ART AUCTION TO HELP RELIEF EFFORTS
Donations of paintings, some from abroad
BRIDGEPORT — Paintings that evoke Ukraine and its people, including works by native Ukrainians, will be featured in a silent auction Saturday to help the war-ravaged country.
Brianna Pivarnik and her best friend Yaroslava Zamoyska, one of whose paintings inspired the fundraiser, have arranged the event, which will be held in the courtyard of Housatonic Community College, 900 Lafayette Blvd., from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will include food, live performances and craft sales.
“We wanted most of the pieces to have a Ukrainian background or have Ukainian soul in them,” Zamoyska, who immigrated from Ukraine in 2005 and lives in Norwalk, said. “We really wanted to have that feeling of what Ukraine is going through.”
“We have four major artists that created work specifically for this event,” Pivarnik, of New Haven, said.
The paintings include a portrait of a prominent 19th-century Ukrainian
poet, Taras Shevchenko, painted in 1968 and donated by Steve Taranko of Westport. Other paintings also were donated from Ukraine.
“People who purchase the pieces that were donated to us will be able to … bring a piece of Ukraine into their homes,” Zamoyska said.
Another is by 2-year-old Priya David, Pivarnik's
daughter. Priya's grandmother, Renu “Dolly” David, who was born in New Delhi, India, paints Ukrainian women in traditional headdresses.
One of the artists, the late Vladimir “Val” Karnauchov, also born in Ukraine, was a longtime art director for the New Haven Register's advertising department. His paintings were donated by his daughter, Laryssa Kaiser. “She thought her father would want to be part of this event,” Pivarnik said. “She said there is no better place to donate them.”
Zamoyska and two other Ukrainians decided the organizations that will benefit from all of the proceeds, including a $2 admission fee. “They chose Come Back Alive, which is an organization that basically supplies Ukrainian soldiers … to get the medical care they need” and for funeral expenses, Pivarnik said. The other is the U.N. Refugee Agency, also known as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
The event will include the singing of the Ukrainian national anthem by Oksana Kit and Yuliia Lukiv, poetry by Vitaliy Yakubovsky, “Hope for Ukraine” played by 9-year-old Sophia Honcharenko on piano, the dance group Kalynonka, a speech by Steve Taranko and the chance to talk with Ukrainians, including Yale University graduate student Yevhenii Monastyrskyi.
Zamoyska said the group's goal is to “help at least a few people and bring a few people to safety through those organization we are working with. That will mean so much to us.”