Tales of Roots & Wings

Tales of Roots & Wings A DIALOGUE ON ART, LIFE, AND LORE

A conversation between artists Olesya Volk and Toti O’Brien

Olesya Volk is a Los Angeles-based artist/writer. She was born in Russia where she started doodling, writing, and publishing her tales and puppet plays. She moved to the US in 1992, studied animation at UCLA, and then worked doing web animation and illustrations. In her paintings she explores the patterns of nature, especially the tree bark, as a form of intuitive “readings” of the primordial language. She exhibits her mixed media, dioramas, and paper theatre in L.A. and internationally. She also makes comic books and graphic novels.

Toti O’Brien is the Italian accordionist with an Irish last name. She was born in Rome and then moved to Los Angeles, where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician, and professional dancer. Her poetry and prose has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies, in the US and internationally.

For a while, Olesya planned on interviewing Toti. Toti wished to interview Olesya sooner than later. Then, what could be more natural than a back-and-forth exchange? A conversation, that is. Topics to be considered were profuse, as the two share a number of interests. But within the context of relaxed, friendly correspondence, the main theme thought it apt to just choose itself.

Toti O’Brien. Let us start from the beginning, shall we? It’s a time and place I like to recall when I think of someone. I like to resuscitate the first impression she or he left on me. Scholars say that in seven seconds we form a fair idea about someone else. I believe it, give or take a second or two. A rough sketch, and yet usually truer than later, more refined opinions.

I recall the first time I saw you at the Neutra Gallery, in L.A., leaning by the wall where two of your paintings were hung. Oh my, they were intriguing and beautiful. From a distance I saw complex textures, subtle nuances of muted, natural colors.

Coming close, I identified the tree trunks. I saw bark inhabited by a myriad of beings, a whole crowd of minuscule people. I am familiar with folk tales, elves, fairies, and all kinds of spirits, therefore I recognized them.

What surprised me, prompting me to introduce myself, was the fact that you looked a bit like your paintings. Your dress was adorned with knitted lace, black and finely wrought. Your long, dark hair was braided. You were dressed and combed like a kind of fairy, though not in a showy manner. Rather casual. And you smoothed yourself against walls. You hid in corners as your creatures did in the bark.

Also, we were dressed kind of alike. Also, I was dressed a bit like my work, as you later remarked.

Then I noticed an oddity, as it comes to art openings. You were nice and affable, easy to befriend in a way that doesn’t belong to show time, not even to adulthood. You were ready to connect as young children are, when they meet at the park. Without preconceptions. We realized that we lived a few blocks away, though far from the place where the Gallery was, which struck me as an interesting pattern… the two close points of origin, where we had never met, and the distant point of arrival where we colluded.

I have dilated seven seconds in many words. They could be further dilated. Let me try to summarize them instead.

You looked like a small fairy of the gentle sort. You reacted to others with the spontaneity of a child. You were beautiful like your own work of art. Without knowing it, we had been neighbors for a long time.

Olesya Volk. I perfectly remember that day. At the exhibit, your dress and whole image being in tune with your painting was both amazing and amusing! In your painting, the prevalent feelings for me were of dance, movement, and rhythm. Its strangeness and symbolism were on the light side. It suggested a signature from an otherworldly language spoken by some flying creatures. Later, I found out that you were a dancer, musician, and actress, in addition to being an artist. In that first moment, I registered just the qualities of air, wind, dance, and a touch of secrecy that felt quite familiar. It reminded me of myself! A feeling of recognition was present, as if two fairies had seen each other in a forest full of all sorts of creatures and had nodded from a distance, saying: “Well met!”

T.O. Yes, we shared a sense of familiarity. As we further acquainted, we realized concrete parallels between our lives. For a start, we both were born abroad, and we came into the States in our adult age. Sure, this is not uncommon. Still, I wonder if it played a role in how we gravitated towards each other. By the way, would you define yourself an immigrant? You remained in the US because of a marriage, as I did. Do you still feel a stranger, or don’t you? Have you felt more at home elsewhere? How deep do the roots of your trees reach? We only see trunks. Do your trees have roots? They must, otherwise they couldn’t support the weight of all those small people. Do small people have weight?

O.V. You know, I never felt as an “immigrant”. My American husband made me feel as if I had stepped into a fairy tale… My life became so different from my past life in Russia. I seemed to have entered another phase, woken up from one dream and walked into another. There was no way

Toti O’Brien—Elisa and the Wild Mice—Detail—Mixed Media—2014

back, as there was no way back in time. The only things that really connected me to my past were the trees. Here, as I did in Russia, all my life, since childhood, I walked among trees, talked and listened to them, making sketches from the bark scribbles into my “secret” notebooks, seeing and sensing the language that trees speak.

Are there many languages? Legend tells of seventy primary languages. I gazed into the tree’s creaks and marks, all those hieroglyphs, and found stories, and got messages coming out of my mind memories. They were triggered on different levels of associations, interplayed, overlapped, and they met with immediate response from the trees. I always felt I was in a dialogue with them.

However, only when I started painting with oil all that became exposed, transferred from my hidden notes to the canvases and panels and exhibits (though I did other kinds of art as well, animation and illustration).

The concept of a “language” comes into my art from painting the tree bark. However, as more and more researchers are saying, the real language of trees starts in their roots. That is where the system of communication is built, enabling each tree to send and receive signals, and as a result, transfer nutrients to the surrounding plants if they lack them. To sense need and provide support.

While I paint the bark, the image of the roots also penetrates my art as a metaphor, expressed by the webs and “strange” entanglements, by the clusters of signs melting into each other, and presenting themselves to our eyes as mazes and puzzles. As the tools allow us to solve the riddle.

The forest, in fairy tales, is a place to where characters escape and, often accidentally, bump into the “meaning,” as it happens to the princess in the well-known “Twelve Swans” (also named “Seven Swans,” “Ten Swans,” etc., in the folk tradition).

We have discovered to our astonishment that we both loved this tale the most. We considered it to be closest to our heart, also, a sort of portrait of our personality as it lives in the world.

Why is the story of a princess who runs away and hides in the forest, where she finds out how to break the evil spell and turn her brothers back from swans into

Olesya Volk—The Wake—Oil and tempera on wood—18”x 24”—2017

people, meaningful for you? How do you see yourself in it? Also, what are trees, how do they speak to you?

T.O. I will start from your last question, because as I read your lines the trees became real and now, though I’m inside my room, I am overwhelmed by their presence. I am not sure of how they speak to me, or if they even do. What I know is that I have always felt protected by them, also linked to them by a strong sense of familiarity. I am a radical (a rooted!) atheist. I don’t believe in gods. But the trees give me the almost tangible feeling of being held by an all-comprehensive, an immensely benevolent entity, which comes close to what believers say about divinity. Perhaps this is due to the fact that trees live long lives. They have seen many things before we were born. They will still be there when we will be gone. Of course, they also die, but to me their longevity sounds a lot like eternity!

Also, trees are intrinsically faithful to their essence, aren’t they? I must have been very young when I realized it. They grow towards the light no matter what. They endure anything and yet they keep growing, giving out new leaves, flowers, fruit, season after season. I have wished and still wish to be like them: faithful to the essence no matter what. As for the “Wild Swans,” yes, there are many versions of this tale. As a child I read Andersen’s story, a poetic re-make of narrative elements found within the collective psyche. Why did it make such an impression on me? Why did I identify with Elisa, the female heroin? Let’s see. She is a rebel. So am I. She disobeys. So I did for a long time. She is not scared of graveyards, where she gathers nettles she then weaves into shirts for her siblings. I always was fond of graveyards. My grandparents’ orchard, where I spent my childhood, adjoined one of them. Only a low, flimsy wall divided the two properties and I climbed it whenever I wished, day or night. As a child I thought cemeteries were wonderful, peaceful gardens starred with cute little lights, full of flowers and sculptures, more than all full of pictures, names, dates. And those pictures, names, dates were marvelous toys, building blocks one could utilize to make stories.

Here is another similarity. Elisa makes things (shirts) with fiber, and I have incessantly dyed, woven, knitted, crocheted fiber. Also, I love birds, and as a child I was very close to my brothers. My first sewing project, indeed, was a shirt for my little bro! I cut into squares a piece of brocade peeled off an old armchair (my folks were horrified). Two for sleeves, two for the front piece, one more for the back. I recall how proudly I spread the finished product upon the piano bench. It was light green.

Did you read the ‘Swans’ in Andersen’s version? When? Do you recall your first reactions? How are you related to Elisa?

O.V. When I first heard the story of Elisa (yes, in Andersen’s interpretation), I had a feeling that it was about me, though I didn’t know why! I was six years old. I still didn’t know I would become an introvert, like Elisa, who spends lots of time alone, walks at night, gathers nettles, secretly weaves magical shirts for the sake of rescuing her brothers, and isn’t even able to talk during the long time of her mission. I still didn’t know about a pattern that would later emerge in my life, which someone from my family named the “magical last moment rescue.” But it perfectly applies to Elisa, who is about to be burned at the stake because of

Toti O’Brien—A Calligraphy of Wind, Golden Dove—Mixed Media—20”x24”—2020

false rumors and still, since her work is done, she can break the spell, save her brothers, and begin talking. At the very last moment, she is saved.

I didn’t know why, but I felt attuned to her sense of secret mission, her journey of serving the mystery, to the feeling many artists know well of being apart, separate from the world, on a special, strange path.

It’s the same path that led me to study the subjects and images of alchemy, to explore the mystery hidden in nature, deep, behind many veils, and still near. In my art I try to express this closeness by hinting at the meaning that is emerging, budding through the language that isn’t revealed yet, but we sense its presence.

Once, you mentioned the quarantine as another possible allusion to Elisa’s symbolism. I was struck. Could you elaborate on it?

T.O. As you said, Elisa is all by herself, sealed away. Since she is gathering nettles in the graveyard (allegedly an act of witchcraft, punished by burning the perpetrator alive) she must hide. Moreover, she is forbidden to talk until her task is finished or else everything will be nullified. So she spends

days and nights alone, focused on her work. As you have aptly noted, this is common among artists, and it might be why we both have identified with this character. During this quarantine, many people endure a state of withdrawal that reminds of Elisa’s. All are sealed within their own habitat and confronted with time stretched, unstructured, no more punctuated by the usual routines. Many live this condition uneasily. Artists usually don’t. There’s a side of what is occurring that is ideal for them, although they are financially vulnerable and the sudden lack of outputs for their creative work might be frightening. Still, when they don’t surrender to anxiety, all the artists I know welcome the opportunity of being “forced” to spend more time in the studio, have less interaction with the world, be less assaulted by distractions. Time mostly unconstrained, or totally unstructured as Elisa’s time is (wrapped in silence, fusing night and day into one, filled up with a single task of great urgency), is the “artist time” tout court. Time unbroken, surrendered, is what creation demands.

And what does this suspension mean to you? How does your art respond to this sudden change? Is it really a change?

O.V. These days, with the quarantine and isolation unfolding, my “artist’s life” hasn’t changed much from before, except for the fact that all shows were closed, including those of which I was part. My usual day schedule is centered around a son who needs my care. I am able to do art essentially at night, although sometimes I find brief gaps during the day. So, this probably affects the character of my art… the fact of being sporadic and “dreamy”, done during stolen moments similar to the moment of falling asleep. Recently, I started seeing a pattern in this, and I accepted it as a prompt from my soul to trust even more my subconscious. During the pandemic, the idea of accepting the rhythm of my time as it is and then finding meaning in it has started crystalizing.

T.O. I also owe an insight about art, and about Elisa, to this time of unusually intense solitude. I have recalled a dream of my teenage years, which impressed me so much I never forgot it. I was pursued by aggressors unknown, and in order to escape I jumped from a skyscraper’s window into a swimming pool located two or three stories below. Although diving that way was very dangerous, I knew I had no alternative and I didn’t hesitate. On the contrary, I was fiercely determined. As I emerged from the pool and tried to reenter the building, looking for the stairs or an elevator, my aggressors were on the landing, blocking my way and ready to get hold of me. So I found another window and jumped into a lower pool. And again, and again. With each jump, I grew weaker and slower, also aware my chances of escape were dwindling. My pursuers would catch me in the end and, finding me unable to fight, they would kill me. I was sure, and still I kept jumping.

I didn’t like this dream, which I found quite ominous. It appeared to contain a prophecy I’d rather ignore. Still, I have never forgotten it.

I have just understood that my life has perfectly embodied my nightmare. I have struggled non-stop for a form of happiness that implied creating art and being able to make a living of it, allowing me to keep creating. This ideal scenario was clear and

detailed since my very childhood. To realize it was so important that I knew life would make no sense otherwise. Leading an artist’s life wasn’t a choice among others. For me, it was the only life worth living. I guess this is what they call a “vocation.” I didn’t succeed, but my failing was quite peculiar. Each time, it meant taking all the needed steps, building my castle of sand to the top, being ready to get in, and then seeing a wave wash it off. “Life” kept happening as life does, sometimes, bringing up one after another the emergencies and crises, the absolute yet alien priorities that would keep me away from my goal. I would lose either the house or the studio. I would have to relocate. To emigrate. I would be forced to take a fulltime job. A close relative would need me full-time. I would get seriously ill. So my life went, and yet I kept jumping, meaning I continued to pursue my creative ventures, constantly adjusting or rather beginning anew, like an ant that sees her heap destroyed, gathers crumbs and carries them elsewhere. My strength wanes with each new beginning just as my dream foretold. Each sand castle I make is smaller and frailer. I have no energy now for moving my building far enough from the ocean. But I don’t truly care, because I won’t stop.

I know that my case isn’t rare. There is something intrinsically Don Quixotish in the artist call, don’t you think?

O.V. In my family, Don Quixote was a main hero. His little brass statue directed our existence from the top of the cupboard. Yes, I think the artist’s way is quite Don Quixotish, since the main point is listening to your own “small voice” and don’t cheat on it, which often involves being alone and fighting the windmills.

I would like to tell you about an absurd, funny dream I had. I saw the famous Russian poet of the 19th century, Pushkin, when he was a boy in his Lyceum years. Unlike how he is portrayed in history books, in the dream he was timid, quiet, and his classmates bullied him, calling him “mysh”, which in Russian means “mouse”. Pushkin answered: “I am not a “mysh”, I am a “kmysh!” This word doesn’t exist, but for a Russian ear it means something such as “quite a guy!” “not that simple”, “special and unique”... It is truly amazing how the soul invents the ways and “words” to support personal bravery in being just “you”! Quoting D. Seuss, “who can be youer than you?”

T.O. This is why stubborn Elisa reminds me of the artist-life, and of my “funny” dream. She seems to have signed for a foolish task but in fact, like us, she didn’t choose it. Could she decide not to save her brothers? Come on. She has a call that she is compelled to follow, all odds notwithstanding.

She must weave shirts out of a plant that grows in a forbidden zone, and additionally makes her hands bleed. Then, her task is on the impossible side. So is the task of making a living with art, in most cases… between hard and impossible.

She is not allowed proper time for bringing her crafts to completion. Are we ever?

She can’t talk, so she can’t explain what she is doing and why that is important. Can we? I have known since an early age that the wide majority would understand neither my functioning nor what I wanted to do, what I did, why I paid the price I paid and why in hell it mattered.

Usually, if artists make art they do not make money. If they make money, no time is left for their art. If they fully devote themselves to family, friends, society, not enough is left for their work. If they give themselves to their work, their family, friends, society resent or even reject them. If the pattern isn’t always so radical, a variation of it always applies. So, it’s a matter of multiple double binds forming a vicious circle.

Now, look at Elisa! If she is caught picking nettles among the dead she will go to prison, therefore she won’t be able to finish the shirts. If she doesn’t go to the graveyard she won’t have nettles to weave. If she is caught and she can’t explain her actions she will be killed, therefore, she won’t finish. If she talks in order to save her life, she will break the spell, therefore losing her work and her brothers. The more she weaves, the slower she gets, because nettles keep cutting her hands. As the time left for completing her task expires, she grows weaker, less proficient, more desperate.

Actually, desperate is the very thing she doesn’t become. When everything goes wrong, when she sneaks once again into the graveyard, is caught, doesn’t answer questions, is chained to the stake and the fire goes on, she is still weaving a sleeve for the last shirt. Nothing could stop her hands, or they were unable to stop.

On her pyre, Elisa still hopes to succeed. She does not wait for a prince or a god to rescue her, and this also strikes a powerful chord. She hopes that she will make it, with her own hands.

Do you still remember the end? The last shirt isn’t finished when the brothers fly by, but Elisa throws them all into the sky. This is her only chance. She has to accept imperfection. She knows it. She doesn’t mind.

There are various interpretations to the unfinished sleeve, to the fact that the eleventh, the youngest brother will forever have an arm and a wing. As far as the artistlife… as far as my life is concerned, Elisa’s last gesture is a lesson about the need of incessantly adjusting. About the necessity of practicing flexibility in order to not forsake the goal. Truly, the only way to keep going is to jump into the lower pool, the one closer to the ground. Is to say, ok, I really wanted this, I had figured that, I cared for this or that but these outcomes are no more achievable. I have lost this space, that equipment, this ability, that connection, this income, that gallery, this publisher, that affiliation. What is left? How can I remodel my dream, while keeping its essence intact?

And what is your take on the eleventh shirt, the one missing a sleeve?

O.V. My son is the youngest brother, whose shirt lacked one sleeve. The swan’s wing remained there instead of an arm when he transformed back into man, making him belong both to this world and to another, higher one. Most sensitive, most vulnerable.

My artwork is subordinate to him and to my daytime schedule, which sets me apart from the world, on a silent path, like Elisa’s. At the same time, my art is about healing

Toti O’Brien—The Day She Sprouts Wings—Ceramic—6”x8”x11”—2019

Olesya Volk—Burned Tree—Oil and tempera on wood—16”x20”— 201420”x24”—2020

Olesya Volk—Performers—Oil and tempera on wood—18”x 24”—2019

and connection, but connection “in full”, on all visible and invisible levels. This is why I define my art’s main theme “reading from the trees”, or “seeking the primary language”. In mythology, the “primary language” is also named “green”, or “bird language”.

Symbols are magnetic to me, and that is another reason why I am drawn to the “Swans” tale. The number of brothers/swans varies in different versions but it is always significant, magical (12 or 11 for the months of the year, including Elisa or without her, 7 or 6 for the visible planets of our universe, etc.). In her life, Elisa loses all parts of her “inner cosmos”. She is left with just one, somehow centered in herself, and she has the task of restoring her whole, her world, no matter how hard and impossible it seems. So

Olesya Volk—Heavens—Oil and tempera on wood—16”x20”—2015

her tale has always been very inspiring, telling me to go on no matter what, and “all will be saved at the last moment.”

Birds play a great part in your art. Could you tell me about their meaning?

T.O. They are my friends, like the trees. By the way, they usually come together! You look up at a canopy and you notice birds. You react to a call, to a song, and you see a branch of green. You just said it, “green language” and “bird language” are synonymous! It is true that when I am about to finish a piece I always feel compelled to introduce something birdy, as if the work wouldn’t be complete otherwise, as if it needed a “bird mark” to be identifiable.

I have recently realized I don’t sign my work. Such omission was brought to my attention when I was, perhaps, twenty? I recall shrugging with nonchalance, “what’s the matter? If this piece is lost or if someone steals it, I will do another one.” I don’t have delusions of endless creativity any more, but I still forget to add my signature. Therefore, look for the small bird in a corner! Or the wing, feather, nest, or else just an egg.

Birds evoke a quite obvious symbolism, to which I can’t avoid responding in full. They are migrators, like me. I am captivated by their freedom, lightness, velocity, by the impression of fearlessness they emanate. Even birds must get frightened, but I have never noticed it, not even in those wounded sparrows Grandpa rescued and put into my hand. “See how fast their heart beats!” Those

Toti O’Brien—Hand Made Map #3—Mixed Media—18”x24”—2014

small birds were scared, Grandpa said. Truly, I couldn’t tell. Sure, those birdies felt fragile. Soft and warm, but also inconsistent. Beak and claws can be dangerous, but birds seldom attack unless they are predators. Even predators don’t attack other than their prey or their competitors. So I perceive birds as vulnerable, but also made quasi invincible by their wondrous ability to fly. Flying is their magic spell, most powerful weapon. It’s the ace up their… sleeve! Fly away. This is what they do if you incautiously leave the door of the cage ajar. Sometimes, they even break the door of the cage.

In your art there is no sense of gravity. I am thinking not only of your treerelated oil paintings (though such quality certainly applies to them), also about the wonderful picture books that you have published. Everything floats, is lifted up to or comes down from the sky, dances, twirls, evaporates or else orbits into space, creating galaxies of its own. What are this lilt and weightlessness of yours about? To me, they speak of freedom.

O.V. I am hypnotized and magnetized by medieval illumination, in which all characters and creatures float around the page, and the page itself looks like a map. Whatever I paint at first looks “too heavy”, and I am compelled to make it appear more airy, fairy-talish, soaring in time and space. Freedom, yes. However, it’s hard to reach total freedom. For myself, I would rather pray for “lightness”, as opposite to the “heaviness” that comes from “daily burdens”. Perhaps I project such a desired state into my creations, and a map kind of quality as well. Because most of my paintings are “nature patterns’ readings”, I tend to make the shapes of trees or rocks recognizable, but as if in the process of transforming under my scrutiny into a book page, a scroll, a symbolic map inscribed in the core of nature. I often apply, though loosely, the old Flemish masters’ technique, a style that naturally emphasizes the “lightness” and transcendent quality I am trying to express.

By the way, I always liked the fact that the word “core” sounds as an alliteration for the Russian word “kora,” which means “tree bark!”