An event to open an exhibition of Klaidas Navickas’s paper cutout works will be held at the LJC on the third floor at 6:00 P.M. on November 17.
Klaidas Navickas was born in Raseiniai, Lithuania, on November 30, 1962. He currently lives in Grigiškės and is an attorney and public servant. He began cutting paper into art in 1988. He has been a member of the Union of Lithuanian Folk Artists since 1991. In 2005 he was recognized as a working artist and in 2009 as a master of traditional arts and crafts. He has held personal exhibits of his paper cutouts at Expo 2005 in Japan; Linz, Austria; Expo 2010 in China; Gdansk and Warsaw; Philadelphia; Mogilev Podolsky, Ukraine; Moscow and St. Petersburg and Minsk. He has done over ten exhibitions of his work in Lithuania. A permanent exhibit has been on display in his workshop in Vilnius since 2003. He has published two catalogs of his cutouts.
Navickas is a participant in the Vilnius municipality’s Artistic Crafts, Ethnographic Trades and Fairs Program. Together with other participants he constantly participates in Vilnius municipal and Lithuanian cultural events. Navickas has been a participant at the last three National Song and Dance Festivals. He welcomes those interested in folk art into his workshop and teaches them about the history, subject matter and techniques of paper cutouts, and then offers them the chance to try their hand at cutting paper and stamping. He is also a regular participant in the national Aukso vainikas [Gold Crown] contest, and in 2005 and 2007 was awarded a third-place diploma. In 2012 and 2014 he took second place, and in 2006 and 2010 was recognized as the most accomplished master from the Vilnius region working in visual arts in the same contest.
More information about Navickas is available in Lithuanian at the following links.
http://www.panoramas.lt/m_katalog.php?p_id=1578&lg=2
http://www.klaidaspapercuts.lt/karpiniai/?locale=lt#ivykiai
Navickas on Jews:
The Old Testament testifies to the prophet Moses, the great exodus from Egypt, the wandering of the nation in the desert and the miracle of Mount Zion. The News Testament [talks] about the prophet from Nazareth. All of us have read or at least heard that much. They came to our land probably before the world then had heard of Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai, Kėdainiai, Linkuva or Kurkliai. They brought to us arts and crafts, silk and violin playing. They dressed us, entertained us and gave us to drink. They also made loans. All of us lived and suffered together, whether that be the union of states, the kings of Sweden, Prussian emperors or Russian czars. There was room enough for everyone, we walked the same land, the same sun shone down, we even prayed to the same God, although in different ways, as each people’s prophets instructed.
That is how it was, until two wild dictators sought to rule the world, one based on the Aryan myth, the other carrying the flag of a world-wide revolution of the proletariat. This was equally foreign to both Lithuanians and Jews, and so we all suffered. Some lie in the vastness of Siberia, others quite close by, in Ponar… The epithet of Jew-shooter was hung on one group, that of eternal pest on the other group.
And that’s how we live until the present, barely able to swallow our pain and barely able to remember how well we lived, when everyone had a place under the sun. Maybe others will see us differently when we realize Jews where people living next to us, citizens, city dwellers, neighbors, and their contributions to our country truly outweighed any problems caused. Unfortunately it so happens that few of them remain in Lithuania, but they have remained, with their culture and traditions. We, as good neighbors, must recognize them and try to understand.
I have tried. I have looked at Jews and their traditions through the eyes of a Lithuanian neighbor, and I pass on my perceptions of a culture about which I knew nothing before. Now I have begun to learn about it and to be proud of this beautiful part of the culture of Lithuania.