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By Kate Botti, News Herald correspondent
Port Clinton, Ohio, Saturday, April 10, 2004
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MARBLEHEAD, Ohio -- Extreme sports, extreme makeovers, extreme
reality TV. These days it seems that everything is going extreme. With the
arrival of spring, and Easter just a day away, there may be another extreme
to add to the list: Extreme Easter eggs.
This is one way to describe the eggs that Marblehead resident Helen Jean
Cooley has been decorating for the past 32 years. However, unlike the
extreme craze of today, Cooley's intricately designed eggs, called pysanka,
are the illustrations of tradition, history and symbolism dating back more
than 2000 years.
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(Click on image to enlarge it)
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The traditions of making pysanka come from the Slavic and Ukrainian regions
of Eastern Europe. While today the eggs have religious ties and symbolism,
their history can be traced back to pre-Christian times when Pagans
decorated the eggs as a symbol of spring and the rebirth of nature.
To create a pysanky (the singular form of pysanka), Cooley begins with an
egg directly from the carton. She uses mostly chicken eggs, but has
experimented with other kinds as well.
She begins by drawing or writing on the egg with melted beeswax using a tool
known as a kystka. The artist then dips the egg in a chemical dye, starting
with the lightest colors such as yellow and orange, then building to rich
colors like red, purple and black.
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The designs that Cooley first penned with the wax stay white. After each
successive dying, she adds more wax to the areas she wants to remain those
colors.As an egg nears completion, Cooley uses a candle to melt all the wax.
When the melted wax is wiped away, the vivid colors and intricate designs of
the pysanky are revealed.
To finish it off, Cooley removes the yolk and adds a varnish to the egg. A
single egg can take between four to eight hours to finish.
Cooley began making the eggs in 1972 when a priest -- Father Stanley
Bartkus -- visited her church to give a pysanka demon-stration. stration.
The art intrigued her and she began researching and making pysanka of her
own.
For Cooley, creating these tiny masterpieces is more than just a hobby, it's
an act of tradition and faith as well as a form of therapy.
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"It's a relaxing thing to do," she says. "Because when you sit and start
working on these eggs you get so involved with what you're doing, everything
that's wrong, all the problems of the day, just disappear. You're so busy
concentrating on the details and designs. It's therapeutic."
Cooley has showcased her talent throughout Northwest Ohio. She has given
demonstrations and had her eggs on display at the Dillon House and
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ida Rupp Public Library
and Danbury High School. Each year, she also does a session with the
catechism classes at St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church in Marblehead, the
church where she is a member.
Cooley says that although the eggs may seem intimidating to a novice
decorator, the process is not as hard as it looks, even for those who aren't
so artistically inclined.
"It's not that you have to be that artistic," she says. "But you do have to
have some patience. Because it is very involved."
The key, she says, is to figure out the method.
Cooley says she finds it easiest to have an idea of what the finished
product will look like before she begins. And, rather than trying to design
the whole egg at once, she breaks it down into sections. Cooley draws a
smaller design and repeats it, creating symmetrical intricate patterns.
"It's a lot of trial and error," she says. "There's never a mistake.
"Whatever happens, that becomes part of that egg. They're unique. Even
though there are traditional designs and traditional styles, each egg is
still unique in it's own."
Through her research, Cooley has found that the eggs were historically
believed to hold great powers.For example, it was believed that a basket of
decorated eggs in the home would keep the family healthy and the home safe
from fire. The eggs were planted in the fields to ensure a bountiful
harvest, put in the troughs of the animals so they would have many
offspring, and placed in the caskets of loved ones as food for their journey
to the next world.
While many of these beliefs are not so common here and now, Cooley says she
continues to use the traditional pysanky colors, symbols, and designs that
have been used for thousands of years.
"Say for instance there was a young couple that got married and they were
going to start a family. I would make a pysanky that would have a chicken on
it.
Because chickens are a sign of fertility," Cooley explains.The decorated
eggs also hold an important part in the Easter traditions at the Byzantine
Catholic Church.
On Easter, the members of the congregation fill their Easter baskets with
pysanka and foods such as paska (traditional bread), hrutka (cheese),
hrin (beets and horseradish), and kovbasa (sausage), to be blessed.
The food is eaten following the Easter service.
News Herald, Port Clinton, Ohio, Saturday, April 10, 2004
http://www.portclintonnewsherald.com/news/stories/20040410/localnews/209552.html
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