The Town Talk from Alexandria, Louisiana • Page 27

I 1 Advice, C-4 Television, C-8 Friday April 2, 1993 7. Alice B. Story r. The Town Talk I a oo -V I ill 1 1 1 If. Judith Meeks Staff photographer Pysanky, a Ukrainian form of Easter egg decorations, dry on a counter at Prompt Succor Catholic School.

Egg 'pysanky' Youngsters learn Ukrainian art of Easter decorating 1 i used because boiling results in a small accumulation of water under the shell, and this moisture can ruin a design over time. The books also point out that pysanky is plural and the singular form is pysanka. In a handout for the children to take home, Mrs. Holcombe summarizes the pysanky method as follows: "The process is a wax resist. Taking a clean raw egg, all the areas that are to remain white are covered with melted beeswax using a very small funnellike tool known as a kystka.

The egg is dyed yellow, and those areas that are to remain yellow are then covered with wax. The process continues using successively darker colors each time. Lastly, every part not covered with wax is dyed black. Holding the pysanka next to a candle flame the wax is melted and wiped away with a soft cloth and then varnished." Slow work On this Thursday morning, the children start these steps at 8 a.m. An hour and a half is allowed to finish.

The work goes slowly. Draw design, apply wax, dip into dye, remove, and outline another area. It may sound simple, but a ball of cooled wax stopping up a stylus slows one down. The stylus called a kistka By Alice B. Story Arts writer The second-graders are writing eggs.

They do it using wax-filled pens while seated at tables set with Mason jars, wax blocks, black candles and uncooked eggs. Each table is also equipped with one hovering mom. Such is involved in producing pysanky or Ukrainian Easter eggs in Val Denley's art classes at Our Lady of Prompt Succor Elementary School. The decorated eggs' name comes from the root word pysaty, meaning "to write," and the folk art dates to pre-Christian days. Guest teacher Nicole Holcombe, Belgian native and mother of four Prompt Succor students, spearheads the pysanky project as guest teacher.

By project's end, she would have volunteered daily for two and one-half weeks and worked with 20 art classes at the school. Books, postcards and magazine articles loaned by-Mrs. Holcombe are arranged along a blackboard in the art room. Among the sample designs, history and technique description comes the explanation that raw eggs are used because pysanky are for decoration and not consumption. Raw eggs are also Judith Meeks Staff photographer Wells melt wax to uncover the designs on their eggs.

Arts groups need your assistance Arts and humanities projects are studies in perpetual motion. Someone, somewhere is always planning another. Thank goodness. Many are free, and although some require small fees, time is often the major cost. You can help.

You can even choose between temporary and long-term community service. The Town Talk Will in this column occasionally devote space to volunteer needs in arts and humanities activities, as we hear about them. For starters, Lois Grant of the Rapides Parish Library tells us of the following library projects for helping hands and heads: Working with or enrolling your children in workshops during the Easter holidays. The workshops are to make decorations for the library's summer reading program. Giving funds to be used for juvenile magazine subscriptions.

Lois sometimes starts one project in order to get another under way. Take the droll suns wearing sunglasses and hanging from the ceiling in the children's area at the library's Main Branch. They were made by children for last summer's reading program. The theme was "Grins and Giggles." Lois organized workshops in early spring to make the suns and other paper sculptures. This year's theme is "All Aboard for Craft Fun." Workshops for train-theme de-; corations are scheduled for 1-3 p.m.

Tuesday and Thursday. The decorations will be distributed among all branches. Workshops are limited to 30 participants and are free, but reservations are required. Magazines A second project deals with juvenile magazine subscriptions. In January, Lois asked organizations as well as individuals to help sponsor juvenile magazines at the 10 library branches.

At that time, budget cuts meant that six branches were receiving no magazines on the elementary level. Main Library's eight subscriptions accounted for most juvenile magazine titles. The average cost of juvenile magazine subscriptions is $15 a year. Lois points out that the magazines are not solely for enter tainment. Encourages reading "The usual magazine format of brightly colored photographs with short articles gives the appearance of being easier to read than a book," at least for some children, she explains.

That makes the magazine style "a good medium for reluctant readers." To date, Lois has raised roughly $650, and that translates into 40 magazine subscriptions. Lois is elated. Not only have organizations and individual adults been helpful but youngsters, too, have made subscriptions possible for the branches they frequent. The Student Council at Pine-ville Junior High School raised $100 for the Martin Branch Library by saving and contributing their, change for a week, Lois reports. The Junior Woodmen of the World donated $70 toward subscriptions for Boyce and Glenmora branches.

Tioga Elementary 4-H Club donated a subscription to Tioga Branch. Several smaller libraries remain in need of subscriptions, Lois says. People who can help with either of these children's projects for the library can call Lois at 445-6436. Alice B. Story reports on arts ond humanities activities at The Town Talk.

She writes this column weekly. Natalie White (left) and Emily or kystka depending on the source consists of a metal funnel attacked to a stick wrapped with copper wire. The wire is used to keep the tool hot and the wax flowing, Mrs. Denley points out. "The children see each The eggs receiving such careful attention are as different as the hands that hold them.

On the eggs appear suns, crosses, bars and dots. Flowers, strings, bands, stars. One design is even Please see EGGS, C-2 other's eggs come out, and they want to go through the stages. It's so different from painting with brushes, and everybody enjoys doing it. 'It's my egg' is the way they feel, and they're baby-sitting that egg," Mrs.

Denley says. Decorated Easter eggs celebrated the sun family and prepare a good din the process was considered a way of transferring goodness from the household to the de- ner betore working on the eggs. Pysanky were made at night. No one was allowed to watch the women working because See DECORATED, C-2 represent various trinities such as air, fire and water, heaven, earth and hell, a family of father, mother and child, and especially the religious trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Criss-crosses within the triangles represented the net to which Christ referred in the phrase "fishers of men." Black eggs carrying such motifs as ladders and gates were sometimes called "gate" eggs and presented to older people.

These designs supposedly represented bridges to heaven. The eggs were decorated by women who were to be in a peaceful state. Supposedly the eggmaker to be would avoid gossip, deal patiently with her winning out over death, or birth in spring winning over dormancy or death in winter. The eggs, representing the whole nation, were parts of Ukraine's designs, colors, legends and craftsmanship. They were given as symbols of good wishes as well as of fortune telling.

Almost every element of the design had meaning. Eggs in light colors with floral patterns were given to children. Eggs given to teen-agers used a great deal of white space in reference to their futures' being blank pages. Married couples received 40-triangle eggs, meaning a 40-triangle design covered the egg. These shapes could EDITOR'S NOTE: Ukrainian Eajfer Eggs and How We Make Them, a book by Anne Kmit, Loretta L.

Luciow, Johanna Luciow and Luba Perchyshyn, is the source for the following information about pysanka, plural pysanky: Pysanky or decorated Easter eggs had their beginnings in pre-Christian days of sun worship in the area now called Ukraine. It was believed the sun was the life source, and the egg represented both the dormancy of winter and the bursting into life of spring. In pre-Christian times, the eggs were created only during spring festivities in celebration of the sun. Later, the decorated eggs became symbols of life's fl 1 1 Judith Meeks Staff photographer Judith Meeks staff photographer Christopher Simon holds a wax-filled kystka to a candle flame to melt the wax. A wax-filled stylus called a kystka is used to outline a penciled design..