Ukrainian Pysanka Festival in Los Angeles

The Ukrainian Center in Los Angeles hosted a traditional Easter egg festival, reports “Voice of America".

Photo: IStock

American artist Anne Marie Dagonastina learned the skill of recognizing messages in every pattern from her Ukrainian friends in New York. Her favorite symbol in Easter eggs, she says, was the butterfly. A brush, also known as a paint brush, beeswax and paints are the main things you need to decorate eggs.

“Pysanka consists of many symbols, lines, crosses, spirals, even fish - and all this is connected with the Bible. This is both abundance and freedom. The butterfly just means freedom. Because of what is happening in Ukraine now, I chose her,” says Anne Marie.

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Daria Chaikovsky, president of the Ukrainian art center in Los Angeles, who came from Ukraine as a child, carefully preserves the traditions that passed from hand to hand.

“Pysanka is Ukrainian folk art, an ancient art. Always in the spring they wrote symbols on eggs. Now Easter eggs are made throughout the year and for various occasions - for a wedding, for a birth,” she says. Czajkowski says this year's pysanka has its main colors.

“Blue and yellow are the colors of the Ukrainian flag. And then there are hearts drawn. With these signs you wish the person to whom you are giving this egg all the best. Blue and yellow are the most popular colors this year,” says Daria, showing off her pysanka.

This year's visitors included refugees forced to leave their homes because of the war. Anastasia Chuba left the Kyiv region with her mother and daughter last March from shelling. Then Nastya planned that she would return home soon.

“My dad is still at the front. I expected to return home in 3 months. I don’t plan this anymore,” says Nastya.

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For many refugees from Ukraine, this center has become a new home.

“This is our outlet, this is our home now here. When you get here, you feel like you’re in Ukraine with people close to you,” says refugee from Ukraine Elena.

The proceeds from sales at the festival will be sent to Ukraine. Volunteer Arina Gerasimova has been participating in all community events for more than a year.

“We help our military, we provide humanitarian assistance to civilians, particularly women and children, and we also help animal shelters by sending them food and money. And just recently, we began to provide assistance in the construction of a settlement for refugees in western Ukraine, in the Carpathians. Last year we sent $1 in humanitarian aid—some was donated by people, some by state companies. We raised about $700 in money,” says Arina.

The Pysanka Festival in the Ukrainian Center was attended by several thousand people this year. Interest in Ukrainian culture, as the organizers say, has grown not only among emigrants from Ukraine, but also among those who were not familiar with it before the war.

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