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Sixteen people were hard at work in the East Village, heads bowed as if in prayer, eggs in hand. They were practicing the ancient art of pysanky — Ukrainian Easter egg decoration, a painstaking process involving wax and dye. And though very few of them were actually Ukrainian, they all seemed to be getting the hang of it.
“I’m not in touch with my own roots,” said Juana Rubi, whose family is from the Virgin Islands. “And I don’t celebrate Easter. But I like cultural things. Especially something so old.” Ms. Rubi, here for her second year in a row, was busy drawing an image of her Yorkshire terrier, Zuko, on her egg next to some spirals, a cat face, a flame and some dots, using a heated stylus called a kistka.
Every year during the Christian season of Lent, the Ukrainian Museum on East 6th Street holds a series of pysanky workshops — and this was the final class before Ukrainian Easter, which falls on Sunday, April 8.
The instructor, Alexandra Lebed, showed the group a short film explaining the history of pysanky, which dates back to the pre-Christian era, and demonstrated the wax-resist technique known as batik. The eggs, a sign of life in the Ukrainian culture, are usually decorated at springtime and were once considered a talisman against evil. Only women and young girls decorated them in the past, away from the eyes of onlookers, for fear someone would cast an evil spell on the egg and its owner.
But today, everyone would work together for two solid hours: Men, women, teenagers, Ukrainian, African-American, Asian, Latina, Jewish, first-timers and veterans, concentrating intently at two long tables in a basement with no phone service.
Ms. Lebed, who grew up in the neighborhood and has been teaching the workshop for 10 years, gave the diverse crowd some basic pointers. Hold the egg gently — they are not hard-boiled or hollowed-out. “If you make a mistake in wax, it becomes part of your design,” she explained. “So just make the same mistake on the other side too, and you’re prefect.” The class nervously laughed.
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The museum held its first workshop in 1977, the year after it opened in its more cramped original space on Second Avenue to accompany a pysanky exhibition. “The classes were so popular that we’ve been scheduling them every year since,” said Maria Shust, director of the museum.
Each student first drew some basic lines with the cone-tipped kistka, heating it on a small white candle and then dipping it into a square of dark bees wax. The first layer of wax would result in those areas on the egg remaining white. The students dipped their eggs in yellow dye in two communal Mason jars at the front of the classroom. And then started etching some more wax designs. Those areas would remain yellow, as they then dipped the egg in orange dye. More wax. Then red dye. More wax. And finally black dye. Anything not covered in wax at that point would be painted black, as each successive dye covered the one before it. But the wax areas would retain the color before the wax was applied.
“It’s a little hard to grasp at first,” said Katherine Hupalo, etching fish and tiny bubbles on her egg. She was visiting with her Ukrainian husband, Alex, and their grown daughter, who have been making pysanky all their lives.
“It’s like coloring in reverse,’ said her daughter, Heather. “It’s actually my favorite thing to do.” When she was younger, she said, she used to accidentally break her eggs all the time. “I was super klutzy,” she said, smiling. Over the years, though, she’s gotten more careful and has a whole basket of pysanky at home.
Alex Hupalo, who grew up on Delancey Street, said his family’s eggs would be displayed at Easter on the table, next to the traditional Ukrainian dinner — kielbasa, ham, stuffed cabbage, and braided paska bread. But the pysanky are merely decorative and are never eaten.
When they were done with their designs, the students took their black eggs and held them close to the flame, gently rubbing each bit of wax off the surface with a paper towel. Each table had four small containers of tap water, just in case a fire erupted from the lit candles. “It’s usually just a little flare up with a paper towel,” Ms. Lebed said with a shrug. “Nothing major. But it happens.”
She instructed them not to hold the egg above the flame, which could result in a permanent carbon smudge. “Hold it here,” she said, taking one egg and moving it to the side of the fire to demonstrate.
“You melt off the wax and the colors just pop,” said Ms. Lebed. Sure enough, the colorful designs emerged, small sunrises slowly peeking out from each black surface. Neighbors oohed and aahed and congratulated each other.
“In the end it always looks nice — it’s a very forgiving art,” said Sara Comis, who was visiting with a mentoring group from Brooklyn called Junket, which has made pysanky an annual tradition for the past four years. “We kind of know what we’re doing. It’s kind of like riding a bike, one that you only ride once a year.”
At the other end of the table Ms. Rubi smiled down at her tiny Yorkie, multicolored dots and red flame, then gently placed the egg in the Chinese takeout carton provided by Ms. Lebed. “I’m so proud of this,” she said, taking a last look before closing the container.
At the next table, Terry Jacobson was admiring her own handiwork. “I’m going to bring this to my Seder,” she said, beaming.
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