At the Residence

 Karen Bozik, Director/Designer for the Holiday Events at the Governor's Residence, invited yours truly along with other individuals and organizations to contribute to this years installations at Boettcher Mansion.  I saw some of Karen's pieces from last year's installation via Facebook - beautiful handcrafted Victorian type dolls, cards. collages -  already then I was smitten. Through talks we found out that we both have a passion for researching similar cultures and traditions -   music, literature, art, language.... and we both  love to delve into our Slavic heritage.  This often shows up in Karen's collages and art craft and is something that I have admired since I first laid eyes on her work years ago. Being part of this project would be great!

As a theme this year Madame Governor, Helen Thorpe,  chose 'Holiday Heritages'.  Brilliant for me! Here I am back to heritage and origins, which  I have  used as inspiration for my personal spaces and very often also professionally in my design themes,  fashion styling, or conceptual art. Karen knew that about me and asked if I would create something representing Eastern Europe. My dream!

I worked on getting information and loan pieces for the Eastern European installation through the month of November.  When last minute another local organization was not able to participate, I threw my hat in for the Central Asian table also and drew from my family's private collection. I finished up last week and it looks great.  Today, press day. It was very exciting to have people interested in the themes, asking questions about the provenance of the pieces, many of them antiques from local museums, others beloved personal objects on loan from friends and acquaintances.

I'll post some more specifics at the end of the week and for now show off a couple of snapshots of what the tours will be showing.

Bosnia

Jewish Sarajevo

Central Asia