Art in a dugout. Story of a potter who became an infantryman
With a flashlight on his forehead, a man in a military uniform carefully carves a wooden spoon with a small knife with a hook. Everything around him is covered in shavings. The sounds of artillery can be heard in the distance.
“Workshops are different. You can carry this workshop with you,” says Pavlo Sakhno in a video he shot in the war zone.
13 years of pottery, his own workshop in Kyiv, festivals, and fairs — all this seems to be something from his past life. It's been almost 2 years since he quit pottery and volunteered for the war.
A spoon for a brother-in-arms
Short, blue-eyed, with a Cossack A traditional Ukrainian hairstylechub and a spirited look, Pavlo starts talking about pottery as soon as we meet. We met him at the Lisova Poliana psychological health and rehabilitation center. The center helps soldiers with complex stress disorders and other war traumas.
Pavlo came to Lisova Poliana with a concussion and PTSD. In a few days, he is to return to the front.
The man lays out wooden spoons of various sizes and shapes on the table in front of us. They are made of apple, cherry, and apricot wood. He brought them with him to give a master class for other soldiers.
“All of my spoons are of a modern shape, except for this one,” Pavlo points to a light wood spoon that stands out from the rest. “It's a traditional Poltava spoon. I made it for my brother-in-arms. That's how it all started.”
“You need to keep yourself busy in your free time on the front line. Creativity helps to keep you going,” he explains.
Pottery as a life's work
Pavlo moved from his native Odesa to Kyiv when he was 24. At first, he worked at the American Embassy until he accidentally attended a potter's workshop. It became Pavlo's hobby, and later he started receiving orders. He quit his job at the embassy and decided to open his own workshop in Kyiv.
In his ceramics, Pavlo used traditional patterns and colors: “We imitated traditional products by region but with modern materials. I watched old movies like The Lost Letter, paused and looked at the interior and the dishes, and then repeated them in my work.”
“I had a large team of 13 people. We represented the country in Israel, the Emirates, Poland, and Belarus. In Ukraine, we traveled to festivals and fairs,” he recalls.
“Art in the Dugout”
The workshop was an outlet for Pavlo and brought a good income, but with the outbreak of full-scale war, he put everything on hold and went to the military enlistment office. He spent two weeks in the territorial defense, cut his Cossack chub, and in mid-March joined the Armed Forces.
First, the defense of Kyiv, then the Kharkiv region. To divert his attention from the constant shelling, Pavlo decided to keep his hands busy again: “I remembered that I had been to a workshop with a man who made spoons. I ordered two knives, spoon cutters, and an ax. I started looking for new shapes, what spoons are made of, what they are covered with, and what traditional Ukrainian spoons look like.
At first, his brothers-in-arms didn’t take it seriously, just watching, but when they saw the first works, they were astonished.Pavlo presented the first spoons to the guys, and then orders began to come in from the military and civilians.
“It all starts with finding the wood, then I work with an axe, and then move on to a spoon cutter and sandpaper. The final stage is oiling. And then you can use it,” says the craftsman.
Nowadays, he makes about 5-8 spoons a month, sells most of them, and sends the money to the unit in which he serves.
“I called it art in the dugout. Many different artists went to defend the country, but they didn't leave their work behind during the war. I had a feeling that I and my work were forgotten when I went to war. It's like you lose touch with civilian life and the work you've been doing all your life. And the spoons brought me back in a way, at least I have feedback from people,” says Pavlo.