Artist Marie Brozova's recollections of the public drawing event in Vinohrady Pavilon Granny's Garden.
It became a nice tradition of the project Defense of Colored Pencils to donate the original drawing from Christmas public drawing event to some place, where there are people in great need, to please them. Last year I chose the Clinic of Children Oncology in Prague Motol Hospital. This time I had in my mind a large orphan asylum. When I found out that newly opened and renovated Vinohrady Pavilion in Prague center decided to continue in its long standing project The Tree of Fulfilled Wishes designed for parentless children in orphan homes I had one more reason to work on my drawing titled "Granny's Garden" right there. The project Tree of Fulfilled Wishes included twenty orphan homes; we decided to donate the original drawing to the largest one in Klanovice with 58 children.
Other children homes were given reproductions of my drawings by Vinohradsky Pavilion.
Outside the glassed-in walls of the pavilion you could see the insipid city winter, but my drawing was full of bright colors of Indian summer from the first day of my public drawing event. The smiling granny started to appear in a white paper, bringing us sweet smelling cake to the garden in late summer sunshine. She seemed to be inviting us for a cup of tea, hindered by hungry cats under her feet, getting their small claws into her apron. That's how I remember my granny, her open arms and smile full of understanding. No matter how horrible crime I had committed, it was never too serious and it could easily be cured by cake and tea. I trusted her and shared with her many secrets I would never have told my parents. They were never strict with me and my childhood was far from rigorous discipline, but my granny was able to see my adolescent silliness from the birds' eyes view.
In every discussion about orphan asylums we talk about children lacking parental love. But the atmosphere that makes you feel at home is created not only by parents, very often it is granny who makes you home cozy and sweet smelling. I agreed on this with many visitors of my public drawing event. They cast their mind back, and told me that their granny had cooked the same cake made of custard and milled poppy seed, that she had the same swollen ankles and shiny white smile of false teeth, that she used to put in the glass for the night – well, granny's dentures was one of the greatest mysteries of my childhood – and as I sat drawing and listening to people's recollections – not only mine. Granny must be by all means very important "institution".
Vinohrady Pavilion is full of luxury shops and I had a chance to meet absolutely different kind of people from my regular audience. The first who came to fulfill some of the orphan's wishes under the Christmas tree was TV news host Ray Koranteng and a famous actor Valerie Zawadska. They were both enchanted by my project, Valerie Zawadska later agreed to became the patron of my new DVD document and pencil technique instructions Queen MAB's Dreamland. I was really glad to find that our children memories and especially the recollections of our grannies are much the same, no matter if we wear designer clothes or drive luxury cars. I could experience just the same effects of the well-known charm of my project even in this pretentious setting. We came to differences only with some luxury shops customers, who are accustomed to the way of life in which they can buy anything. They were bewildered to find that it was not possible to buy my originals. They would never buy reproductions because they were interested in originals only. I tried hard to explain that the real original is the pure, perfect idea that comes to me from the world of imagination. The drawing I'm working on is, in fact, the first copy. And this first copy I would like to save for all the people without exception that would come to my exhibitions or visit my planned gallery of my collected works, where all the images would create the connected fantasy world.
I remember a busy man, who also wanted to buy one of my original and was not successful. Freshly disappointed he asked me, if it was necessary to be happy while creating such drawings. I told him, that it would be extremely hard to draw the bunch of kittens fighting on a bench if I felt skeptic and disintegrated. "If that is true, I really envy you your beautiful life." Is my life really so enviable? The joie de vivre is not a gift that falls into your lap easily without any efforts. Sometimes it is a really hard job to prevent the ubiquitous negativity from spoiling the children zeal and enthusiasm. But great majority of visitors were truly delighted and touched by their own childhood memories my drawing evoked.
The Defense of Colored Pencils was also unexpectedly awarded – I was included into the prestigious Almanac of celebrities – Czech form of Who is Who. But sadly, I attracted not only the attention of media but also some influenza virus I could thank for having a runny nose until the end of the whole public drawing event.
The resulting drawing was delivered to the headmaster of the orphan asylum in Klanovice, Mr. Nejezchleba, during Vinohrady Pavilion Christmas ceremony. I had a chance to meet at least a few children from the orphans' home I created the picture for. The patron of this gift became the famous pop singer Leona Machalkova, who contributed with her euphoric performance to the relaxed atmosphere of the final programme of the Tree of Fulfilled Wishes finale.
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where you’ll find both the drawings created during public events and in the studio.
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