Yaroslava Surmach Mills: Retrospective

An exhibition of Yaroslava Surmach Mills' (1925–2008)  wide-ranging work showcases more than eighty objects including glass paintings, etchings, icons, books, a selection of her pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs), and drawings. Examples of the stained-glass windows she designed, as well as other images, are presented in visual projections. The exhibition places special emphasis on Surmach Mills' unique reverse glass paintings that depict and illuminate Ukrainian folk life. 

Yaroslava Surmach Mills (1925–2008) was a Ukrainian American artist whose career spanned nearly sixty years. A graduate of The Cooper Union, Yaroslava—as she signed her work—was trained as a fine artist. She is known best for her unique reverse glass paintings depicting Ukrainian folk life, adapted from an ancient method for creating folk icons found in Carpathian Mountain villages. Her professional career branched into several other fields such as book illustration, calligraphy, iconography, stained glass design, and education, even as she continued with one of her earliest artistic endeavors – making pysanky (plural for pysanka).

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.