Ingrid Hlavka at Home - photo by Nigel A JAMES
A Picture at an Exhibition
In a little chapel in the Breitensee church in Vienna’s 14th district is a work of great wonder, a patchwork by Ingrid Hlavka. And this is good so. For, it is in this church that she has always found the strength and encouragement that has always inspired her. And the picture, although new, has been on its way through the brightness and shades of Ingrid’s life for a very long time.
And Ingrid’s life, just like her patchworks, is made up of squares, which, although different, are, in fact extremely related. They all revolve around the celebration of life; and her life has not only led her to the heights of great beauty in the worlds of music and fine arts, but also to the four corners of the world in her travels.
As a young lady, she trained to be a singer and it was this which led to a career with the Austrian Broadcaster, the ORF, and it was there that she developed an appreciation in depth of the modern, but, it was the church, where she also sang, that provided the majesty, the feelings and the heights of the divine and celestial choral works of Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, and many more as well. Ingrid had become, in a musical sense, both ancient and modern in one. But, her art was still wanting!
Still as a young girl, she was apprenticed to a seamstress, and one of her jobs was to clean up at the end of each day. This was fine, but, there was always one thing that disturbed her, and that was the throwing away of the fine brightly coloured left-over scraps that were no longer needed. This was pure waste! There had to be something more worthy for these fine pieces! And this was the thought that she filed away in the back of her mind.
And, many years later, the answer presented itself at an exhibition. She was stunned; there was a patch-work picture, the beauty of which she had never seen before. She was mesmerized by the colours and the finesse of this fine work of art. There were the scraps of long, long ago! They, for her had come home! There was her path, and it was shining in a way that was to hold her for ever!
And now, 18 years later, Ingrid’s latest in a very long line of very fine works is to be seen in a little chapel of the Breitensee church - her spiritual home!
Church at Breitensee
http://www.pfarre-breitensee.at/
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