The Rose of Turaida

So, I’m graduating college this week, and moving on to the grad school where I’ve been accepted in to the Masters of Art in Teaching program. I understand I may never be able to play with clay again like I’ve been able to here at Hofstra (highly unlikely, but anything is possible). Luckily I was able to have my own show here in the Student Gallery! I wouldn’t call it a wild success, but I did get a lot of great feedback, and perhaps the best part was that I was surprised by some 100% Grade A Latvians, who just happened upon the show.  Why are Latvians important at this juncture? Well, The Rose of Turaida is a very popular Latvian folktale that I took as the inspiration for the name of my show, and my main piece.

The Story: After a battle at the foot of Turaida Castle in Latvia, 1601, the castle clerk, while searching for survivors, found a baby in the arms of its dead mother. He named the child Maija and brought her up as his own. She grew up to be very beautiful and so was known as the “Rose of Turaida.” She fell in love with Viktor, the gardener at the castle, and in the autumn of 1620 they prepared to be married. Shortly before the wedding Maija received a letter from Viktor asking her to meet him at the Gutmanis Cave, their usual meeting place. She went to the cave, but when she reached it, it was not Viktor she encountered but a Polish soldier named Jakubowski who was lying in wait for her with the intention of forcing her to be his wife. Maija promised to give him her magic scarf, which had the power to make the wearer immune from injury, if he would let her go, and persuaded him to test its power on her. Maija tied the scarf around her neck, and the soldier fell for her trick. in testing the scarf’s “power” he cut off her head, and saved her honor.

It has been customary for newlyweds to leave flowers on the grave of the Rose of Turaida in hopes of knowing the same eternal love and devotion.

My own spin on this is a little different. Rather than an ultimate love story, this is more like an illustration of the chaotic and destructive forces that so often overcome loved places, people, and ideas. Partly because of my heritage, and partly because of a beautiful book based on this story, that I remember from my childhood, I’ve been minorly obsessed with the story and the idea.

So I took it to clay.

The five main tiles each measure about 10×10″, so this turned out to be a sizeable mural. Is it how I envisioned? No. But I’ve learned to love it.

In any case, a selection out of the 50 porcelain bowls I did for my independent study were also on display:

And for good measure I put up some new work, and some work from my Japanese Ceramics class.

So here’s hoping that I continue to be able to function as a ceramicist. I don’t even care if I always have a studio to use, I’d be quite happy working on my dinky wheel in the back yard, and firing my pots in a pit. Which is actually something I’m really excited to try!

-Delgado