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Sharif Bey
Slovakia
July 2004
View previous submission by Sharif Bay.
A Week in Kremnica
Last month my wife and I took a trip to central Slovakia to visit one of the major high schools for applied arts in Kremnica. There are five major applied arts high school in the Slovak Republic. In addition to a rigorous foundations program, each school offers specialized training in fields including metal casting, blacksmithing, textile design, stone and wood carving, ceramics, glass, industrial design and photography. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to see four of these schools.
The school for applied arts in Kremnica is most noteworthy for its toy design program. We were in awe after seeing the amazing handmade prototypes. A teacher lead us to a storage space where we photographed with amazement the uniquely crafted baby rattles, wooden toys, jungle gyms and puppets, which were all designed and produced by 15 and 16 year old students.
I was surprised to discover that toy design majors also are required to take courses in child psychology. However, the Slovak Republic has a history of offering unique and thorough training to high school students, a model developed during the communist era. Most programs offered outside of the mainstream education are vocationally focused, and the art schools are no different. In fact, many of the students who do not move on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava are placed in internship and apprenticeship programs where they acquire real life work experience and are further educated by masters in their fields.
I could not believe the resources available to students at these schools, and the teacher-student ratio in the programs averages one teacher to every five students. It would not be possible to sustain such costly and intensive programs in the United States, and here in the Slovak Republic, it’s a shock that such programs continue to flourish. They simply don’t receive the kind of state support they once depended on; as the country has been in economic transition for several years and is facing yet another challenge with its integration into the European union in May of this year, the schools are experiencing serious financial difficulties. The buildings are dilapidated and the landscape is overgrown, but the students remain focused and continue to produce work of the highest quality.
At the conclusion of our trip to Kremnica (and subsequently my Fulbright grant), I returned to the United States and am now teaching ceramics and drawing at Pennsylvania State University. Through my experience in the Slovak Republic I have gained a newfound appreciation for the resources available to me here, and recognize that I am lucky to be affiliated with such a well-endowed and respected institution. I have witnessed people in Slovakia create mind-boggling works with so little. The services and materials that many of us take for granted are impossible to find in Eastern Europe. Since I was a teen, I have been affiliated with various craft centers and art schools. The more resources I was given the more dependent, lazy, and spoiled I became; I could not work when I did not have these facilities available to me. I now understand that art is one of the most accessible things in the world. The only resource I will ever lack is time. All I need to create is my hands and my heart.
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