Luiza Barcan 1

Conception of icons and sacred items at Bujoreni

Luiza BARCAN

art critic

We wanted that all artists invited to participate at the creation camp organized within the program “Summer workshops Tradition and Post-modernism” to be young and enthusiast, to be dedicated to this project and to endeavour through talent, imagination and skill to give a new look to such location. Part of them also attended classes in order to better understand the issues and goals of this program. Thus, the rooms and porches of the wooden houses at the Valcea Village Museum were turned temporarily into artistic workshops, where wood, glass, colours, tools of the painters, sculptors and gravers met together for giving birth to some religious items created in the spirit of tradition but bearing in the same time the artistic contribution of every artist.

Aspects from the final exhibition.

They painted icons for the church, which was taking shape next to them, Mihai Coman and Gabriel Chituc bachelors in monumental art, Suzana Dan, Dumitru Gorzo and Alexandru Rădvan bachelors in painting (all three at the classroom of professor Florin Mitroi). Mihai and Gabriel, as specialists in church art, painted the founder’s icon and the royal ones as well as other icons representing some of the important saints of the Orthodox culture. Suzana Dan created some wooden and glass icons choosing those representations that better match her vision and style, whereas Dumitru Gorzo from Maramures, Ieud village, painted in the exact manner used by his predecessors, the glass icon makers form that historical region, even if he used wood instead of glass. Alexandru Rădvan represented on glass classic scenes mostly of the Old Testament, attempting to adapt to his vision on human face the portraits of biblical heroes. The graphic designer Mircea Nechita, original from Maramures – the Lapus Country, just as Gorzo, chose as artistic expression the icon too. Instead, he used the techniques of the xilograving and linogravurii, in order to create icons on paper, just like in the churches of Translivania. His representations comply only partially with traditional iconographic suggestions, which are mixed together with his particular artistic vision, in a combination of profane and sacred elements.

Mircea Nechita was assisted during this camp, by his son, Vlăduţ – the naughty boy, who made desperate efforts to imitate his father’s gestures and to be paid attention as much. At a certain moment, when his playful gestures get beyond his father’s patience, Mircea thought it’s high time to give his son a correctional lesson, in the upper room of the house in which he was working. From house next door, hearing those few slaps on the buttocks of the child, who responded in somehow over dimensioned manner, as any other spoiled lad will have done under those circumstances, Suzana stated: ”I believe that no child has been punished here over the last hundred years or so!” This detail is not just picturesque and fun. Those days we all had the feeling that the Museum was not what it used to be, being filled with life and being part of the most real and authentic present times. There were people who created, laughed, changed ideas and left the trace of their passing by in those rooms with ancient items that remained untouched and unchanged from their places. We must say that Vladut has become wiser since the last unpleasant event, and he continued to amuse us during dinnertime, with his characterization made for each of us.

He was not the youngest participant at the Workshops. Another little one, the son of the Scripcariu family, Ioan, who practiced with audacity the crawling and standing through the grass of the museum’s yard. Virgil Scripcariu, his father, bachelor of sculpture at the class of professor Vasile Gorduz, together with Cătălin Udrea, former student of the same maestro, and with Toma Gabor created the wooden furniture of the church: a tetrahedron (Cătălin Udrea), an iconostas (Virgil Scripcariu) and an archbishop’s throne (Toma Gabor).

At the exhibition that occurred on the occasion of the program closing, all these icons and religious items were displayed right inside the church that is to be religiously certified once it finds its final location.