TERRA ERCOLANO Publications
Lesia Maruschak began collecting books and art when she was 15 years old. In 2018 Maruschak launched her international publication program Terra Ercolano.
Every piece created at Terra Ercolano distinguishes itself through individual design and production values. Known for her passion for paper, printing and publishing Lesia Maruschak personally selects the papers, binding materials and production methods for each title. Not only does she oversees all aspects of the production process, but she also sources materials from all over the world and in some instances personally crafts the papers and art which find their way into the title. At Terra Ercolano each publication literally passes through her hands. In fact, in some instances she personally produces the paper or in collaboration with Atelier Saint-Armand for her publications.
Terra Ercolano’s goal is to create art in book form and challenge the bounds of the traditional practice in art collection - conceptuaily and physically.
Our books and folios include written works by esteemed authors and academics, and astutely curated art. Each unique work is presented with elegance and an affinity for a blend of new and ancient artistic traditions. This is our gesture – our contribution to the art of book making.
MARUSCHAK’S Gesture
TRANSFIGURATION memorializes the victims of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 - Holodomor - an event widely thought to be genocidal. At its center is a single vernacular image of a young girl who survived. More than four million did not.
The book presents Maruschak’s intellectual and emotional response, informed by current research and the stories shared by survivors in the Ukrainian Canadian community the artist grew up in.
The project utilizes three kinds of images. A fictional album of Maria’s life offers an illusionary sense of order while pointing to the impending horror. Lead-like images derived from a laborious process and the use of ash, pigments, parchment, wax and felt express the feeling of starvation – the body transformed into skin and bone - the spirit destroyed. An abstract representation of the ancient Salamis counting tool, explores Maruschak’s inability to grasp the conscious eradication of human life on such massive scales.
TRANSFIGURATION is more than a prosthetic memory of a modern-day atrocity or a memorial space - it is a cautionary tale to be heeded.
WORKS
Maruschak comes to photography from the world of art, specifically Byzantine iconography. Her works, each unique and hand-painted with egg tempera and pigments, are metaphorical markers of a pathway to a place beyond. She proposes a visceral and tactile manner of exploring the world and our relationships with each other through repetition and rhythm. By using an algorithm designed in her digital lab, as a counterpart to the ancient techniques, Maruschak invites us to examine perplexing man-made tragedies which repeat themselves over and over again.
ALISON NORDSTRÖM Essay
In her essay “From Ashes” Alison Nordström notes: “The pictures she makes, finds, organizes, and embellishes, are thus powered both by a need to know and by the impossibility of knowing, and both elements become what the pictures are about. Maruschak transcends the absence of statistical fact by asserting the higher truths of selfhood, identity and artistic expression with images that are intentionally ambiguous, mysterious and abstruse. Both the documentary base and the artist’s transfiguration of it are true, and both are fictions.”
SABINE TANOVIĆ Essay
In her essay “Interspersed Memory” Sabine Tanović notes: “The work creates an immaterial transitional space - a space of elucidated experience for the viewers. It is a powerful medium that creates considerable potential for learning through experience. It is a space that exists around historical memory evoked and its purpose is to encourage the feeling of connection between two realities, personal (both ours and the one of the artist) and factual.”
POEM
The publication is accompanied by the poem “EYEBROWS” by Lyuba Yakimchuk, translated by Svetlana Lavochkina, from Words for War, edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky. © Borderline Foundation for Academic Studies, 2017. © Academic Studies Press, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
PLATES
21st century printing and 4th century painting are integrated to present a suite of 27 color plates.
Each image has been meticulously hand-printed by Maruschak on Awagami Kitakata Paper and overpainted with egg tempera, pigments, wax and resin. Some images have been treated to Manetti 23 KT gold leaf. The result is the unique harmony or painting, gilding and photography.
Each work has been individually hand tipped onto Somerset Book Wove Paper.
ICON
The cover is ornamented with an image of Maria F. presented in the tradition of the Byzantine icon entitled “Dochka”. The image of Maria F. was obtained from a private collection with permission granted to the artist to use and alter.
The icon was rendered using an algorithm created for this series. It is gilded with 23 kt Manetti gold leaf, hand-painted with egg tempera, pigments and wax on Hahnemühle Museum Etching paper and set into the debossed cover panel.