In the hands of creative people, any trash can become a valuable art object...
Tatyana KUZMINA Volgogradskaya Pravda, June 2008
EVERY normal person sometimes wants to misbehave from the heart! Especially a young person...
In our city, there is probably only one cultural institution where young people are allowed not only to have plenty of fun, but also to receive awards for it.
The Children’s Art Gallery is constantly coming up with something new. In the current academic and creative season, the main event in the category of “talented fooling around” was the April youth festival with the sensational competition titled “It’s All About the Hat!” In an indirect way, I too became involved in this unusual project, and I am in a hurry to boast about it to you, dear reader.
During a casual phone conversation with Elena Orlova, director of the Children’s Art Gallery, the question suddenly came up: “Do you know where we could find old newspapers, magazines and wrapping paper? And a lot of it?”
Elena Vladimirovna probably shuddered when she heard my triumphant cry: “Please! Come to me! With a car and ropes! A whole mountain of this paper nightmare has piled up over the winter, ready to be taken to the dacha!..”
They came and kindly relieved me of a long-standing problem. A couple of days later, as the chief supplier of raw material and one of the jury members, I was watching closely as printing waste was transformed into exclusive headwear and items of ladies’ attire. The point of the competition was for imaginatively minded students to create works of art from recycled materials within a strictly limited time.
The team from the Volgograd Academy of Civil Engineering, Department of Design, managed to create as many as three costumes: “Hope,” “Mystery” and “Determination.” The effect was stunning. One wanted to continue Akhmatova’s famous lines — “If only you knew from what rubbish...” — with: “...such unearthly beauty can arise.”
The jury unanimously awarded first place to Miss Determination. The others were much more difficult. The rather eerie “Girl with a Terrible Face,” born of the bold imagination of students from the Technological College, was in no way inferior to the refined “Stranger,” invented by a second-year team from the Volgograd State Institute of Arts and Culture. In the end, the stylish ugly duckling and the impeccable lady shared second prize.
And there were also the philosophical “Tree” by fourth-year students of the Volgograd State Institute of Arts and Culture, the charming “Madwoman” by second-year students of the Institute of Art Education, and the magical little bird “Hummingbird” by first-year students of the Volgograd State Institute of Arts and Culture. All these characters expressed their authors’ individuality so impressively and were so inventive that the jury, with a heavy heart, awarded all three of them third place, sincerely regretting that it had no right to change the terms of the competition on the spot and urgently introduce separate prize nominations. No one had expected that mere piles of pitiful waste paper would awaken such a brilliant flight of imagination in the students.
Of course, there were inevitably those who lost. Some were left behind, unable to bring their creative idea to the level of a capacious artistic image. But never mind. In the near future, the exceptionally talented teaching staff of the Children’s Art Gallery will surely announce new competitions, each one more exciting than the last, where today’s outsiders will still have their chance for revenge.
