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Artist Patty Wiszuk De-Angelo
First Place in Best of Show
First Place in Pysanky Wax and Dye
Second Place in Pysanky Wax and Dye
   
"After the Battle"
First Place Pysanky Wax and Dye
First Place Best of Show
   
"Hand of God"
Second Place Pysanky Wax and Dye"
Our Best of
Show artist is Patty Wiszuk De-Angelo, who presents an updated version of a
4000-year-old art.
Pysanky has
gone through many changes in its evolution. In its earliest mystical origins pysanky was a women’s art,
practiced after the children were tucked away for the night and the house was
quiet. A fresh, fertile egg
was used because it was a symbol of life. The
design on the egg resonated with symbolism; the recipient would be wished a good
harvest,
 fortune,
healthy children, love or any number of other things.
Over the years, trade routes enabled an exchange of ideas, which surely
had some affect on the designs. When
the Ukraine embraced Christianity in 988 AD, the symbols took on Christian
meanings. The decorated eggs slowly became associated with Easter
rather than spring rites. A few
hundred years later when Communists took over the area and forbade Christian
worship, pysanky became a symbol of underground worship.
In more recent years pysanky artists have discovered new canvas in
“exotic” eggshells such as rhea or ostrich and many have begun blowing out
their eggs.
"Easter"
Over
the years Patty Wiszuk De-Angelo has experimented with various shells types and
techniques. Through this
experimentation she has taken the evolution of this medium a step further by
using what would seem to be an impossibly dark shell.
By substituting acid for the dye in her work with emu eggs and working
backwards from the usual pysanky method of putting light colors on first, she
does the dark areas first. “My first wax lines will be the dark green of the shell, I
do EVERYTHING that I want dark on the finished egg first (working backwards), I
then put it into an acid bath solution, scrub away some shell, and then begin my
next lighter lines, eventually doing this until I reach areas of white, trying
the WHOLE time not to lose the shell in the acid, by collapsing it.”
As she works her way down to the white of the emu egg, each line is drawn
with the point of the kistka and the melted beeswax, the shading achieved is
nothing less than miraculous. The
Best of Show egg and first place in Pysanky Wax and Dye, “After the Battle",
took approximately 45 hours to complete. The
“Hand of God” took about 30.
Patty Wiszuk De-Angelo is the owner/operator of Pysanky
Showcase and has been featured in Emu's Zine in two
other articles:
A Ukrainian
Easter by Karen Myers
Patty
Wiszuk-de Angelo - Carved 2000
She has written a step
by step article on etching in pysanky style for "The Pysanka"
magazine. Has been featured in the March/April 2000 Eggshell Sculptor Artist's
Gallery, and has had eggs displayed in the online magazine Sierra (http://www.sierra.com).
Visit Patty’s
website, Pysanky Showcase for more
information on this unusual and ancient art form.
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