since he lived here for 5 years.
Today I am happy to present an interview with a unique tapestry artist from Ukraine Olha Pilyuhina.
History of the tapestry in Europe and Ukraine
I love visiting European castles. Last year I could visit Kronborg, Broholm and Glucksburg castles. For me it is the way to dive into the history and to feel connected with people from the past.
”Freedom”
One of the things that fascinates me are the huge tapestries, covering castles walls.
Actually this kind of handmade has a long history in Europe. ”Tapestry art is one of the oldest forms of woven textile crafts, traditionally created on a vertical loom.”
From middle ages they used tapestries to cover walls in castles and churches, so it would be warmer in the winters. It had also decorative meaning, picturing scenes from religious and royals lives.
It was also easier to transport tapestries from one place or another, compared to huge paintings.
Tapestries were woven of such fabrics, as wool, silk, cotton, linen and acrylic.
In France thanks to the family of manufactures des Gobelins tapestries became a trade mark. The family founded their business in 15th century in Paris and because of the great quality of the products they were official suppliers of tapestries to the royal court.
”Grove”
They made tapestries in Ukraine for many centuries (in Slavic mythology there was even a Goddess Mokosh, who woven a soul’s path on Earth). They were also used for practical reasons, and from 18th century they became more popular and decorative thanks to the influence from the West Europe. Tapestries showed motives in barocco, rococo and classical styles. They pictures scenes with flowers, fruits and vegetables.
Some examples of Ukrainian tapestry art can be see in Lviv at the Museum of ethnography and art crafts.
During the times of Soviet Union there was a boom in the tapestry art. There were created many small art workshops to make the products with collaboration with the famous Ukrainian artists at that time, as Mihajlo Deregus, Vasyl Kasiian, Anatol Petrytsky, Dimitri Chavikin etc.
After Soviet Union’s collapse there was some recession of the tapestry art.
Tapestry artist from Ukraine
Olha Pilyuhina is one of the Ukrainian artists who develops the tapestry art in the country.
Olha is a member of National Society of Artists, owner of the President’s grant for young artists in 2012- 2015, participant of more than 300 art exhibitions, inclusive 17 personal owns.
Got special awards from the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture (2007, 2012, 2013) for significant contribution in the formation of spiritual values, education of younger generation and high professionalism.
Olha exhibited not only in Ukraine (at the national museums, at the Verkhovna Rada, at the National Bank of Ukraine) but in such countries as Hungary, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Russia.
I feel blessed to speak with amazing people during my ”corona talks” project. Many of my guests’ stories are inspiring and educating, but some of them are just heartbreaking and soul touching, like hearing about bush fires in Australia or animal protection in Russia.
Today I am going to present you an interview with Marta Levchenko, whom I discovered thanks to my previous guest, she is the president of non – profitable organization ”Future of Ukraine”, founder of the children’s festival ”Literature Future” and founder of a charity organization ”CITY OF GOODNESS”.
Our main topic of the conversation were the activities and the purpose of the ”City of Goodness”.
For me it was quite painful to hear many tragic stories, and for Marta and her colleagues it is everyday job and I needed some time to write this post.
At the same time it is just great there are such wonderful people who can bring hope in the darkness of life and are willing to help others in need.
Volunteering
Marta was an active volunteer for many years, from 2009 she was involved in the work of ”Future of Ukraine”, whose main goal is to fight against poverty in Ukraine and helping children from poor or problematic families.
In 2016 the first house of ”Mother’s dream” was open, later it involved into the building of the shelter ”City of Goodness” in Chernivtsi. There are very few women’s shelters in Ukraine.
The shelter helps women,
*who suffered from home violence
*who are homeless with children
*who are close to lose parent’s right due to lack of means to support their children
*who have problems with documents and due to this reason cannot find job
*old women, who suffered from home abuse or are homeless.
The land for the ”City of Goodness” was a gift from a private person and Marta with other volunteers found means from private sponsors to finance the center.
At the moment they helped more than 260 women and 800 children.
The volunteers fight for the children’s rights for dignity, education, medical care and development. And most important for the right to have a family.
According to Marta, there is nothing more heartbreaking, than seeing a child taking away with force from a mother.
The volunteers also help poor people in the villages, so the children wouldn’t end in orphanages. It is not enough to come with the gifts, it is also important help with basic and practical things, like to wire electricity to the houses.
For Marta it is important to have dialogs with mothers. Once she helped a young mother to keep her infant child. Social services threatened to take the child, as the mother didn’t feed it every 2 hours. The mother claimed she did, when she ate herself. As Marta talked with the woman, it appeared, that she didn’t understand the time on the clock. Many women, who the ”City of Goodness” helps are from orphanages, and they often lack basic everyday knowledge. Marta helped this woman, and the child stayed with the mother. →→→
Today I want to present another edition of ”Corona talks”, with an Ukrainian artist and an art teacher Victoria from ”Art Dreams”.
Actually it was the first time I met offline during corona pandemic for an interview.
It was quite a spontaneous meeting.
Due to family matters I needed to travel from Denmark to my home town in Ukraine.
I was walking around and saw an ad for an art school. Out of curiosity I checked the instagram page and there were some colorful and tasty works of the young artists.
I managed to arrange meeting with the school’s founder Victoria, who herself is an artist.
Because of quarantine in Ukraine we were sitting outside and drank delicious coffee while we chatted. It doesn’t compare by sitting at the café, but the weather was nice and sunny, so one couldn’t wish for more these days.
elille 