BROOKS — Her parents fled Ukraine generations ago, during World War II, and joined the massive diaspora that settled in Philadelphia.
Lesia Sochor grew up there with thousands of other Ukranian immigrant families. They had their own church, their own school, even their own Girl Scout troop – bound together by heritage and cultural traditions.
Over time, many of those traditions have faded, but Sochor, who is now 69 and has lived in Midcoast Maine for much of her adult life, keeps one close.
Every spring, as the Easter holiday approaches, she takes up the ritual known in her homeland as pysanky – decorating eggs with ancient, often colorful designs steeped in symbolism. Over the years, Sochor has hosted workshops at schools and libraries, teaching thousands of Maine children the same technique her mother taught her decades earlier. A painter by trade, Sochor also has used pysanky in a series of paintings currently being exhibited at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts. Laura Garrity-Arquitt, the museum’s registrar, called the work “stunning and powerful.”
Sochor in her studio at her home in Brooks. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
“I think people felt that the egg was such a fitting symbol of spring because it’s this seemingly inanimate object, but what’s inside is filled with life,” Sochor said last month from her home, where she has a sun-filled studio over the garage. “So, for generations – literally hundreds of years – this tradition just flourished and grew. And for me personally, being in a Ukrainian household, it was something that was done every spring. And I loved it. I loved the whole feeling about it.”
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This year, the ritual has turned somber. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February has been followed by weeks of bloodshed with no clear end in sight. Sochor doesn’t have any close relatives there anymore and hasn’t visited since the mid-1990s, but it weighs on her. She can…