This little dolly is a collection of feelings. By the way, do you know what it the difference between feelings and a emotions? I will tell you. Imagine that you’ve cleaned your house. It is sparkling clean and you’ve just finished. And now your husband and kids come home with their shoes and clothes dirty after having fun outside and make a mess. What would you feel? … Well, maybe irritation… This is an emotion. But you still love your husband and kids!
And this is a feeling.
This is what Marina told me while we were walking together from an art and craft workshop she organized for locals of one of the neighborhoods in Kyiv, Ukraine, totally free of charge. Marina is a handcraft artist, who makes dolls and toys of scraps of cloth and ropes and other small stuff. When in her home town, she learned this craft from another person who passed it to her right from hand to hand.
Here, at this masterclass many of the students are women in their 70s and 80s. Likely, they’ve lived a difficult life, through all the 20th century with its wars, industrializations, and dictatorships (as you know, Ukraine was a part of Soviet Union before). Right now many of them don’t have much money and their health needs support. Though, as well as their souls.
It was not easy at the beginning – about half-a-year ago when these classes started. Elder women kept reserved, didn’t understand what was the sense of them being there, and seemed only interested in what material things they would be able to bring home from this place. But step by step it started to change.
Now, when I came to see the workshop, I was genuinely touched. A nice lady, sitting next to me, first seemed alert by my “intrusion”. But later she talked to me and started singing and said that she is “good at singing”. And she sang all the way while she worked. Others played with their dolls, making them dance in the air (“Look, my dolly is dancing!”) And then mentioned in a bit embarrassed voice that “they were going back in time, turning into children again” (and we all are supposed to “behave like adults” all our life, aren’t we?)
But why the doll is a collection of feelings?
It’s because of the way it is made.
Before the work started, Marina gave instructions to the participants. There were many pieces of cloth of different colors and patterns on the table, scissors, spools of thread. Everyone had to remember their most important feelings, that they had had through their lives – those feelings that they found good and inspiring, one by one. Then they choose a scrap of cloth that could represent each feeling and carved stripe from it.
Work started with a small roll of cardboard paper tightened with thread. Then people put stripes of cloths charged with feelings, one by one, over the dolly’s “head”, each one wound by thread at the “neck”.
And then you take your dolly home and if something frustrating happens in your life – something that makes you feel bad emotions – like if someone was rude to you in the street, or you had a small misunderstanding with your family, or .. – you come home, take your doll and start flipping her cloth “dress”, remembering each of your important feelings when touching a stripe of cloth representing it.
Other students in the workshop were relatively young and modern women, who came to the class because of their interest in making things. Some of them came specially for this workshop from other parts of the city.
All this activity is organized by a non-commercial fund established by a rich Ukrainian, who, according to Marina’s words, “wanted to make lives of old people happier”. So, he started this fund or club, called “Life-lovers” (in my translation – “Zhitteliub” in Ukrainian) and then other people joined, volunteering. They handle myriads of projects and volunteers are multiple. They are called “super-grandchildren” there – even though sometimes “grandchildren” are almost the same age as grandmas and grandpas (the fund works with people starting from age 55).
At the workshop, Valentina is our welcoming host. The location itself is a social center for elders supported by municipality. Valentina is a super-creative person herself – it becomes evident when she starts showing us around the room where we were working and we find out that half of the applications, toys, paper flowers, hanging, lying, sitting on the shelves all around the room she made herself.
Like these straw hats. And the rest was made at various creative workshops under her coordination.
Marina came to Kyiv several years ago. Before she lived in a part of Ukraine that is now occupied by Russia and Russian-supported forces. She had to flee from the war and leave behind her home and her “habitual zone of comfort” as she formulates it, like many others.
And then, at the new place she faced a necessity to construct her life from scratch. She thought of how she could promote herself and the things she makes. She tried cooperating with several non-profits, and now she conducts art-therapy, records video workshops – apart from making and selling her own dolls and toys – and volunteers for these art-craft-therapy-and-fun classes as an instructor, several times a week in different locations. (And she also takes 2 hour walk from one location to another through the city – calling it her “way to exercise and have some relaxing walk during the day” – some leak from me 🙂 )
To end this story, I want to mention what a great pleasure, by itself is making something with your own hands! I wanted to observe first but couldn’t help participating. If you haven’t done anything with your hands lately – try! You’ll have fun! 🙂
( Click / tap on a picture to see it in larger size )
And that’s me 🙂
See you at my next post!
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