Minnesota churches host Ukrainian Easter egg workshops and sales to help relief efforts

It seems like Jackie Pawluk has always known how to make pysanky, the delicate, fanciful folk art also called Ukrainian Easter eggs.

"I learned from my mother," said Pawluk, a third-generation Ukrainian immigrant who lives in Columbia Heights. "She had us making them as soon as we were old enough to hold the stylus."

Every year, like many other women at her church, Pawluk makes several dozen of the intricately designed eggs, each of which can take as many as eight hours to create. Before Orthodox Easter each spring, the women gather their pysanky for a festival and sale at St. Michael's & St. George's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Minneapolis.

But this year, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the annual event gained a new urgency. The church dedicated all the funds raised at its April 10 event to humanitarian efforts in the ancestral homeland and to support its sister parish in Bucha, where many civilians recently suffered atrocities.

"Our mothers and grandmothers started this tradition. So we're just carrying it on. But boy, we've never had a turnout like this before," Pawluk said. "It was really heartwarming, because I know a lot of the people who were there came because they were looking for ways to support Ukraine. We were just overwhelmed with support from the community."

Across the state and the country, there is a flurry of pysanky-based fundraising efforts at churches, art stores and museums. St. Paul's Awaken church is hosting a Ukrainian Eggs for Ukraine event, a how-to workshop on Orthodox Easter (April 24). In New York, a group called Pysanky for Peace is encouraging people to sponsor a pysanka or host their own "pysanky parties" to support humanitarian groups helping in Ukraine.

Meaningful and mystique

Pawluk typically begins making eggs to stockpile for the sale as early as January — covering them with minuscule designs of stars, flowers and animals like birds, rams and horses.

"All of the different motifs have a different symbolism and a different meaning behind them," she said. "Ukrainians have been decorating eggs for thousands of years. It predates Christianity and became part of the Easter church tradition."

While making pysanky is routine for her, Pawluk understands why they are so compelling. "You have these fantastic, intricate designs on this very fragile shell," she said. "How fragile they are, it just adds, I think, to the mystique."

St. Paul artist Justin Terlecki, who learned the art of pysanky growing up in the Ukrainian-American community of Youngstown, Ohio, said he tries to begin each egg with a positive feeling.

"The final egg is supposed to hold good spirits," he said.

"We are always raised being told how important it was to keep the traditions alive and the art forms alive," Terlecki said.

Micah Witham, lead pastor at Awaken, an Evangelical Covenant Church in St. Paul, hadn't seen a pysanky stylus before this spring. And while he doesn't have Ukrainian roots, or even a deep connection to the country, he decided to learn the craft to help host the April 24 workshop at his church.

Witham hopes that people who attend the free event will make donations to the International Association For Refugees' work helping Ukrainians who fled the war.

As far as his own pysanky go, he's still getting a feel for the process. But he's already developed an appreciation for the eggs.