A shared newspaper article introduced me to Helen Badulak, master pysanky artist. There pictured were eggs graced with the most delicate lines, complimentary colors, and a perfect, quiet symmetry that defines her style. As I read the article, I zeroed in on one sentence: “Before starting a pysanky [sic], Badulak says a prayer and trusts God will guide her hand, she says.” She says! I knew that eggs contained far more depth than I had thus far been able to bring to my own work. And in one statement she revealed what must have been the secret of her mastery.
The trip to meet her at that first egg show was a pilgrimage. The large gym was lined with rows of tables displaying every egg-art technique imaginable. Ostrich-egg lamp shades cut through with lacy patterns. Whole dioramas with landscaping and painted figurines enclosed in a hinged goose shell. A Virginia bird farmer with crates of blown raw shells in every size and color. Egg stands of gold and silver, drilling tools and drill-bits, bedazzled Fabergé and painted movie characters. Novelties, one and all, but I pursued a more urgent objective.
Helen’s table was tucked into a corner. Her down-curved back faced me on first sighting as she dug through bins and boxes. When she finally turned around, I recognized her instantly from the newspaper article. She was egg-shaped herself, a Ukrainian baba with short gray hair and glasses. She moved slowly and methodically, searching here for blank receipts, rummaging there for bags and tissue paper. Despite her humble first impression, my heart raced with nervous excitement.
Introversion got the best of me and I delayed an interaction in favor of some browsing. I could have spent hours appreciating the intricacy of each egg on display; the tiniest finch eggs offered just as much artistry as the largest ostrich eggs. Straight and perfectly parallel lines ran in eternal circles accented by stars and triangles and stylized roses. Display case after display case held hundreds of unique designs in small plastic cubicles to separate one from the next. The multiple layers of varnish added a plastic glossy brightness which had me questioning if they were even real. My eyes feasted on crosses and flowers, geometry and fluidity, delicate netting and sweeping colorful backgrounds: even this extensive display seemed only a small sampling of her abilities. If there’s a pysanky heaven, this would be it.
I finally worked up the resolve to speak, leaning slightly over her table of masterpieces. “Your eggs are beautiful,” I led with, stating the obvious. “Oh, thank you,” she responded back with a delightful hint of Slavic accent. “I saw a newspaper article about you at home. I didn’t know the designs could be this detailed.” My mouth spoke while my brain rolled its eyes, shook its head, and let out an exasperated sigh. “Do you do pysanky too?” she asked. Her voice was soft and slightly raspy, yet inviting. “I do,” I replied, “but nothing like this.” “Oh excellent! What’s your name?” “Joe,” I replied. “Ah, Joseph, did you bring any of your eggs with you?” My eggs? My eggs?! Of course I brought them; this was an egg show after all.
Out to the car, gingerly carrying the year’s batch back though the crowds. I handed her the carton of my own creations like handing over an infant to a stranger. She opened the lid and removed the tissue that was laid on top. “Oh, they’re beautiful work, Joseph.” Her use of my full name made me uncomfortable; that was usually reserved for my mother’s ire. She scanned over the dozen, picked up one in particular, and as she looked into that egg, she looked into me. She accurately read the lack of confidence in my indecisive lines. She critiqued the wavering symmetry and balance. She used the tip of a black ballpoint pen to point out a suggested change in layout; it would have been an honor—an improvement even—if she had blobbed her ink on my design. “I like that,” was an occasional unearned compliment, perhaps offered as consolation as she bared my soul. A good friend, if present, may have jumped in to defend me from her criticism. My own mind stood in partial shock at her bold appraisal of a stranger’s work. But I couldn’t avoid the obvious: she was right. About all of it. Looking back at that egg years later, I can see exactly what she saw, and every word of her observations was accurate, both externally and internally.
As she finished her assessment I asked what she prays before she starts working. Time slowed as she started to answer, the bustling of the show was muted, and it was just the two of us held in those moments. I asked if it was a specific prayer or just a feeling, and she said it was a feeling that comes, especially right before she starts. “It’s like there’s another hand guiding my hand,” she said with quiet faith. “You look at some eggs and think they’re ok, but you look at others and don’t know how you did it – you got help from a higher power. And the help is given because we’re trying to bring more goodness into the world through the eggs.”
This timeless moment quickly faded as other customers stole her attention. I closed the carton’s lid and scooped it back into my arms. My question asked, her wisdom steeping into my soul, I left the show still reveling in my experience of grace and inspiration. She seemed to hold answers to questions that I hadn’t yet learned to ask. I resolved to see her again and chose for this to be only the beginning.
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Pilgrimage number two, and of far greater import: my first egg-lesson with Helen. It wasn’t a thatched-roof Ukrainian homestead at the end of her long and winding driveway as I envisioned. Instead, she and her family lived in a semi-sprawling, modern house with landscaping potential yet to be fully realized. Many of the bright, open rooms inside were in various stages of renovations; banging hammers were paradoxically the soundtrack of my visit to this Mecca of fragility. And the centerpiece of it all were two rooms of pysanky museum. Shelves of eggs lining the walls, dazzling views in every direction. It was egg-overwhelm as I tried to absorb and appreciate even a fraction of what surrounded me. Cupboards and curios with eggs perched on stands and packed in with barely enough egg-elbow-room in between. Display cases of her work and other artists as well, each labeled with names and country of origin. Eggs hanging from the ceiling. Eggs on spinning racks. Ostrich, finch, goose, duck, chicken; even her latest experiments with using the pysanky techniques on gourds.
Helen escorted me around, telling me about her designs while my eyes feasted without any expectation of satiety. The lines stretched from top to bottom, side to side, even millimeter to millimeter with an almost machine-like consistency. Some eggs sported lines so thin and delicate that I wondered if she had scratched them in with a needle. Each color enhanced all the others on the egg. And her symmetry—oh, the symmetry: perfect proportions, balanced designs, mixtures of lines and curves, traditional and modern, miniscule to grandiose. Every egg captured my attention, pulled me in, and led me on a journey through its artistry, into its history, speaking its unique story, and then dumping me across the egg-elbow-room to the next masterpiece. And the next. And the next, from shelf to shelf, case to case, surrounded by enough designs to last years of study and appreciation.
“Pick out a few you want to try working on.”
I held back exasperated laughter. Um, one of each, please?
“Take your time,” she said, appreciating the attention I was paying to her museum. She puttered around behind the counter as I tried to narrow down infinity.
I gingerly plucked a few from the shelf, maybe not my favorites, but ones that I thought reasonable for a day’s worth of instruction. She added a few more of her own choices to the basket as if she was shopping in the produce section. How long was this lesson?! Perhaps I should have packed an overnight bag.
Helen led me into her bedroom-workshop. An egg-salad sandwich waited half-eaten on a tray-table. Her lumpy bed was the only uncovered space in the room. The sweet smell of beeswax hung light in the air. Eat, sleep, breathe; truly she is one with her art. More shelves covered every wall, and egg items covered every shelf. Oversized hardcover books were stacked with crooked papers stuffed between. Drawers gaped open and were stacked beyond full with tools and tissue boxes. An occasional religious icon peered back from amongst the clutter. This artistic chaos, far from a distraction, revealed this as the abode of a master. It radiated an unexpected tranquility and inspired creativity.
Here were yet more colorful eggs in multiple stacks of trays, 30-shells full, four or five trays tall. Decorated and undecorated eggs mingled in baskets and bowls and vases of every size and shape. Posters, pictures, and postcards covered the bulletin boards and provided inspiration for new designs. And the shelf of “celebrity eggs:” those designs that were featured in her book. In her slow enthusiasm to share, she handed me the ostrich egg featured on its cover. Its tiny price tag was over-filled by the monstrous number written on it, and I couldn’t get the egg out of my hands fast enough…and slow enough at the same time.
The large window on the far side of the room flooded through with sunlight and warmly illuminated her workshop area. We faced each other between two table-top magnifying lenses. I unpacked my tools: like children’s toys in this room. Her nine (!) electric kistkas lay neatly side-by-side, all plugged in and ready to go. My one would take several minutes to heat up. Helen eyed my egg lathe and commented in her deliberate style, “I don’t use that.” Just minutes into my first lesson and I had already violated a taboo! She handed over a collection of blank shells like a candy bowl and I picked one out with hardly a glance. Designs and shells and techniques didn’t matter at this point. The very air was saturated with greatness, and the chance to walk through this sanctuary was an experience for a lifetime. I wished that osmosis applied to talents; if this kind of obsession is prerequisite for greatness, I’ll barely even make a beginning.
She picked up an egg I had chosen and explained its layout step by step. “I haven’t seen this design since November.” She’d have to reacquaint herself as if with an old friend.
And so began the slow journey through my lesson. She eyeballed all of her pencil lines but gave a passing condescension to my lathe request. I imitated her approach instead, hoping to transcend the trappings of tools and instead squint through the keyhole of mastery. She demonstrated the divisions and sketched life into the blank shell. I added doodles to my own. Somewhere between her heart and her brain she had an image, and her pencil massaged and smudged the design over and over until it matched her imagination. My own lines were singular in character, and the clean areas in between spoke loud my lack of inspiration. “Every line is valued, and it’s important to see how every line fits within the rest of the design,” she instructed. “Don’t force things into a strict scheme of measurement.”
This is not an art of sweeping strokes and grandiose movements, it’s a meditation on subtlety. A dance, a martial art, and a ceremony all combined and offered within each square centimeter. Artistry here is not achieved in complex details, but in balance and symmetry. I watched the elegant simplicity in her genius and coaxed myself towards imitation. With pencil lines drawn and my kistka sufficiently warmed, it was time to begin.
The hand is the link between heart and egg, the vehicle through which prayers become manifest in wax-on-shell. In the beginning, children grip a kistka like their first writing tool, knuckles clawed and white. Wax audibly scratched and scrawled across the colored surfaces. Nervous hands hold their art to the flame. And there finally revealed a glorious monument to living tradition: a linking of hands from an ancient lineage, to the hands of an elder, and into the hands of a child. A child who will one day hand over that egg to the future.
My adult hand was more coordinated than when I had completed my last egg as a child. I held the kistka there as if a pen, writing the designs with a little-by-little sketchiness, occasionally propped up with my pinky for added support. I drew toward my body. Drawing inward toward self.
I can still see Helen’s sharp eyes, watching, probing, staring over her glasses as she interrupted my first strokes on the egg. “I see you make your lines toward yourself,” she said. “I hold it like a hairbrush and make the lines away from myself. Come watch.” I stood up and walked to her side of the table. And there it was in that moment of revelation: what I now call the “kistka hand.” Relaxed, peaceful strokes, the kistka tip nearly floating above the shell. Each line was a work of art in itself, straight as an arrow, laid down with confidence. “I hold it gently, so if you pulled on the cord it would come right out of my hand.” She might as well have been dangling a swinging pocketwatch in front of my eyes.
“Now you try it.” Her words snapped me out of my trance.
Back to my seat. I picked up the kistka anew, holding it as Helen had, palm down, thumb and two fingers gripping, last two fingers tucked inward. The same position as when making the sign of the Cross over myself in Orthodox blessing. I couldn’t see her eyes but I felt her gaze on me. I mimicked her movements, or tried to, but felt like I was back in elementary school holding that thick blue pencil and trying to form letters on super-wide-ruled paper. “Relax,” she said as I struggled to re-learn everything. I tried alternating between techniques. She eyed me again, “You have to pick one way and stick to it. You can’t be switching back and forth like that.”
After all I had seen, was there really any choice? I propped my right hand on folded towels and secured the kistka cord in place. I held the egg in my left hand on a silken napkin. Breathe, relax. Remember her gentle touch and aim for the same. Would a slight jerk be enough to pull it out from my grip? Am I holding it that softly? The right hand’s movement a simple repetition of short, straight lines as the left hand shifted and spun the shell into place. Surrendering to this dance, I saw my movements as hers: kistka hand.
This small change even enhanced my prayers with the egg. I was no longer pulling God toward myself; instead I was writing prayers outward and away. Each line is a chance to offer a prayer to the world. The light touch adds a meditative aspect. Sometimes I felt my hand squeezing as I concentrated on finer details, sometimes I stopped breathing to minimize all movement of my body. Breathe, relax. My whole self transferred into my hands in this present moment.
But “kistka hand” is more than just an artist’s technique. It became a philosophy and a way of life, an offering to the world through touch. I paid more attention to my hands when I got home. I stirred my soup, holding the wooden spoon like a barbarian’s club; held instead with a kistka hand it becomes a gentle folding of love into the food. A random and haphazard chopping of an onion with a knife; the kistka hand instead slicing with a refined rhythm. A pen gripped like a vice to sign my name to a check; with the kistka hand the signature instead anchored me back to the artistic potential of the present moment. And other applications: folding a t-shirt like it’s a sacred robe, mindfully turning a car’s steering wheel, lifting food ceremonially into my mouth, a touch to console a friend, all done with the grace of the kistka hand.
An Apache elder once said that “to touch is to know.” Touch, he added, is the sense least prone to deception. Optical illusions abound, sound can bend and twist through shifting air, smells and tastes blend, mask, and mimic. But with touch it’s flesh on flesh, rough or smooth, cold or hot. The object under investigative fingers contains no grey areas in between. To touch is to know the world around us.
To touch is also to know the world within. How do we reach out, and what do those interactions say about us? Do we roughly grab at objects, or do we gently hold and embrace them? Do we merely scribble with a pen, or do we scribe with our words? Will I chat with this person, or hold this conversation for its connection and communion? Deeper yet: are we only seeing the world, or are we fully beholding its miracles? Listening with our ears, or truly hearing with our full being? A way to honor each moment, to leave our mark on the world with a gentle, mindful touch no matter the interaction, no matter the form it takes. The kistka hand has far more to do with the heart than it does with our palm and five fingers, but the hands can be a starting point by bringing into ourselves the same spirit that they offer outwardly to the world.
The lesson continued for several hours. Helen would occasionally fill the silence with stories or tips spoken in her lilting accent. She encouraged me to take pictures of everything, generously sharing whatever she could to preserve and pass down her knowledge. During one of our breaks she spent about twenty minutes analyzing one of my eggs. Every section was scrutinized and overlaid with suggestions for improvement. She read into the design and accurately tracked the process of its conception and layout. Each egg not only tells a story through its design, but also tells the full story of the artist behind it. This one egg reflected outwardly the whole journey of my life.
A journey that seemed at the time to build to this one day. Everything I had ever done with the eggs, all of the years making them, pushing my techniques, reading, the hours sitting at the table—all of that training and experience prepared me for this one day, for this one lesson. One of many culminations that stand as signposts along the journey of life.
She’d take my egg and add a few demonstration lines once in a while. We’d walk back to her large sink to choose dyes. She even introduced me to the technique of acid etching to eat away parts of the shell and add depth and texture to the design. “Some people complain that etching isn’t traditional. But if our ancestors had acid back then, they would have probably used it.” Made sense. Tradition has to start somewhere. We might as well use the tools we have to stretch the art to its utmost limits.
While browsing the egg show a few months prior, I was admiring another artist’s ostrich-egg pysanka. It was a beautiful and intricate piece of art, but a Helen-egg it was not, neither in execution nor precision. This artist pointed out one particular section that broke the pattern’s repetition. “I always purposely add an imperfection to my eggs because only God is perfect.” Watching my own rough attempts at this art, I could see more than enough imperfection without adding it intentionally. I asked Helen her opinion on this suggestion. She said, “No shell is perfect, but we can force perfection out of it. Our thoughts and our minds make something perfect – only One is perfect and we try to imitate Him.” No need to force intentional imperfections; we have plenty of that built in. “We’ll always fall short, but when we look at it completed we will only see the beauty,” she concluded, offering holy hope even for us mortals.
A full day of egging was more draining than its light physical effort would imply. But the exhaustion was borne of the focus I poured into the experience. I packed up my stuff, browsed a bit more, took a few pictures. Being with Helen felt like being with a grandmother, but one who has fifteen other grandchildren: caring and affectionate, but not doting. Still, I was starstruck and felt over-saturated with this day’s-worth of wisdom under her guidance. With hugs and gratitude, I exited the house a significantly different person than the one who had walked in just hours ago.
I’ve always admired the beauty of sunsets, and my drive home was graced with another sky-spread of oranges and pinks to end the day. Not even Helen’s eggs can rival this heavenly ceremony. I’ve witnessed sunsets that dipped down into the calm waters of the Pacific. I’ve watched the sky match the colors of the Dakota badlands’ spires. Even the most basic of sunsets from my backyard are cause for both celebration and introspection: what have I done with this day? And if I’m graced with another, what will I do with my tomorrow? Each evening is a fragile, finite glimpse outwards and inwards, never again able to capture that moment in time or in imagination. The fleeting beauty of a light-painted sky, made more precious in its transience, just as with the delicacy of an eggshell.
Memory is a mere consolation prize, though, to a life’s pursuit of beauty. I may not remember the details of this sunset, this egg, but I’ll always seek to experience the next. The outer manifestations of our actions are secondary to the spirit behind those acts. This continual pursuit of beauty will carry on as a golden thread throughout—and beyond—the tapestry of life.
The fragile and fleeting beauty of an egg: the tip of a spiritual iceberg. I came to Helen’s to learn an art. Instead she guided me along her own threads of beauty by her life of embodied prayer. “My work is my meditation,” she’s famous for saying. And as I drove away into the sunset of my own meditations on this art, one piece of her advice pointed the way forward.
When I had earlier struggled with her kistka-hand technique, Helen recommended: “Try this method on four eggs. If it doesn’t work for you, just go back to the way you did it before.”
She offered it as a choice, but she knew: my shell was already deeply etched by her wisdom. After this, there is no going back.
Click for next chapter: Baba – Red