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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Between Church and Emergency Room

<h2> The Studio at the Central House of the Artist allows young and old alike to feel truly creative</h2>
18 January, 2000 - 00:00

The things that happen in Ukraine’s daily life are not
very attractive and a far cry from the beautiful and everlasting. People
are used to hearing about how ugly and useless their life is today. It
has got so that every attempt to do something in culture and life looks
out of the ordinary and those that do so must be courageous and truly dedicated.
There is, however, an even higher level of counteraction, when one does
not only serve beauty, but also teaches others to do so. When such teaching,
in our world composed of a diversity of heavy roofs, big and small, that
seem to cover everything, acquires the shape of an island, a territory
where laws reign that are somewhat different than those in our own roofed
reality. Actually, there is such a territory in Kyiv, and one does not
have to go far to find it. It is on the sixth floor at the House of Artist,
a true Art Studio. Are there not many other art studios? First, there are
not. After many decades of the facade existence of the system of amateur
art, Palaces of Young Pioneers with their study/hobby groups. Gone with
conventionalism is all that with which conventionalism existed: a possibility
of refined creative leisure for whomever wished to indulge. Second, those
few art studios still in existence are trying primarily to survive. Even
regardless of the cost of tuition, the inner sense is also very much subordinated
to commonness; people are taught things they will need in order to earn
a living: design, clothing style, modeling, ceramics, and various crafts.
The studio at the Central House of the Artist in this sense is in a losing
business, teaching pure classical art, basic drawing techniques, composition
— in short, all that which was our primary education has been unanimously
discarded. Studio director Mykola Horokh still does not fully understand
what prompted him to head such a thankless business, as his original relatively
well-off solitary studio work, suddenly replaced by a very restless lifestyle.
Indeed, there are so many things to worry about. As he puts it, “We have
something best described as being between church and an emergency ward.”
Here not only mothers bring their children. All age groups are represented,
from 4-5 to 60 years, school and college/university students, sometimes
even diplomats, all sitting docilely by their easels, among them a French
and Spanish consul. The children feel completely at home and start painting
things the most daring modernists can only dream about. Adults (with them
one must use kid’s gloves and watch out, sighs Mr. Horokh) discover they
can finally do something they have dreamed all their life. They can paint.
The amateur is only part of the project, as every tenth studio member prepares
for enrollment in a special art school and the Academy. Of these ten every
eighth makes it. The secret is simple: good teaching staff. Here one is
taught the ABCs of art and then what allows one to fearlessly take up any
modern trend. Mr. Horokh says, “First, one must learn to read and then
one will read all kinds of books” (he knows what he is talking about, being
in charge of a teenage class, one of the most difficult at the studio).
Although there are some 150 names on the waiting list, the monthly tuition
fee has been the same for quite some time: slightly more than 40 hryvnias
[about $7.20]. Another principled stand. Much could be said about the studio,
about how some of its young people enchanted surgeons from the Amosov Cardiology
Clinic, about the director’s various plans and projects, about paintings
made by the children, and about the problems facing this small island of
art built with such painstaking effort. However, the old truth that seeing
is believing applies here particularly well. Simply drop by, look at the
drawings and paintings; then at the authors, young and old, equally in
love with the art; and maybe you too will join them.

№1 January 18 2000 «The
Day»


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By Dmytro DESIATERYK Photos by Oleksiy STASENKO, The Day &nbsp;
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