Jennifer Larue Correspondent

"We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness."

Ioana Rogers has a little studio set up in the laundry room of her Liberty Lake home. It is really just a table, but big enough to create art on eggs. Using a kistka, a tiny copper funnel attached to a stick, brushes or toothpicks, she applies layers of wax, dye, paint, watercolor, ink or etched designs onto hollow quail, duck, goose and chicken eggs, always mindful of the historical value of her work.

Rogers was born in Bucharest, Romania. Her art form has roots in the Trypillian culture that existed in Ukraine hundreds of years before Christ, and in the Ukrainian word pysanky, which means to write. The eggs, which represented life, were used like greeting cards and decorated with messages. They were then given to others, often in spring. Every symbol and color had a specific meaning. When Ukrainians became Christians in 998, their spring festivities and traditions became Easter celebrations.

“Since I am Romanian, you may wonder about the difference between the Ukrainian eggs and the Romanian eggs. The difference is only about 30 kilometers. Ukraine is just across the border,” she said, “The tradition is older than Christianity and existed in all of Eastern Europe before borders existed.”

Rogers painstakingly replicates ancient designs onto the eggs. She also mixes traditional religious symbols with portraits and Christmas or Easter scenes. Each egg takes five to six hours to complete and is finished with a protective coating. A chain can be added to hang the egg.

She learned the craft from an 80-year-old woman in a remote mountain village in Romania. Now she sells them at Christmas arts and crafts shows in the area. She also sells pysanky eggs brought from Romania. The eggs are in boxes with labels that describe their meanings. She sends the money back to Romania where her parents and sister live.

Rogers has a bachelor’s degree in science from Bucharest Construction Institute in Romania. “In Romania we didn’t use computers until 1989 when communism collapsed. Working for nine years in an engineering job designing culverts, bridges and tunnels for the railways, I got a steady hand for drawing.”

Rogers, who speaks Romanian, English, French, and some German and Italian, also was a freelance translator for visitors. While translating for a group of Washington State University employees, she met her future husband, Brett Rogers.

She moved to the United States 13 years ago, and to Liberty Lake in 2003. She is a substitute teacher at Valleypoint Learning Center on Pines and is also an area representative for foreign exchange students. She enjoys skiing, playing tennis, camping, hiking and kayaking. Her spare time is spent doing pysanky. “I don’t watch TV. I do this all of the time. It’s relaxing.”

Rogers will never forget her history and in her own small way, she is passing it on. Besides sending proceeds from her art to her parents and sister, she also works with a volunteer group that raises money for the elderly poor in Romania, many of whom may understand better than anyone the meaning of pysanky.