Ritual art

POL,

Kłopotnica

    • Artystka na tle pająków ze słomy i bibuły.
    • Stoisko z ozdobami choinkowymi. Są zrobione głównie z bibuły i papieru kolorowego.
    • Na stoliku leży wianek na głowę z kwiatami z krepiny.
    • Ozdoby na choinkę z papieru i słomy: ryby, bocian, muchomor i dwa światy z opłatków.

    Zofia Sompolińska makes ornaments inspired by many motifs from the regions of her ancestors. What started as genealogical research evolved into an interest in ethnology. Since Zofia has always gravitated towards the arts, her interest seeped into her forms of self-expression, which in turn allowed her to gradually discover folk art from Sieradz and Łęczyca regions, and parts of Jarocin.

    As she recalls: “My grandma, Adamina Dzidowska, née Firgan, she could plait straw hats like no one else, and I remember her making these plain Christmas ornaments, but I didn’t manage to learn it from her. My mom and I also used to make different toys and garlands for our Christmas tree. I was born in Poznań, so we couldn’t really use straw to make them. So when we made, for example, crepe paper garlands in place of straw, we used an aluminum lid from a milk container. I brought my first pająk (straw mobile) from an open-air museum in Lublin when we were on a school trip there. From that moment on, I was determined to make one of my own. I’ve always liked making things, even as a little girl, I did some embroidery, but I started to take my art seriously in 2017”.

    Now, Zofia makes pająki, Christmas ornaments, paper toys, crepe paper flowers, and tries her hand at some types of embroidery (Sieradz embroidery and snutka, sometimes called spiderweb embroidery) and decorates eggs for Easter. She’s often accompanied by her daughter.

    She looks for possible motifs and patterns in old magazines, books, and even museums, and then creates ones of her own based on what she’s seen. When, while reading a stitching guidebook and making some Christmas ornaments, she sees suggestions to use traditional patterns, she tries to imagine how these ornaments could have looked, taking into account the limited resources available at the time.

    In her work, she mainly uses crepe paper, straw (with rye from her own garden), willow branches (main material in making the base for pająki), coloured paper, candy wrappers, and blown chicken and duck eggs. Zofia decorates her Easter eggs using wax from neighboring beehives after first dying the eggs in natural dyes (usually using onion shells, red cabbage, and alder cones). What she ends up with are beautiful decorations, although she’s, in her own words, still a beginner in the craft.

    The first and only contest Zofia took part in so far was the 30th Ceremonial Art Competition in Rudniki in 2021. Her handmade pająki won her 1st place in the “Traditional crepe paper and paper ornaments – crepe paper and paper flowers, garlands, pająki, wedding rods, etc.” category.

    Contact www: wycinanka.pl e-mail: ludowe@wycinanka.pl