28. Holy Days - Новые Годы

I was thinking what my next page should be about, and just at the right moment Victor sent me this drawing in an e-mail with the subject "Happy New Year!" - today is the Lunar New Year. 

I hope the letters are not real, because if they are, I would need to find out what they say.

Anyway, now I have a little cycle about multi-cultural celebrations in the holiday season. I would have called it New Year's celebrations, if it were not for Hanukah, but I think it still fits this cycle.

"The Year of the Dragon"

"Год Дракона"

Although Victor drew and sent "The Year of the Dragon" recently, he claims that it was not meant for the New Year. Or maybe it was sub-conscious?

"Christmas Tree"

"Елка"

Ironically, in the Soviet Union where the Russians got used to what was called "a New Year tree," people didn't associate it with Christmas at all, because any mentioning of religion was undesirable. The star on the top of the tree was not just a star, but a Soviet red star. In America, Soviet immigrants (including some Jewish families) keep celebrating the New Year's Eve with Christmas trees.

Although neither this not the next drawing has anything to do with it, I'll add that before I moved to America, I didn't even know what Hanukah was. Or, I guess, there may be some connection: even though Hanukah is a happy holiday, there were too much grief in Jewish history, hence - tears... I don't know if that's what Victor meant though.

27. The Challenge - 6.

For a long time I have neglected our game. The challenge continues: I offer Victor "themes" which are usually based on my day's impressions and events or just come up in our conversations. It is just there are always some other ideas for my weekly posts. So here are just a few of his recent responses.  The first one he sent simply because I went to the opera.

"Opera"

"Опера"

It's winter time. And for my class' Geometry project I assigned to construct a snowflake using a compass and a straightedge. So, naturally, my "assignment" for Victor was a snowflake. Of course, he had had one already:

"Snowflake"

"Снежинка"

Since I started talking about school again, I recalled this drawing that Victor sent me awhile ago, when I complained that my students cheated on a test. In Russian, he named it with a title where he merged together two words, something that he does masterfully: one that means "writers" and another that means "to cheat" or "to copy" (if "copywriters" were not a word, I could use it, probably, as an English equivalent, but its meaning is actually different). By the way, the hair and the beards clearly hint to some very famous Russian writers...

"Writers"

"Списатели"

And finally my favorite. I don't remember why, but I offered Victor a theme "Help." It's a pretty wide concept, it can be both abstract and concrete. In any case, I never know how he will interpret my requests, I am used to receive funny responses to very serious topics and vice versa. It is definitely not what I would expect, but, yes, it is about help, and I really like it.

"Help in Nesting"

"Помощь в Гнездовании"

26. Reversed Roles

Sometimes, when I look at Victor's drawings, they group together on their own, for various reasons. Often it's obvious: a common theme, like "Love" or "Fall" or "Angels." Less frequently it's just the timing or the way they were produced, for example, based on our so called "game." Sometimes it's much more random. For example, looking at his "Robot" that he sent recently, I recalled his old drawing "Delicacy" - these two definitely belong next to each other!

"Robot"

"Робот"

"Delicacy"

"Мировой Закусон"

But then I found several more that can fit the same idea, more or less. Actually, the next one was Victor's response when I offered him a theme "conscientiousness."

"Conscientiousness"

"Добросовестность"

"A Sheep and a Shepard"

"Овца и пастух"

I just noticed that in all of these, except the last one, animals are involved. But this is not the only reason the following drawing fits the least: even though we can still see reversed roles, but here we - humans - make this choice.  

"This happens often"

"Так бывает часто"

I am pretty sure that if I look at all of these drawings on another day, with another mood, I would combine them/understand them in some different way. This makes me wonder: what about real (professional) art critics who analyze artists' work? And how about all those people who read/listen to their analyzis of how an "artist wanted to depict in his painting..."? How much of it has anything to do with real intentions of the artist?

25. The Artist Talks About the Arts

For this post I selected a few of Victor's drawings about various Arts and Artists. It kind of continues one of my older posts that was all about Music. All these works are pretty old, I remember them from the 1990's. I am pretty sure he has many new ones, so I just need to nag him about sending me some. But let's start here.

"An Artist"

"Художник" 



"From Tragic to Comical"

 "От Трагичного до Смешного Один Шаг"

This is my title, Victor may not even like it. But when I come up with an idea for my next post, I don't have patience to wait until I can ask him, and it won't happen soon since he is celebrating his New Year Eve in the Crimea Mountains...

"Jokes"

 "Шутки"

"My Mask Also Needs a Mirror"

"Моей Маске Тоже Нужно Зеркало" 

"A Writer"

"Писатель"

24. Challenge -5: A Weird Dream.

A few days ago I had the weirdest dream: I am a young girl (around 15), and some older woman (of my real age, I guess) kidnapped me and is going to pump out all my blood to rejuvenate herself. I ask her to leave some, but she says that she really needs all of it... I woke up (just in time) being very confused: who was real me in this dream? I know that I was the girl, or at least observed all of this from her position. It would be nice to believe that I can rejuvenate someone! But then I am also nervous that I somehow was that woman who needed rejuvenation...

I told Victor about it, and he sent some of his old drawings: one about dreams in general:

"Hecuba's Dream"

"Сон Гекубы"

...and another one. It was difficult to believe that he didn't draw it just now, based on my dream. It illustrates it amazingly well - not only the dream itself, but my confusion as well. It is kind of scary: sometimes I feel that he had thought and felt and illustrated all  possible shades of all possible emotions!

"Age"

"Возвраст"

23. Ceramics - the End of the First Semester!

I brought my "Pottery Love" home a couple days before Thanksgiving, and there was some dough remaining after we baked the cake. So here is one more implementation of it, although it is definitely not as lasting as clay. The title for it, naturally, is "Dough Love," but in its Russian version, if you insert several letters in the middle of the word, it becomes "Torturous Love," although it doesn't look like one.

"Dough Love"

"МУЧ(итель)НАЯ ЛЮБОВЬ"

Sadly, the mug that was invented by Victor and that I was impatiently waiting to get out of the kiln, didn't come out well, and this semester is over... It's too small and crooked, it is not spiral enough, and the glazing is messed up. And I had to make the bottom to hold it all together, but Victor said it defeats the whole idea... (Definitely not the whole idea, since you still can't pour tea in it.) But I am taking another semester of Ceramics in the Spring (it was a great idea to take two student teachers last year!), and I will try again.

I will conclude my three-part report on the theme with one more of the Victor's drawings that he made recently, I hope, in response to my Ceramics endeavor. Its title literally says "A Goddess firing pots." No, I don't think he means I am the goddess... He refers to the Russian proverb that can be translated like "It does not take gods to make pots." 

"Богиня, обжигающая горшки"

22. Friendships with Animals.

As I receive more and more of Victor's drawings, it’s getting easier to group them in small series by topic. For example, one day he made three drawings named “Friendship with…” But before and after this he also sent a few other “double portraits” that can be easily included in this series.

"Friednship with a Leopard"

"Дружба с Леопардом"

"Friendhip with a Bird"

"Дружба с Птицей"

"Friendship with Snakes"

"Дружба со Змеями"

"Love"

"Любовь"

"Tenderness"

"Слонежность" 

By the way, Victor sent this to me recently when continuing our game I gave him a theme: "Making an elephant out of a fly," which is the  Russian version of the idiom "Making a mountain out of a molehill." He said he didn't find one with a fly, but a mouse is close enough. Just now I thought that the saying has nothing to do with a frienship! Oh well...



"Pythagoras"

"Пифагор"

In the last drawing Victor refers to a legend: when Pythagoras saw how someone beats a dog, he stopped them by saying that the dog has a soul of his friend, because he heard this friend's voice in the dog's barking. I think this qualifies as a frindship too.

21. One Day in the Life of an Angel.

I don't know why, but from time to time Victor draws and sends me various moments from lives of angels (even though "life of an angel" seems to be an oxymoron). I never asked him, remembering how unwilling he usually is about explaining anything about his art. After reading this, hopefully, he will enlighten me...

Even though they were not drawn or sent in this particular order, I can pretty much imagine that all of these drawings are about the same angel and follow - him or her? sometimes it's a he and sometimes it's a she - for a day.

"Angel with a cup of coffee"

"Ангел за чашечкой кофе"

"Angel in subway"

"Ангел в метро"

"Angel running late"

"Опаздывающий ангел"

"Two angels, one with a flute"

"Два ангела, один с флейтой"

"Dreams about flight"

"Мечты о полете"

"Untitled"

"Без слов"

Well, in the end I am not really sure if this is the right order, and if this is the same angel... All I know it is the same artist!

20. Ceramics is addictive!

My first semester of Ceramics class approaches to the end. Almost a half of my projects is inspired by Victor in some way, and at least three are simply implementations of his drawings in clay. Finally, my (or his?) animal tiles have been glazed and fired. I am showing the prototype as well:

It was not easy to make "Pottery Love." I had to start over a few times, before I figured out the best way to do it. The day before glazing I asked Victor what color glaze I should choose. He responded: "Love should not be glazed. It should be raw and ooze blood." Well, I don't completely agree with it. Love can (and should) have a happy color! But also, without glaze it was light pink, and it definitely was not what he had in mind. So I picked a matte glaze, the most resembling raw clay (or raw meat, if he insists).

  

 

I also started making a mug based on one of his drawing. But since I  only go there once a week, it will take three more weeks for it to be bisque-fired, glazed and fired again. I can't wait to post this, but I will add the picture later.  

19. All about lobsters.

A few days ago Victor sent his drawing with a strange name: "Lobster reminiscent of the islands:"

I liked it, although I said I probably would never be able to eat a lobster again. This time I didn't even ask, why such a strange idea, but Victor told me that in the November issue of his favorite magazine "Around the World" he read an article about a French chef Olivier Roellinger who works in a London restaurant. One of his special dishes is called exactly so: "Lobster reminiscent of the islands." Of course, Victor immediately saw this image behind the name.

I recalled one more Victor's lobster, or rather a crawfish, from the 1990's. It's also sad, but in a different way. There is a Russian idiom that literally says "You will know where crawfish spend winter." It has the same meaning as "You will get it in the neck." So this drawing is called "Where crawfish spend winter."

"Где раки зимуют"

18. Challenge -4.

In one of the earlier posts, I told about the challenge that initiated our "game:" almost every day I give Victor a theme - usually just a word inspired by certain events or impressions of that day, and he finds and sends me a drawing that he already has on this topic. Some themes are more and some are less concrete. Sometimes his responses match more perfectly and sometimes less. (I guess, they do match perfectly in his vision, it's just that we - non-artists - cannot always see it...) These are just a few sent for the last two weeks:

I had a cold, and couldn't think about anything except my stuffed nose; I couldn't even talk. When I e-mailed Victor that this is the only theme I could think of, he said it's not interesting, too "down to earth" for him. Still, next day he sent this to me. I felt better right away!

"Common Cold"

"Простуда"

Then there was my son's 22nd birthday, and in our conversation I listed his achievements for the past year, and sent his picture. This is Victor's response:

"Pride"

"Гордость своим сыном"

Once thinking of the next theme, I realized I've never "ordered" Victor anything about teachers (Geometry - yes, he sent a few drawings about it, but not about teachers in general). So when I told him about it, that's what he found. I gave prints of this to our English teachers.

 "Dragons need reading aloud"

"Драконам нужно читать вслух"

17. Foliage.

The Fall is almost over, and I just realized that I haven't showed any of Victor's "seasonal" drawings. These are just a few. The first one was drawn a couple of weeks ago, the other one is from the past.

"Coloring the Fall"

"Раскраска Осени"

"An old park plays again its timeless music to a couple of eternal lovers"

"Старый парк в дымке туманной снова играет музыку листопада вечной паре вллюбленных"

Another sudden realization: Why haven't I posted any of Victor's photography yet? It is also very artistic/poetic. It just hasn't fit into the themes of my past blog pages, buy definitely fits this one! These two are my favorite of his Fall pictures (or rather of those few that I have, which is a tiny portion of all he has).

"All gold in the world..."

"Золотой мир."

16. Virtual crafts.

Since I started taking Ceramics class in September, we have been talking and e-mailing about it, as well as about other crafts. I am telling Victor about my modest progress, and he generously shares his unfulfilled ideas. Even though he has never done ceramics, he has several drawings that were, in fact, design for pottery. They just ask to be made! I hope I'll have time in my course to make them.



Even more surprisingly, it turned out that he also has some drawings that just look like wrought iron design. In fact, they are! Victor made them for one of his friends a long time ago.

                                "Rain"                                                                           "D'Artagnan"                                                                                               

                               "Дождик"                                                                    "Д'Артаньан"                                                                            

I wonder if there is a course in NY where they teach to make wrought iron!