This just in to my archive - a recent series called Portrait of an Artist, about Belarusian artist Zoya Lucevich. Look for the green ‘view slideshow’ button on the right.
I met Zoya and her (then) husband Pete Pavlov in Minsk last fall. They’re among the counterculture royalty there, she as an established artist related to Belarus’ early 20th-century poet, Yanka Kupala. Pete as one of the country’s top rock musicians, as guitarist for NRM and as a solo artist. (There are a couple of photos of Zoya and Pete mixed into my updated Belarus series here.)
A friend and I have a little nonprofit and decided to bring Zoya to the US this past spring (she’s known in Europe but it was her first time here). We found her free studio space courtesy of A. Salon in Takoma Park, where she created an impressive new body of work in about a month. We got her an exhibition at the United Nations and a couple of smaller shows in DC. Art sales from the project will help establish arts programs for young people in Chernobyl-affected areas.
Zoya is a unique soul and an amazing person. Her work and personality reflect both her old-world roots and a playful modernism. I hung out with her in DC and NY and tried to capture a quiet, non-literal sense of her as an artist, and as a person taking in and channelling all kinds of new impressions.