Spotlight Artist Sept 2017: Olga Yukhno

Artist's Bio:

Olga Yukhno is an artist originally from Pyatigorsk, Russia. It was in Russia her passion for art began. Inspired by the culture of her home country, she began by working with batiques, stained glass and enameling. She studied under world renowned enamellist, Nikolai Vdovkin for several years to hone her skills, before moving to the United States in 2008.

In the US, she no longer had access to the tools needed to continue with her enameling, and quickly started expanding into any and every new medium she could get access to. What she fell in love with was ceramic sculpting. It allowed her to experiment, and fuse together old-world artistry with her skills and abilities across a wide variety of art forms to create totally new and unique mixed media pieces.

Over the years, Olga has traveled to over 25

countries across Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and the Americas, and visited museums ranging from the world famous Louvre in France, to the smallest unnamed art displays in towns and villages few outsiders have ever seen. It is in these travels she gets the most inspiration, drawing on the uniqueness and culture of every new place she visits, she finds ways to incorporate those cultural nuances into each new piece she makes. The colors, shapes, and ideas of everything from tribal masks to modern street art can be seen woven into her work. She loves juxtaposition in her art, old and new, lustrous and weathered, and it’s in these contrasts she finds beauty.

Artist's Statement:

I travel to different areas of the world for fun and inspiration. I love to learn about different cultures, and who the people that live in the countries I visit really are. I take what I learn from these places and translate it into the universal language of masks.

I am inspired by all sorts of ethnic music, especially Latin American, and love music you can dance to. In music, you have all the different individual elements; rhythms, instruments, and voice coming together to create the music. I use forms, and colors to create the same type of harmony.

All of the pieces are created by hand forming clay into the coils that make up the masks, then hand detailing them with fine tools. Each piece also uses over 20 glazes to create the color patterns.

You can reach Olga by clicking HERE.