Soloma Project 2024

I have been on a journey with straw ("soloma" in Ukrainian) for about a decade, and it all started with "pavuky", these gorgeous mysterious ephemeral straw "spiders" that seem to hold the cosmos in balance. After making countless pavuky and teaching dozens of workshop participants, I wanted the chance to go deeper with this material, and this craft.

With the aid of a grant from the Shevchenko Foundation, and the support of St. Volodymyr Institute in Toronto I dedicated the first half of the dark season of 2024 to exploring pavuky and solomopletinnya (straw weaving). I created some large scale pieces that became an installation to commemorate 1000 days of War in Ukraine at SVI, which was kept up throughout their Holodmor memorial exhibit, and then displayed in the board room/gallery space.
Back home, I worked on a series of straw angels and an exploration of straw epiphany crosses.*

May the harmonious energies spun by these beauties reverberate ever futher out into the world, and bring some solace to us all.

*I posted a little more background about this custom of making straw crosses on epiphany on instagram, if you are interested, check out @thisfolklife and also @khata_tradyciji, who posted more research about the topic*