Lifestyle
Showing Courage in Ukraine With Handfuls of Clay
This article is part of our Design special section about the reverence for handmade objects.
In late August 2020, eight humanoid statues appeared in a quiet corner of the Saint-Sophia of Kyiv conservation area, a 12-acre museum complex that is centered on the thousand-year-old Saint-Sophia Cathedral. Called “Shadows,” the clay-and-copper sculptures — each faceless and ghostly, with a torsolike form planted on a cylindrical base — had been made by Yuriy Myrko, a co-founder of GORN Ceramics in Kyiv for the annual Bouquet Kyiv Stage Festival.
“The people who keep the cathedral decided they liked the sculptures and proposed to keep them there.” said Bogdan Kryvosheya, 30, who founded GORN with Mr. Myrko, 41, and is the studio’s creative director. “The exhibition was only for a week or so, but the sculptures stayed there for almost three years.”
“Shadows” marked a turning point for GORN, which until then had mostly produced utilitarian items like vases and bowls. The figures reflected ideas about human relationships, death and spirituality. Since they appeared, GORN has continued to produce emotional art pieces alongside its more practical offerings. Intensified by the war with Russia and the unpredictability of the future, the studio’s output is a testament to creative freedom and resilience in the face of unimaginable hardship.
Mr. Kryvosheya and Mr. Myrko met in 2017, and with a third partner, Sasha Mychak, established GORN the following year to produce ceramic tableware that they and other artists designed.
Two years after the company started, the Covid-19 pandemic hit; then, two years after that Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Despite the challenges resulting from the invasion — limited access to resources, an unstable electricity supply, impediments to shipping and travel and the looming risk of conscription — GORN is thriving. This is thanks in part to its low-energy means of production — human hands shaping local clay, which is baked in wood-fired kilns — and in part to an international market.
It is also helped by its collective operation. Working with Mr. Kryvosheya and Mr. Myrko (Mr. Mychak is no longer with the studio), three artists make pieces under the GORN label while also practicing independently: Yaroslav Honchar created GORN’s East Wind group — minimal, juglike vessels in olive-green hues.
Yuriy Sulikovsky contributed to the Flame vases, which are wood-fired at hyper-scalding temperatures for so many hours that smoke and ash interact with the clay, producing streaks and dapples. Dmytro Yakub works as Mr. Myrko’s apprentice, assisting in daily operations and contributing to several different collections.
“Nothing is impossible in ceramics thanks to GORN’s skill and technical capabilities,” said Sana Moreau, an art dealer who sells the studio’s pieces in her Ukrainian-themed design shop in Paris. (Prices range from $45 for a bowl to $12,000 for sculptures.)
Ms. Moreau, who emigrated from Ukraine to France in 2021, said she works with more than two dozen Ukrainian designers and studios. GORN, she said, “can implement even the most complex and unusual ideas for modern interiors. One of their strengths is ceramic sculptures that touch on complex philosophical topics.”
Like many producers of household goods globally, Mr. Kryvosheya said that the pandemic was a boon to his company. People who were stuck indoors throughout government-mandated lockdowns became eager to improve their homes.
Perhaps less predictable was that the months after Russia attacked were also profitable. In addition to Ms. Moreau, GORN was represented by several international galleries and design retailers before the world’s eyes turned sympathetically to Ukraine.
“When the full-scale invasion happened, that was one of the triggers for them to get our pieces,” Mr. Kryvosheya said, adding that GORN had a 30 percent increase in sales in the year following the invasion.
Nor has the spotlight on Ukrainian design dimmed. Ms. Moreau estimated that Ukrainian design exports have grown at least threefold for most of her clients since February 2022.
“Things were not purchased out of pity, but simply because they are more visible,” she said. Designers who refused to let fear impede their lives were pouring their hearts into their art. “For the first time we really had something to offer the European and American markets.”
An outgrowth of dire conditions is that GORN is looking beyond its own commercial interests to nurture a local arts community. “Our goals have deepened, moving beyond a general desire to create unique pieces to a broader mission of fostering creative and cultural growth,” Mr. Kryvosheya said.
Last year, it opened a school that teaches every aspect of ceramics, including how clay can serve as an expressive medium, or as an escape from daily life in wartime.
About 40 students have enrolled in the workshops. Many are “older people” with successful careers in technology and business, Mr. Kryvosheya said. “They finally want to do something for their soul.”
He is optimistic about what he described as life challenges. “You have nothing if you just keep sitting at home and crying all the time,” he said. “The chances of us dying are higher than before, but what can we do? Nothing, but just move forward.”
Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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Paul W. Downs can’t help it that even on the weekends, his life intersects with “Hacks,” the HBO comedy he co-created and co-showruns with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their friend Jen Statsky. (He also appears on the show as Jimmy LuSaque Jr., the besieged manager of its two stars, played by Emmy winners Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.) The fifth and final season of “Hacks” premiered last week, but on Downs’ days off, he often finds himself at its previous filming locations or hanging out with cast members who have become like family.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Downs moved to Los Angeles in 2011, but soon after, he and Aniello were hired to write (and for him to act) on the über-New York show “Broad City,” keeping them away from the West Coast for years. Now the couple live in Los Feliz, which they enjoy with their young son.
“I love Los Feliz because it’s a real neighborhood with restaurants and bars, but also feels close to nature with Griffith Park,” Downs says. “Also it’s very central to my Eastside friends and Westside agents.”
And if he had to live at a local mall, like the character Ava Daniels did in the third season of “Hacks,” which would he choose?
“It would be the Americana, obviously.”
Here’s how he’d spend a perfect day in L.A.
10 a.m.: A late rise and a li’l barista
I’m sleeping in if I can, which I can’t because I have a toddler, but let’s say I can sleep ’til 10. That would be insane.
Then I’m making coffee at home. I’m making it with my 4-year-old because he likes to make my coffee now. He always wanted to help, now he really wants to do it on his own. I’m still there to supervise, but he does do a lot of it.
I do batch brew. I’m doing Verve Coffee that I’m grinding there, and then I’m brewing four cups because I need my coffee. I had a Moccamaster for a long time, but I recently got a Simply Good Coffee. There’s no plastic — it’s all glass and metal.
11 a.m.: Chocolate croissants for everyone
We’re driving to Pasadena and we’re going to [Artisanal Goods by] CAR, which is the place to get the best chocolate croissant, I think, in the world. I don’t just think in L.A., I think they’re better than Paris. I’m going there with my wife and my kid and I’m having another coffee and some pastry. We’re ordering three [chocolate croissants]. We’re not doubling up.
11:45 a.m.: The family business
We’re driving to Fair Oaks in Pasadena. There’s a place called T.L. Gurley. We shot “Hacks” there, actually. Not only in Season 1, but also full circle in Season 5. We’re going to shmay around and look at antiques. My kid is going to want to play a vintage pinball machine. We’re going to find a little piece of art for the house or what have you. It’s not necessarily that I’m on the hunt. It’s to pass the time and to have some fun. If I could do anything and have a leisurely day and take my mind off work, that’s what I’m doing.
People love to interact with my kid when he’s there. We’re really training him to appraise things at a young age. My parents are part-time dealers of antiques. My grandmother bought and sold antiques. It’s kind of a family business.
1:30 pm.: Baguettes and books
We’re driving to Larchmont and we’re getting a sandwich at Larchmont Village Wine, Spirits & Cheese. I’m doing prosciutto-mozzarella-basil on a baguette.
Then we’re going to Chevalier’s Books. What’s sad is that I’m often not looking for leisure material. I’m looking for something that I’m interested in learning more about or writing about, or that they’re turning into a show I want to audition for. But we’re also doing Little Golden Books for my son. He’s obsessed. We’re not huge on screen time, so we really encourage the book-buying.
2:30 p.m.: Cast pool party
We’re having some family fun in the pool and we’re doing that until evening. We invite people over all the time. My sister-in-law is a New Yorker, but she actually wrote last season on “The Rooster” and she’s often writing on shows in L.A., so she’s often here and she’ll have a couple friends come over. I know this sounds like a piece of PR or something, but we’ll really literally have Hannah [Einbinder] and maybe Mark Indelicato from “Hacks” come over to swim. Jen, our co-creator of “Hacks,” will come over.
6:00 p.m.: Family dinner
Sometimes we’ll order Grá to the house, which is a pizza place in Echo Park — excellent sourdough crust pizza. But if we don’t do that, an ideal evening is an early dinner at All Time on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. We’re ordering the ceviche and my son is having all of it and not sharing with anybody at the table.
8:45 p.m.: A thrilling ending to the day
After putting my kid to bed, my wife and I, in an ideal world (full disclosure: we haven’t done this in two years), we’ll watch something together that we’ve been meaning to watch. We have a long list of movies and we either want to revisit or that we haven’t seen that we need to watch.
We don’t watch a lot of comedies. It’s a dream to watch a “Black Bag” or a little espionage thriller. We really like that because it’s so different than the stuff that we’re working on in the day.
Often the things we watch are things that we admire. We like deconstructing it as fans of film and television. We do like talking about the making of it, but it’s less of a critique and more of a listing of the things we appreciated about it.
10:30 p.m.: No work tomorrow
And then it’s lovemaking ’til morning on a perfect Sunday. If it’s a perfect Sunday, there’s also a Monday that’s off.
Jay (not pictured) found himself alone and hopeless in a jail cell when a fellow inmate’s unexpected words of comfort changed his life.
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When Jay was 22 years old, he was a self-described loner. In this story, he is being identified by his nickname to allow himself to speak candidly about the following experience and his mental health. He says the few people he did hang out with at the time had questionable morals.
”I chose my friends poorly, and your friends have a tendency to rub off on you. And so I started making poor decisions,” Jay said.
One evening, when he and his friends were out drinking, someone suggested they should try to break into the chemistry building on his college campus. Most of the group shrugged the suggestion off, deeming it impossible, but Jay was convinced he could pull it off.
“The next night I made a plan of how to do it, and I did it,” Jay remembered. “And I didn’t get caught doing it, [but] I got caught afterwards.”
At around 1 that morning, Jay was placed in the county detention center. Sitting alone in his cell, reality began to sink in.
“I pretty much thought that my life as I knew it was going to be over, and I had decided that the world would be better off without me in it.”
Jay made a plan to end his life. As he prepared himself, he began to cry.
“But just in that moment when I was ready to do it, I heard a voice coming from the top left corner of my cell, from a little vent. And someone called out to me and said, ‘Hey, is this your first time?’”
The man who called out was an inmate in the cell next door.
“I collected myself a little bit, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Can I pray for you?’”
Jay had grown up religious, but had stopped going to church years before. In that moment, though, he knew he needed support. He said yes, and listened as the man began to pray.
“I wish I could tell you that I remember the [exact] words that he said to me, but what I remember is that his words landed with me, and instead of wanting my life to be over, suddenly I saw hope,” Jay said.
The interaction happened nearly ten years ago, but it was a pivotal moment in Jay’s life, and one he thinks about all the time.
“[Now], I have a good job. I have a girlfriend who loves me. I have a life. But I have a life because somebody who was in the same situation I was in had the courage to talk to a fellow inmate and be kind.”
Jay says that he wishes he could meet that man again and express his appreciation.
“[I would] shake that guy’s hand, give him a hug, and tell him what his small gesture meant for me, how he changed the course of my life.”
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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