Intricate Slovakian wood carving offers ‘moving’ experience in many ways
Joe Stefka, left, chairman of the board at the National Slovak Society, and Sue Ondrejco, with the National Slovak Society Heritage Museum, display an animated woodcarving in advance of the society’s Septemberfest set for Sept. 26 in McMurray.
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
The National Slovak Society display opened Nov. 25 to the public.
Peering at a gargantuan animated wood carving, you expect to see movement.
What you wouldn’t necessarily know when looking at the basswood creation now in Washington County is that it was moved more than 3,000 miles from its origin in Eastern Europe to a now-closed store in Sharon, Mercer County, then moved again this summer to Peters Township so the little people, animals, sawmill and workshops could entertain those at the National Slovak Society Heritage Museum.
And Sue Ondrejco, curator of the museum on Valley Brook Road, hopes that Eastern Europeans and spectators of other ethnic origins find the craftsmanship evident in the masterful carving to be a moving experience.
“Words can’t express,” Ondrejco said. “It’s the purest form of folk culture.”
The 17-foot-long panel features 53 little scenes from significant settings in Slovakia and 82 animated figures. Three wood carvers captured everyday activities such as women churning butter, scutching flax, winding and spinning yarn and weaving on a loom. Workers enter an opal mine, make barrels and shoes and, of course, carve wood. A bear carries a sheep it has snatched from a mountain pasture below mountain peaks, churches and castles. Shepherds and their dog pursue.
Anne and David Dayton, who are not Slovak but who ran a Mercer County Slovak folk craft shop for 14 years, were enchanted by an animated wood carving in Rajecka Lesna (Woods) in northwestern Slovakia, where a Christian pilgrimage takes place every Sept. 8, the feast day of the birth of Mary, mother of Jesus. The compilation of carved tableaux measuring 25 feet was made by parishioner Jozef Pekara over the course of 15 years.
The Daytons commissioned a variation of the display for their store.
Pekara, with the help of two younger artists, labored over the basswood carving for the Daytons over the course of 2 ½ years, shipping it in sections as they were completed. He died six weeks after the last section was finished, according to an article in the Sharon Herald newspaper.
Hidden behind the wood – also known as linden, the national tree of Slovakia – are six Volvo windshield wiper motors that power the movement of the figures. Joseph Stefka, former McGuffey school superintendent, who is chairman of the nine-member NSS Life board of directors, called the way the scenes blend together “seamless.”
When the Daytons closed their store near Grove City for the last time after the 2014 Christmas holidays, they chose the National Slovak Heritage Society Museum as the wooden carving’s new home.
“We paid a little bit for it,” said David Blazek, president and chief executive officer of NSS Life.
The wooden panels, pillars and base were disassembled, trucked to Peters and reassembled as a permanent exhibit amidst other art, crafts and historical documents that have been housed at NSS Life locations in Southpointe and now, McMurray, where the organization purchased property a dozen years ago.
Students from nearby McMurray Elementary School already have signed up for a tour as part of their unit on Slovakia.
NSS Life was formed in 1890 as the National Slovak Society to insure immigrants who spoke no English but who came to North America to work in coal mines and steel mills. A cholera epidemic, lack of jobs and crop failures in their native land caused many to emigrate.
The Library of Congress recognizes Narodny slovensky spolok, founded in Pittsburgh by Peter V. Rovnianek, who was also a newspaperman, as “the first supraregional, nondenominational association of Slovaks in the United States.” In the 1990 U.S. Census, 1.8 million people identified themselves as being of Slovak ancestry. This is the world’s largest concentration of Slovaks outside of Slovakia.
Showing off the wood carving, which features a creche front and center, also served as a kickoff for the National Slovak Society Heritage Museum’s “Septemberfest,” formerly known as Christmas in September.
The Sept. 26 event lasts from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. at 351 Valley Brook Road, McMurray. Slovak food, dancing by the Pittsburgh Slovakians, craft demonstrations of straw and paper Christmas ornaments and vendors will be part of the festival, as well as cooking demonstrations of chlebicky, open-faced sandwiches, a carrot-garlic spread and ceregi, fried dough knots. Roxy, representing the sheepdog breed native to Slovakia, is again scheduled to make an appearance.