KYIV – Sofika Zielyk of New York City, who is known for her authentic, meticulously researched pysanky representing various regions of Ukraine, was invited recently to exhibit her works at the newly built America House, a component of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
Ms. Zielyk is currently living in Ukraine, having been awarded a Fulbright grant for her research about the influence of folk art on the work of eastern Ukrainian artists of the early 20th century.
While on a break in New York City from her Fulbright work in Ukraine, Ms. Zielyk said: “I packed up my chicken, goose and ostrich eggs (including the pysanka birds) and sent them to America House. Everything came in one piece!”
The exhibit opened on June 24 with Christi Anne Hofland, the director of America House, opening the exhibit and Public Affairs Officer Conrad Turner delivering opening remarks.
Christina Santore
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland visits the exhibit.
The pysanka artist also addressed the gathering, noting that it is truly a pleasure to exhibit her work in the capital of Ukraine. But it is also significant that these pysanky are displayed on American soil, she added.
“Immigrants coming to the U.S., including my grandparents and parents, brought with them the tradition of ‘pysankarstvo’ for safekeeping and kept it alive. It flourished here, while there was a decline of this tradition in most of Ukraine,” the native New Yorker told The Ukrainian Weekly.
In Kyiv, she said she described her exhibit at America House as coming full circle and noted at it was an honor to “unite” the two countries by bringing the pysanka tradition from its haven in the U.S. back to its birthplace in Ukraine.
Ms. Zielyk holds a degree in art history from New York University. She started making pysanky and ceramics when she was 6, having learned the basics of these traditional Ukrainian art forms from her mother.
She has lectured and exhibited her work widely, most notably at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum) in New York. Her pysanky are in the permanent collections of The Ukrainian Museum in New York, the Ukrainian Museum and Library in Stamford, Conn., the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington and the Pysanka Museum in Kolomyia, Ukraine.
In 1992 Ms. Zielyk became the first American of Ukrainian descent to exhibit her work in her ancestral homeland, at the Taras Shevchenko museums in Kaniv and Kyiv. She has been accepted as a full-fledged member of the prestigious Association of Folk Artists of Ukraine.
Ms. Zielyk’s works may be seen on her website, Sofika.com.
Sofika Zielyk at the entrance to her exhibit in Kyiv.