something a little interesting and fun to enjoy with your morning keurig coffee…
A story of art from the Ukraine! It seems an old fellow from Kiev decided to turn his apartment stairwells into a Tsarist palace…
Kiev pensioner turns scruffy stairwell into a gilded palace
From the outside, number 11A is a drab block of flats like any other in Troyeshina, a scruffy Kiev suburb of identikit Soviet-era housing. The entrance door is daubed with graffiti, the ground floor hallway dingy and depressing.
But exit the lift between floors six and eight, however, and the contrast with the grey, snowy winter outside could not be greater. The stairwell has been plastered, gilded and ornamented so it resembles a Tsarist palace more than a Khrushchev-era block of flats. Set in gilded frames, reproductions of the Mona Lisa and other well-known portraits stare out. Cherubs and ornamental flowers adorn the ceiling; set amid the swirling plaster are colourful vistas of desert islands fringed with palm trees.
I think it’s lovely that this fellow chose to spend his time making things, crafting things, making his world more beautiful.
Practicing skills like molding plaster, painting, sculpting… they can really help you live a good life. Not only is there a certain satisfaction to making something with your own hands but there’s something that happens in your brain during the process… it’s like you’re freed from the world around you.
So I hope this story of art and plaster inspires you a bit…
As for what his wife of 38 years thinks of the results of his labours, it remains a mystery, he said. “She hasn’t ever commented. I guess that means she likes it.”
Ohhhhh yeah… Silence is a great sign *said no one ever about wives*