Nature Sketch #004 Drawing

Lena Kapshukova - artist, designer, illustrator, art teacher, cultural researcher, art manager. Since birth, Lena has lived and worked in Ukraine, in the largest postindustrial city of Ukraine - Dnipropetrovsk. In order to comply with the 2015 decommunization law the city was renamed to Dnipro, because of the nuclear, space and military industry, it functioned as a closed city until the 1990s. This historical fact highly influenced the cultural life of the city's residents and youth. Lena was born in 1990 on the eve of the Soviet Union's collapse in difficult years. Regardless, her parents gave her possibility learn dancing, figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics, English language and arts since 1993. In those years, the early 90s, were fairly widespread children's creative arts centers, clubs or “palaces”, where children were taught folk arts and etc. Lena was lucky to live near one of it, so she began to learn Petrykivka painting. Traditional Ukrainian decorative painting style became first step in her art studying and first step in cultural identity education. Lena graduated from Dnipropetrovsk National University (Design specialty) in 2011 and Dnipropetrovsk Mining University (Pedagogy specialization) in 2012. Since 2010 she has been working in various fields and projects: as head of art class at preschool, where she created a specialized author's program for children with visual impairments; as designer of printing products and corporate identity; as head of art school at the Museum of Ukrainian Painting; as methodologist and support manager of distance learning; as designer and research fellow at Dnipropetrovsk Art Museum. The position of Head of archive (conservator) in Museum of Ukrainian painting was exerted the greatest influence on further choice of professional activity. From September 2014 until February 2015, Lena participated as a volunteer in the program "Urbanism" Robert Bosch Cultural Managers Network. Where she created models of cooperation of cultural institutions of Dnipropetrovsk city, worked with city residents, creative community, volunteers of the program, city authorities. The final workshop (social experiment) of this project "UrbanGeometry" took place in the Dnipropetrovsk Central Library on 02.08.2015. Since 2009 Lena began her professional exhibition activity as an artist, it includes about ten group exhibitions.