B.F.A. (Alta.), M.F.A. (Concordia)

Darlene teaches printmaking in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts

Loss and Cultural Identity

Baba’s Wedding Dress presents a remnant of my Grandmother’s bridal gown, a physical trace that evidences the long-term memory of her marriage – a significant moment in her 100-year-old life. Mary Konoby (nee Cheylak) was wed on September 22, 1928. She was born into a Ukrainian family as the oldest of twelve children and married into another Ukrainian family. Mary is first generation Ukranian-Canadian, her family having arrived from Galicia in the first wave of emigrants. Her husband Metro Konoby had emmigrated to Canada as a young boy with his mother around that same time in 1903. She was searching for answers as to why her husband, Metro’s father, didn’t return to the Ukraine. He had mysteriously died in a sanitarium in Mississauga Ontario.

These are some of the stories and family mysteries that I am exploring in my recent photo-etchings and “Earthboxes” which bring images and texts together with actual soil. The earthbox Baba’s Hand echoes my grandmother’s love of gardening and our Ukrainian agrarian cultural roots. This is apparent in the actual wheat kernels that sprout in the soil and that are seen through the screen-printed image.