MY PROFESSION BECAME MY LIFE

The article briefly describes the artistic and restoration activity of the Lviv Polytechnic National University senior teacher of the Department of Restoration of Architectural and Artistic Heritage – Orest Ivanovych Shykh. The results of many years of pedagogical practice and his creative work, the activity of which is aimed at the development of the professional discipline at the Department of Restoration of Architectural and Artistic Heritage, are highlighted.

In 2007 the specialty “Restoration of works of art from natural and artificial stone” was created, where O. I. Shykh started working in 2011. Before that, he was a teacher at Lviv Ivan Trush College of Decorative and Applied Art. He came to our department with the already prepared theory and practice of restoration, which he began to develop while working at college. He has a range of techniques in working with a lot of materials, knows quite a few recipes of the old masters and willingly shares his knowledge with the students.

As a senior lecturer in the Lviv Polytechnic, he prepared an academic program on the basics of molding and copying of stone works for the first year students. This program consists of a step-by-step task complexity. For example, the first stage of the carving is cornice parts, a lion mask, a foot, a wrist, and then a bas-relief, then the torso and the last stage is a voluminous head.

Besides pedagogical practice, O. I. Shykh creates artistic works. His biggest passion is manufacturing of the small-sized sculptures. Orest Ivanovych made a great portraits collection of the Halychyna personalities, work colleagues, students and friends (Pic. 8-10). He found the brightest distinctness of a human-being and aptly expressed it in the sculpture. He became a true virtuoso, the master of imitation of bronze, cast iron, gold, copper, and the like. Orest Ivanovych often gave lectures on the themes of composition harmony, images stylization, dynamics reproduction, ability to convey symbolic meaning in creative work and much more.

The creative potential of Orest Ivanovych Shykh is an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Over a lifetime he has made and keeps making an enormous work on improving his skills both in the educational process and creative work.