Olga Bench: about Wólka, Bałucianka and famous Lemko sculptures

In the old photograph from 1935 – Ivan Kyshchak, Dmitri Shalayda and Oleksa Stetsak (on the right). They are representatives of a big group of sculptors from Wólka and Bałucianka near Rymanów. They came to Zakopane for the Mountain Day and they presented their works. They are glad to see that their works attract attention of both simple men and lords, they think about the future… They do not know what it will be like. For sure, it does not even cross their minds that they will sale their works not to Rymanów, Iwonicz, but to Truskawiec, Morszyn or even Odessa… In other pictures – the works of Lemko sculptors. A box decorated with a cherry bough which was made in a mignon way by Oleksa Stetsak, a fairy-tale stick by Hryhorij Bench .. All of these are the exhibits of a private museum of Lemko sculpture and Easter paintings of Kishchak family, located in Lviv. About the masters who were acquainted with wood’s soul, about difficult lots, about villages where many of such skillful sculpturers were born – we talk about this with a conductor, musician, pedagogist, professor of the Ruzomberok Catholic University, a former deputy of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Ukraine, ex-general consul of Ukraine in Presov – Olga Bench. But today this serious lady will be, first of all, the daughter of a great sculptor Hryhorij Bench. And she wil return in her memory to the times when she used to sit among chips of wood and watched with curiosity how her father formed something interesting, fairy-tale, fantastic – of a simple piece of wood…