Ukrainian artist keeps folk art of pysanky eggs alive during Easter, beyond

Put down that egg dyeing kit and come look at the eggs Carol Novosel creates using wax and dyes like her Ukrainian ancestors did.

Novosel said she can create one of these intricately designed eggs, called pysanky, with just an hour's worth of work (and some overnight waiting).

"I've mastered it," Novosel said. "The work that takes me two hours would take you two weeks."

But even for her, making a pysanka egg is not a quick project.

"If you take every step of process, the soak, the cleaning, making sure the shell accepts color, the wax and dye, the varnish and then to empty it out, it's at least an overnight project," Novosel said. "An average egg may take me an hour, but there's some waiting involved."

Novosel said sometimes she sees new egg designs in her sleep.

"Especially this time of year," she said, adding that the designs aren't just pretty, but incorporate symbols that each have a deeper meaning. "There are symbols that wish the recipient health, prosperity, long life, safe travels, getting along with neighbors, everything.

"A traditional pysanka egg is like a greeting card for someone."

Passing pysanky down through generations

She said herself, along with her three brothers and a sister, were taught the craft as children.

Novosel said she is the one who continues to create the eggs regularly, and has a studio at the Hope Center for Arts and Technology in Sharon. Novosel, 68, has lived in the northwest Pa. region her entire life.

She sells her eggs for $20 each, which she said is below market value, but she just likes to make them. She feels compelled to share the 2,000-year-old art with new generations.

"I sell them and my whole idea is to keep this folk art alive," she said.

She said it is a tradition to fill a basket of pysanky eggs, and bring them to church on Easter Sunday. She said she'll do that, and others who buy her eggs will, too.

Passing the Pysanka

Novosel is working with a grant through HopeCAT designed to keep folk art alive to teach her niece, Jill Fulmer, 40, how to create the eggs. Fulmer and her son, Matthew, 9, help with her egg festivals, held annually on afternoons around Easter. The festivals take place in Hermitage and showcase the eggs and how they're created. The 2024 festival took place March 24.

She said she sells most of the eggs she creates, but Novosel said over her 50-year span of egg making she has kept about three or four of her favorites per year, leading to a collection of approximately 150 pysanky eggs.

She always has help showing them off around Easter time.

"My Aunt Carol and I have always been close," Fulmer said. "I’ve helped with her egg festivals every year since I was old enough.

"I started helping my Gigi (grandfather) with bagging the sales and eventually took over handling the whole table and now add in the business side of promotion and online sales," she said.

Fulmer is learning the craft of pysanky and is passing what she learns to her son.

"It’s very important for someone to carry on the tradition and although I don’t find myself to be an artist with drawing, I’ve come a long way given Carol as my teacher," Fulmer said.

She said learning her family's folk art has been a dream of hers.

"Folk art is tradition," Fulmer said. "It's heritage. It’s keeping family history alive. We all came from somewhere in our historical lineage and it’s each generation's responsibility to continue to pass down the stories and traditions that our ancestors did. Folk art in my family is one of those traditions."

'Almost died out'

The pysanky tradition is not unique to the history of Ukraine, Novosel said, adding that many cultures in Eastern Europe have their own styles and symbols, which she has learned to interpret and imitate in her own work.

The art and techniques vary from culture to culture, but Novosel said she can tell the difference instantly.

"I've learned all the traditional symbols," she said. "I can tell a regional style, nationality style and work my way through all of that. The internet has muddled that somewhat."

Novosel is actually kind of a big deal in the world of pysanky eggs.

"I'm a resource," she said. "I know thousands of symbols and can tell you about each culture's composition and color. I'm widely copied and published everywhere, which is fine by me."

She said while she learned pysanky as a child, what spurred her fixation was a story about the (at one time) "dying art" in a 1972 National Geographic magazine.

"The art almost died out," she said. "There was a time in the Cold War that in Ukraine you were not allowed to make them. The practice is faith-based and the Russians were trying to get rid of all the independent cultures in the Soviet Union. You could be put under house arrest for making them."

She said in April 1972, National Geographic did an article about how the tradition was dying out. "I believed that (story) resurrected the art."

More than a hobby

It certainly inspired her. Novosel was 14 and wrote to the people mentioned in the story. That was the beginning of her friendship with kindred spirits with Pysanky lovers around the world. She wanted to be part of the folk art's renaissance.

Those people featured in the National Geographic article in Ukraine helped her find the materials to do pysanky, as well as information about the symbolism in the practice. They've also become lifelong friends.

"As soon as Communism fell, it became OK again" to make pysanky, Novosel said.

Making the beautiful eggs is much more than a hobby. She said she's trying to save the folk art piece of her culture, because it represents so much for her.

"Any culture's folk art is important," Novosel said. "It's good to put a face on those people" who carry on the tradition. "We are a people. What is art if it's not anything you can do to the best of your ability?"

She said she has no plans to stop making pysanky eggs.

"At this point, my vision isn't as good as it used to be, but I plan to wear myself out doing it."

Novosel has a website, carolnovoselart.com/, a Facebook page, facebook.com/CarolNovoselArt/, and a shop on Etsy, etsy.com/shop/CarolNovoselArt. She said she's taking a break on Etsy orders because she's busy doing the eggs for the holiday.

Contact Jennie Geisler at jgeisler@timesnews.com. Or at 814-870-1885.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Ukrainian artist determined to keep folk art of pysanky eggs alive