The path will be created soon owing to the efforts of the 5th Wooden Sculpture Festival’s participants. This year’s event commemorated Taras Shevchenko’s legacy, offering the sculptors a chance to trace the poet’s life journey in their works. The festival organizers were the Cherkasy City Council and the Park Authority Municipal Enterprise. For the first time, only Cherkasy artists were eligible for the carving competition.
Seven sculptors worked on wooden figures. Dmytro Burian carved Shevchenko in the Summer Garden, Oleksandr Turetsky presented his vision of Shevchenko’s Dream, Roman Turetsky created Striving for Freedom, Yurii Oliinyk showed A Petrified Woman, Volodymyr Tolstopiatov based his work on Shevchenko’s poem I Was Turning Thirteen, Anton Panasiuk named his sculpture Three Comebacks to Ukraine, and, finally, Yevhen Shtein carved Sleeping in the Steppe.
All figures have been made of oak, the trees, according to the Park Authority’s head Oleksandr Radutsky, being about 400 years old when cut down. The oak logs, measuring up to three meters long, were purchased from the Kirovohrad Forestry. Burian said the log’s size complicated his work: “At the same time, it was a fortunate circumstance since it allowed me to engage in experiments. I decided to carve not one, but two figures from the same log. We have such opportunities only rarely at our workshops.”
Radutsky stated that all seven sculptures would be transferred from the Jubilee Park’s main path to the path running close to the Tree of Love and offering a magnificent view of the Dnipro’s cliffs. This path will be renamed to honor Shevchenko.
