Pelhrimov (or) The Sea of Silence Among the Crowds

Artist Marie Brozova recalls her public drawing event in Pelhrimov 2006 - the City of Records.

I was invited to the international festival at "Pelhrimov, the City of Records." Pelhrimov is the seat of the Dobry den Agency, which adjudicates the Czech Book of Records, the national equivalent of The Guinness Book of Records. The festival is held annually and my agreed part was to perform a two day show of my colored pencil technique. This was followed by the exhibition, including my record breaking drawing, St. George Killing the Dragon of Winter created in the Konopiste Castle in 2005.

I did not know what to expect from the audience full of record-lovers, who admire all those strongmen, tough fellows, stunt men and gamblers with their own life. Although I am also a recordwoman and I was even nominated for the title "the recordwoman of the year 2006" by the Dobry den Agency for the largest drawing created by colored pencils, I must admit that there is nothing hair-raising about my fragile drawings. My work doesn’t put my life in danger and I hope it is not shocking in any way (with the exception of art critics, of course, who find colored pencils vulgar).

I did not have to worry. The reaction of this audience was so warm and friendly, that they were sometimes hard to handle (especially when my admirers plucked up their courage with a few beers). But luckily I met only good-natured drunks. My drawings almost bewitched one expert in the spitting of fire. His dream was that one day I would make a drawing of his fantasy about fire dragons flying above the burning tree.

I was frightened only once, when two really big ladies in their mid-fifties stomped to my easel and one of them roared: "Look, is it her?" The other one answered: "Well, I don’t know. Is it her? Hey, you, look at us, is it you? It’s you, indeed! We saw you on TV yesterday!" If they had decided to break me apart for souvenirs, there would not be left much of me.

I was surprised to find Pelhrimov a beautiful, historic city. I haven’t seen many well-preserved baroque squares without the occasional horrible building from the communist era. It was quite hard for me to work in the thunderous noise of the festival; I had to practice reading the lips of my visitors. But I chose a very good kind of compensation, I decided to work on a very calm drawing titled "The Sea of Silence", which I had started to draw in Prague's Old Town Square the year before.

The idea of this drawing had been sleeping inside me since I was sixteen years old, but no paper seemed to be big enough for the endless universe, the ocean full of stars with one lost island of the Little Prince’s planet, somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Long years ago, when this idea came to me, I held in my heart a great wish, that has never come true. And so I decided to make it true at least in the drawing, where you can see the Littel Prince sitting side by side with the Fox and they are launching ships made of paper into the sea universe of silence. And the Fox has a torn Rose in her hand, the pampered rose from Saint-Exupéry’s fairy tale. And for those trying to decipher the words written in the letter the unicorn is holding in his mouth, here is the answer: Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. But only I know, to whom this letter is addressed.