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!

15. Halloween thoughts...

A few days ago I asked Victor if he had anything for Halloween.  Of course, he did, and he sent me two drawings. I guess, I expected some traditional pointed-hat-black-cloak-flying-on-a-broom witches. When I received one of them, I was surprised first. After the second, I realized that our perception of witches is quite different!

"Witch"

"Ведьма"

"Witch's Blinding"

 "Ведьмино Ослепление"

Of course, Halloween is not a traditional holiday in Ukraine or Russia, even if it is gaining its popularity lately. But Halloween or not, all these creepy creatures, and especially witches, have their own rich history in pre-Russian orthodox folklore. For Americans, witches and other Halloween characters are so commercialized and stereotyped, that most of us would have the same image as I did. On the other side, witches that we “grew up with,” are more like spirits of nature. Also, they can be understood as a person’s inner self. The Russian word for "witch" is "ved'ma" that came from "vedat'"  that means "to know."

Actually, I believe, if we could escape the influence of the commerce that is trying to sell the traditional Halloween costumes and toys, we could relate to this other perceptions of the “witchism” as well.

Among old Victor's drawings I also found this non-typical image of Devil that also doesn't really fit our Halloween "standards." But this is why it's worth looking at!

"Pact"

"Договор"

14. Ceramics

Last year I hosted student teachers in my classes, and for this, Columbia University offered me a free course. I chose Ceramics. I can appreciate art, but can't really create anything. Ceramics, I guess, is as close as I can get to art. I am not saying it is not one, but the material itself offers you so many possibilities that your artistic skills matter less than in drawing or painting or sculpture, or so I'd thought. Besides, as a mathematician, I have sense of space, at least. This is my first composition. The assignment was "Environment," and we had to use extruded shapes. It will still be fired and glased:

"Evolution"

"Эволюция"

Anyway, when I told Victor about this course, he was kind of jealous: being a medieval apprentice in a pottery shop was his dream, not mine! (Here is that drawing again):

 

"Apprentice"

"Подмастерье"

It turned out that ceramics was much more that just using clay. Most people in my group are Arts majors, and trying to catch up with them in terms of creativity and artistism is not easy. I am not even talking about the quality of their pieces, but even about ideas they come up with. I had to ask Victor about some ideas and especially about design for a tile quadriptic that was one of our assignments. Well, "we, artists," are not very generous when it comes to sharing ideas. So instead he just made this drawing - I guess, pretending he is making it from clay. I hope I'll be able to make somehing to implement this idea.

"Pottery Love"

"Глиняная Любовь"

Nevertheless, after some more begging Victor said that he actually has something that will work for my four tiles, even for 49:

"My Animals"

"Мои Звери"

I selected four of them, adjusted the size, and the next time in class transferred the images to my tiles. I will  glaze them next week - so, to be continued... When my professor saw what I was doing, his eyebrows went up: clearly he didn't expect this from me. I explained that the drawings are not mine, and mentioned that it would be cool to make all 49 tiles. He said "Why not? Take a Ceramics class again next semester." May be I will.

13. "Let's denounce the old world!" - "Отречемся от старого мира!"

 It's really time to show some other aspect of Victor's work, I can call it "social." Here is a very old series of drawings;  I remember that I saw it even before my emigration in 1993, so it was created during the Perestroika. He named it by the first line from the Marseillaise. Another name for this series is "Seven Elephants." According to Feng Shui, a set of seven elephants brings fertility, or protects from danger, or attracts prosperity, depending on the position of their trunks.

 

12. Love through Humor

Finally, a different way to look at/think/talk about love, even though all concepts involved - passion, betrayal, desire - are not a loughing matter...




Lightning

Мол-ни-я

Secret Rendezvous

Секретные Свидания

Lust

Вожделение

11. Love - Dramatic Lens

I feel that this blog becomes more and more like a gallery... Oh well, I guess this is still a way to show Victor's art, only through my perception.

I realize that "classifying" his drawings as "dramatic" or "lyrical" or "comical" is not very meaningful. There is humor (dark, may be, but still funny) even in the most tragic work, and lyricism in the most comical. But I simply couldn't place them all in one post - too many, so this is just one way to sort them out.

"Because we were deaf and blind"

"Потому что мы были слепоглухосвязанные"

 "Nagara"

"Ниагара"

 "Sign: Danger! Love crossing."

"Осторожно: Переход сердца"

"Unknown Parameter Value"

 "Suicide, or a new beginning""

"Самоубийство - или новое начало"

10. Love - Lyrical Lens

Although "Love" is, probably, the most common theme for Arts of all genres, I never offered it to Victor- namely because it would be too obvious and too simple for him. Nevertheless, I want to show some of his drawings - my favorites - on this inexhaustible topic. I feel I can divide them is several groups, for example, "lyrical," "dramatic," "comical." Let's start with the lyrical aspect...

 "Fоliage"

"Листопад"

 "She is from the Fall, He is from the Sea"

"Она из Осени, Он из Моря"

"The Red Flower"

"Красный Цветок"

9. Trying to Get Inside the Artist's Mind

Sometimes, looking at Victor's work, I asked him two types of questions. Both of them are traditional questions that many viewers and critics of art are asking: "What did he mean when he created this?" and "Why on Earth did he think of making this? What inspired/triggered this drawing?" I am quoting his answer (well, translating, really): "It is not me who made up these drawings, it's someone else who sits inside me, so I am not responsible for their content or form or anything else." So I stopped asking...

A huge majority of his drawings that I've seen and that I am showing here he just sent to me for a certain occasion, but they had been created a long time ago, so it's impossible to track how they appeared. But in very few cases I witnessed this "sacred" moment.

Victor was reading (or, rather, rereading for the n-th time) "The Doomed City" by the Strugatsky Brothers, and on a page describing the main character he caught these two words: "a star astronomer." This didn't even matter much for the rest of the book. Suddenly, he put the book aside and started drawing this:

"The Star Astronomer"

"Звездочет"

Here is another example. As I mentioned on the first page, my favorite drawing "Constellation of Cow" was created in Crimea, Ukraine - somehow the beautiful August sky "met" in his imagination with impressions of Somali cave paintings that he had seen in a magazine a long time ago. Here it is again - why not?

"Constellation of Cow."

"Созвездие Коровы"

Once Victor sent the following three drawings. I didn't physically "witness" how the these three came to life, since we were 5,000 miles apart, but at least I know that he produced them one after another the day before. There was no book or conversation to provoke them. Why fish? I am afraid, I'll never know...

"A Fish Wedding"

"Рыбья свадьба"

"Saving a Fish" ("Salvation" would be a more accurate translation)

"Спасение Рыбы"

 "Begging"

"Умоляние"