Polish Symposium - Hucisku, July 2010

                                                  The trip to Poland didn't start well.

I was due to take a bus from Montpellier to Barcelona where I would catch a plane to Katowice. But when the bus arrived at quarter past midnight it was already full. Two hours later I was driving to Barcelona.

The next afternoon the passengers on my Wizz Air flight applauded when we touched down; I summoned enough energy to join in.

Though I couln't see Katowice, just the small terminal building, the runways set in fields of bright grass and beyond, trees, woods, on all sides.

I mentioned this to Bartosz when he collected me at the airport the next morning.

"Ah yes," he said "in Poland we have a saying : if you can't find it in the forest, better go and have a look in the forest!"

I was to hear more of this dry humour in this very rural country, where they like beer and spirits and much of the building is in brick.

Very similar to Britain. Apart from the language, where most of the consonants have gone feral and the others are in drag.

Orle Gniarzdo was the name of our hotel.

The Eagle's Nest

Gathered there, a group of Polish artists and academicians, a contingent of Rumanians, and a slightly dubious Briton, who listened intently and clung like a bull-dog to anything sounding like English; or French. I was in very respectable artistic company.

Company which also turned out to be polite, gracious, sincere,

and frequently, deliriously funny.

For several days, a group of these serious people were occupied writing a letter to those who administer the Polish Culture. Between bouts of painting in one of the hotel's conference rooms, the rest of us went off sight-seeing.

As somebody joked, "In this region, you can't drive for more than five minutes without coming across a castle!"

They are all known as "Eagle's Nests"

OGRODZIENIEC

ZAMEK MIROW

  ZAMEK BOBOLICE

The landscape reminded me of the Englih Heartland, before urban sprawl set in along with the pseudo modernisation of the sixties an seventies. Roads following rolling hills through woods of ever green trees, small towns and villages, charming, rustic, with a hint of a world beyond.

En route to Czestochowa we stopped off at the studio/gallery of sculpter Jerzy Kedziova. Jerzy, A.K.A. Jotka, was one of our group.

He is renowned for his balancing sculptures, works which are poised on wires, and which were recntly shown off to stunning effect amongst the contemporary architecture of Dubai.

During an evening of festivities, I also noticed that he and his wife were accomplished dancers!

The cathedral at Czestochowa is huge and important.

There are always vast numbers of visitors,

many of them making for the chapel of the celebrated Black Madonna.

As an example of the place of the Catholic Church in Poland it is an impressive site.

But as an old-fashinoned heathen I found the presence of

so much belief claustrophobic,

so I slipped out through the park

to have a look round

                                                                      and do some

                                                                        shopping...

We met back at the gallery which Wlodzinierz Karakiewiez, with some colleagues, hard work, and some regional funding had developed from the old railway ticket hall.

                                                                    A fine gallery.

Wlodzinierz is a jolly energtic man (with a smattering of English) who worked with Mirela Traistaru on a large canvas during our stay at Hucisku (see videos).

Before returning to the hotel, we passed by his house to meet his wife, visit his studio, and drink a quiet cup of coffee.

Although renovated and now surrounded by appartment blocks, the house is basically the same building lived in by his wife's great grand parents, when it was a simple farmer's home in the fields outside the city.

A house full of charm.

Towards the end of the stay a violent storm broke through the heatwave to freshen the air.

And we celebrated Wlodzinierz's "name day" to freshen our academic brows!

And Waldemar Rudyk's impressive sculpture, executed during the week, was hauled out of the woods for all to see.

I had decided to fill the 48hr gap between the Symposium and my return flight from Katowice with a visit to Krakow. On hearing of this, Adam Wsiolkowski, rector of the Jan Matejko Academy in Krakow, offered to give me a lift in his car. Like all the Polish people I met, Adam is charming, enthusiatic, and drole; perhaps even more so! The drive to Krakow was brisk and so was the conversation. I found I shared much with Adam Wsiolkowski, including ownership of a Fiat Punto and a dislike for rude or improper drivers!

After a coffee in the Planty park and dropping my bags off at my hostel, which conveniently looked across to the Academy building,

Adam kindly took me over to the Academy to show me his offices and tell me something of the history of the place, his role there and some wonderful anecdotes.

The work of some of the Academy's students lit up my early days as an art student, still do, and to be in the very building was like visiting the Bauhaus, Graceland and Laugharne, all at the same time!

One of those who opened my eyes and ears to Polish art was Tadeusz Kantor, who taught for a while at the Academy. Adam recounted how, on hearing the noise of hammering coming from the studio where Kantor was instructing a class of students, they would say

"Aha! Tadeusz is giving a painting lesson!"

But behind this there is a strong resistance against giving up the traditional teaching of basic disciplines. All students must learn to draw, paint and understand colour theory, whether they will later be ainters, dress designers or film makers.

From the windows of Adam's office, myself and the Rumanian colleagues had a grandstand view of the ceremony celebrating the reinstallation of the statue of Grunwald,

the Polish warrior hero who liberated the Polish people from Teutonic domination and whose statue was tumbled into pieces by the Nazis for doing so.

After the war the pieces were painstakingly put back together and the statue replaced atop its plinth by helicopter,

an event which Adam remembers seeing from the Academy as a student in 1976.

                   Just up the road, Chopin was also being celebrated, in a different way!

Sadly, we had to leave Adam to his weekend with his family and go our separate ways, Wasely and Mirela back to Bucharest, Wasely's daughter Dana off to Prague by train, and me down to the Market Square to devour a classic half-pounder at the Hard Rock Cafe!

This fueled me for a day and night wandering Krakow town,

discovering that Florianska Street on a hot July night strongly resembles Las Ramblas in Barcelona.

The next morning, after a "continental breakfast" that cost the price of a cup of coffee in Paris,

I got down to some serious shopping. The sales were on and there was a huge new shopping mall just round the corner from my hostel.

But the sky was grey, drizzle was setting in, nature's way of sating time to go home.

Yet there was one surprise left. Breakfast at the hostel near the airport the next morning was typically Polish : coffee, bread, cold meats, cheeses, salad...and in the middle of this selection a stemmed bowl, containing, could it be? Yes! Strawberry jelly! Something so familiar, so far from home.  

I don't know what it is, but I hope to go back soon to Poland to see if I can find it in the forest...