What do people associate with the word “art”? Museums with their strict no-talking policies, or modern art exhibitions where exhibits often challenge conventional perceptions? In fact, it goes beyond all of that.
One of the objectives we have set here at UWCF is to bridge the fictional gap between people and art. We strive to show that painting is beautiful and meaningful. And everyone can find something interesting to explore, irrespective of whether or not you have been interested in art exhibitions before.
CONTEST
On Saturday, our morning started with children’s laughter, smiles and slight excitement. At 12, we launched the contest “Drawing Like Da Vinci”. It had been initially conceived to combine the useful with the pleasant. The contestants – students of 8 to 10 grades of Taras Shevchenko State Art School – competed to become the author of an interactive mural on the wall of their own school. The agenda was as follows.
First, the children were divided into three areas, and then by lot each area was given a reference painting. There were three of them: the Mona Lisa, the Vitruvian Man, and the Lady with an Ermine. The contestants had to create their own interpretations of the paintings in any genre, theme, style, with the only essential condition that the base painting could still be recognized. For the contestants’ convenience, creative company «ТОP» provided gouache paints from one of the best producers – Neva Palette Artistic Paint Factory.
They had 3 hours to create their paintings. After that, the jury selected three winners. These short-listed rivals competed in the final for the grand prix. The winning painting is supposed to be a rough design for creating a mural on the wall of their alma mater. Later on, the mural will be animated using AR technologies.
Alongside the three finalists, viewers could select one young artist for the Audience Choice Award. All the contesting artworks are available in a separate photo album on our Facebook page.
While the children were painting, absorbed in their ideas, creativity was seething all around. To tune in the young artists to the positive wave, for two hours, famous street musician and poet Edgar Vinnytskyi was reciting his motivating poetry for them.
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After the contest finished, the vibrant jazz duo NK project. performed for the event’s guests. Romantic melodies played by bandura and guitar player Sviatolav Sylenko marked the event’s completion. Oleksand Oles’ poetry that he presented sounded even more soulful than in the original. However, the ones who stole away all the girls’ hearts were the guys from the acoustic duo ROGI.
EXHIBITION
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Drawings in AR - AR is the first interactive exhibition in Ukraine that uses this kind of technologies. It was prepared by students of the Kyiv animation school Pause to play together with their leader, founder of the school and the animation studio Nikita Kravtsov. The exhibits could be animated thanks to Nikita’s good cooperation with Oleksandr Velychko, director of Yаskravo and one of the developers of the application SIMO AR. By the way, not only the great artist’s mechanisms, but also computer technologies became three-dimensional. Exhibition of Computers in AR brings you back to the past to see the exhibits representing computer technologies of the world and Ukraine.
Nikita Kravtsov – is a successful Ukrainian animator. He supervised the production of videos for clients from all continents, except Antarctica. In particular, Nikita worked on creating an explanatory video for Elon Musk’s Hyperloop project and animations for numerous research projects, including for the space industry.
Both young and adult viewers were absolutely delighted by the exhibition!
BOOK PRESENTATION
The book Animation History: How the Art Is Born - presented at the event is a fundamental work completed by Nikita about the human progress, development of arts, culture, and of course animation. The book tells in simple and easily understandable terms how the prehistoric ‘cartoons’ first appeared, how Leonardo da Vinci made a contribution to the emergence of our modern animation, how Alice saved Walt Disney’s studio, and how an air conditioner nearly disrupted the release of the first Star Wars film.
The lecture covered more than just the book – it also touched upon the development of animation and the mankind, evolution, and search for new solutions to old challenges. Basically, the speech – just like the book itself – gave an insight into the arts and progress presented in a plain style, both enlightening and fun.
WHAT ELSE HAPPENED?
We had an exhibition of pastel drawings “Autumn Flowers” - that is one our favourite artwork collections at UWCF. It consists of the drawings created by participants at our art workshop by Andriy Kulagin.
Pause to Play school organized a cool interactive quest game for younger children. All the kids had great fun!
Worthy of special mention was a corner from PremierFood and Milkshake where they served free of charge and absolutely delicious milkshakes to all guests.
Another small surprise was waiting for the youngest visitors – we arranged a face-painting location. Magic brushes of our water make-up masters turned the kids into butterflies, princesses, and other fairy-tale characters. We would like to thank volunteer masters Liliya Bondarenko and Iryna Tkach.
OUTCOME
The children happy to try their luck and talent in a large and serious contest, excited and impressed eyes of the viewers, and lots of most heartfelt thanks that we received – this all makes us think we are doing the proper thing.
We would like to once again thank everyone who has helped this event happen! Our special thanks go to our most favourite venue at Parkovy Kyiv International Convention Center. We would like to express our gratitude to the companies: Stul Naprokat, Milkshake, PremierFood, InJazz, Voda Ua та Tesla Batteries.
