Chimerical fountains in stone

A festival called “Living Stone 2010” has finished in Cherkasy. This year the festival, held for a third time, was devoted to street fountains. It took sculptors four weeks to combine water and stone and thus implement their projects.

The Jubilee Park in Cherkasy suddenly saw chimerical stone umbrellas that weep with rain, a genuine Sphinx who cares about purity of water, a forest nymph with a snail, and even the biblical apple with which the Serpent tempted Eve. The Kyiv sculptor Vladlen Karachentsev, well known for his wooden sculptures, tried to experiment and made a stone figure of a fish caught in the Dnieper. Festival participants remained satisfied. Lviv’s Andrii Datsko, who takes part in almost every fest held in Cherkasy, has already been hewing sculptures out of not only stone but also wood and ice. He says it is unique to combine stone and water.

“There has not been an exhibit like this in Ukraine before. Water is something transient, temporary. For they say quite aptly that you can’t enter the same river twice. Meanwhile, the stone is perpetual. It has seen everything and will see a lot. I immediately wondered how I could combine the two things. A good food for thought. I had first to think very well and ‘talk’ with the stone before I got down to work. A stone does have a soul – one must just know how to expose it for everyone to see. I think we managed to do this to some extent,” the master told The Day.

His sculpture A Rainy Morning came off third best, while the work Swamp Sphinx by the Cherkasy sculptor Mykola Dzetsini and A Fish by Vladlen Karachentsev took first and second place, respectively. Now that the fountains have been supplied with water, they are in all their beauty.

“We did not even expect such a result. When we mounted everything, laid stones, and brought in water, we gasped with surprise,” Datsko says smiling.

Mayor Serhii Odarych has assured Cherkasy residents that all the eight fountains will be set up in the city’s parks. He also requested all the city dwellers to actively express their suggestions about where to place the sculptures.