Aka Pereyma

Aka Pereyma was born September 30, 1927, in the town of Siedice, Poland. Till 1939 she resided in the Polish village of Domanice where her parents were school teachers. Her family then moved to the towns of Cholm and Sokal, Ukraine. It wasn't until 1959 that she took up residence in Troy, Ohio. She studied at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio and in 1963 pursued her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Hobart School of Welding Technology in Troy, Ohio. From 1965 to the present she exhibited yearly in solo and group shows.

Aka Pereyma works in a wide variety of media - sculpture, painting, decorative ceramics and drawings - that draw on Ukrainian folk art as a symbolic form. She expresses the essence of her work as follows: "I enjoy and need to incorporate in my everyday life the influence of the traditions and artistic expressions of my Ukrainian heritage. This enjoyment I consciously use as a point of departure in my artwork. I develop my compositions intuitively depending on my knowledge of Ukrainian folk art, especially the patterns of Ukrainian Easter eggs."

No element, no motif, no artistic consideration is regarded as ordinary in the art of Aka Pereyma. Her entire being is immersed in each and every moment of daily life, and her art transforms life into rousing celebration of everyday living. The question of what it means to "be alive" is bound up with the artifacts of her native Ukrainian roots that surround her daily routines. Aka Pereyma's art is generated by the power of nature, just as the very rhythms of nature defined the visual expression of Ukraine's ancient culture found on vessels, monolithic pre-Christian sculpture, ritualistic objects, including always the simplest source of restorative symbolism -- the decorated egg (pysanka).

Despite the fact that her entire creative period as an artist has been spent in America, and even though she was geographically separated from the Ukraine, she preserved a powerful link with her native land. Her formal education in art began later in life than usual, but inception and completion were replete with experience, discovery, and originality There is nothing in Pereyma's long and productive life that does not relate to her art.