Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1993–1994
Ukrainian Pysanky:
Zoria Zetaruk, Luba Eads and Natalie Pruc
The Wednesday morning Ukrainian egg class at
the Dula Senior Center in Las Vegas is a cheerful
place. The students hunch over their work, trading
stories and jokes as they carefully draw lines on eggs with
melted wax heated in small electric styluses. Instructor
Zoria Zetaruk, an energetic 80-year-old woman, is
everywhere, sketching the next step of the design on
a blackboard, encouraging and praising, passing cups
of red and purple dye around, noting the fine points
of an intricate design, and joining in the good-natured
kidding.
Zoria has been teaching this class for 15
years, ever since she arrived in Las Vegas, but
her knowledge of Ukrainian pysanky is rooted
in her earliest memories. Her parents were
Ukrainian immigrants to Alberta, Canada,
who insisted on teaching their children the culture
of their homeland. She says, “My mother
taught us early on how to make these Ukrainian
eggs, and she had a double purpose why she
did this—to keep the children quiet because
she loved to write eggs, and if we weren’t writing
eggs we’d be rambunctious. Therefore she
sat us all around the table and all together we
worked on these eggs. And then later on in life
when my mother wanted us to do better work
than we were doing, she knew another way of
doing it. She would say, ‘Zoria, will you help me, I can’t
see.’ She could see, but this was her way of getting me to
help her, and getting into better designs and to knowing
the tradition. And we would discuss the egg and
what we were drawing and why we were drawing this,
and that is how I got into the eggs.”
Pysanky, which means “written”, are traditionally
made for Easter and use Christian and pre-Christian
symbols such as stars, crosses, flowers and animals to
symbolize the rebirth of spring. Designs are drawn in
wax on the egg, which is first dipped in a light dye such
as yellow. More designs are drawn and the dyes become
successively darker until the egg looks like a dark lump,
misshapen with blobs of wax. When it is heated and the
melted wax wiped off, however, the completed design
appears as if by magic.
Two of Zoria’s students, Luba Eads and Natalie
Pruc, undertook an apprenticeship with her outside of
the regular class. Luba was born in New York to Ukrainian
immigrant parents, and has always had a strong
interest in all aspects of the culture, but did not have a
chance to learn pysanky until she met Zoria. Natalie was
actually born in Ukraine, but left with her family when
she was 12 and eventually came to Las Vegas. She was
already a skilled practitioner of traditional Ukrainian
embroidery, and had no trouble picking up the art of
pysanky as well.
Natalie Pruc, Zoria Zetaruk and Luba Eads.
Luba Eads “writing” a pysanky design in wax.
There is not much of a Ukrainian community in Las
Vegas, but these three women, who all speak the language,
prepare traditional foods, and carry on the art of
pysanky, make sure their heritage is not forgotten even
in the Nevada desert.
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