Artist Marie Brozova recollects her public drawing event in Pisek.
I was very lucky to start the traveling part of my project of public drawing The Defense of Colored Pencils in Pisek. I was so warmly received, that I felt warm even in the very cold weather. The winter stayed over-long, it was snowing in the middle of March.
My public drawing was planned for the entrance hall in the municipal library. Nobody expected that it would be freezing outside. But the librarians did not let me suffer, they equipped me with a small electric heater and in a few days the spring finally came. The gulls flying around the oldest European bridge over the river Otava, announced with their wild shrieks a spring thaw in this historic town.
Memories of the Pisek public drawing are among my best. I often recall our sweet breakfasts in Mozart the patisserie near the Stone Bridge with its magnificent view of the seagulls and swans flying over the river, as well as the calm evenings in a cozy teahouse under an oriental lamp, where we rested over cups of very good green tea and watched an eerie creature, a hybrid between a black dog and a bat, called Amalka. When we returned home to our friend’s parents, where we had been staying, we were invited by our host, old Mr. Kunik, a bricklayer (who would have become a priest, if it were not for communists): “Welcome back home”
The first day we were visited by an unforgettable student of ecology, who had very vivid sensual perceptions when she looked at my drawings. She could hear the music "at the bottom of the well", she could imagine the taste of "the Mother Earth’s spring soup". I also remember a teacher who lead many classes to my public drawing and talked to her children with such warm attention and understanding; or the boy named Kuba, who stayed at my easel for long hours; or Miss Calarien, who easily solved the riddle of my visits to the world of imagination, because she knew them herself; or an old man, who at last found out how to make a star-studded sky in the background of his home-made wooden Bethlehem Nativity scene. And when we returned back home, we were received by old Mr. Kunik: "Warmly, I welcome you back home."
Casual visitors became regulars. One of them was an irresistible fifteen year-old boy, a black-eyed graffiti artist, who became a bricklayer apprentice against his will. He was always amazed by my colored pencils' charms, and swore like hell when he heard that some art experts find my drawings undesirable. "How can anyone say that this is not beautiful? They are lucky I haven’t heard them. I would explain it to them – by my own hands!" he threatened rolling up his sleeves. Another time he boasted: “Mrs. Marie, I’ll be a millionaire one day, I really mean it. And then I will buy all your drawings, ALL of them, you see? And then I will talk to myself: When Mrs Marie worked on this drawing, I was such a young boy.”
He invented vertiginous philosophical thoughts, and was absorbed in analysis of my drawings so deeply, that he hadn’t noticed his teacher standing behind him, listening to his words in awe. When he at last noticed, he left quickly and ran away in a very shy way. His teacher told me, that he knew him as the worst rowdy and aggressor in his class, and that he wouldn’t expect him to have worlds of imagination and emotions deep inside, where he never allows his class-mates or teachers.
At the end of my public drawing many people came to give me a present to remember Pisek and them. I especially value two small butterflies, made by crocheting, one endearing old granny brought me as a souvenir. "When you come to Pisek for the next time, I may not be here," she told me. And her husband added: "We will miss you, girl."
And when we returned back home for the last time, old Mr. Kunik greeted us: "Very warmly welcome."
VISIT MARIE BROZOVA’S VIRTUAL GALLERY
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where you’ll find both the drawings created during public events and in the studio.
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signed author prints ready for framing, postcards and more.