inspired after attending
Washington, D.C., event
Freehold Borough woman
inspired after attending
JEFF GRANIT Donna Koloski of Freehold Borough holds one of the masks she created after being inspired at an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. She created two masked figures and one mask that are on display, along with the works of about 50 other women artists, in the earth room of the Unitarian-Universalist Meeting House in the Lincroft section of Middletown.
Washington, D.C., event
By linda denicola
Staff Writer
According to the latest poll, 51 percent of the American public supports a war with Iraq, even without United Nations support, but Donna Koloski is not one of them. The Freehold Borough resident has been an active supporter of restraint.
Koloski has spent many hours participating in silent vigils and protest marches in Washington, D.C. During a peace march in the nation’s capital a couple of months ago, she saw a group of women dressed in black with masks over their heads.
"The masks were all pretty much the same, with sad-looking faces," she said. "Behind the women were men dressed in black with masks that were pretty much featureless, but they wore white gloves stained with red."
The somber scene of the masked women in black followed by the men with blood-stained hands was very dramatic, she said.
"It made such an impression on me that I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I decided that I wanted to make the masks, which were probably made out of papier-mâché. The masks were larger than the head size, which gave me the impression of peasants, or like the old people that mourn in some societies. They were like archetypes," Koloski said.
She created two masked figures and one mask that are on display, along with the diverse works of about 50 other women artists, in the earth room of the Unitarian-Universalist Meeting House in the Lincroft section of Middletown.
Koloski’s pieces are not the only ones with a peace theme, but they are the only pieces created out of something as prosaic as paper bags.
"I didn’t want to use papier-mâché, so I took out my supermarket bags and began to play with them," she said.
She manipulated the bags and drew on them until she got an expression that portrayed what she was looking for. For armatures on the two life-size figures, one taller than the other, she used a coat rack and an easel that she draped with fabric capes, one black and one in a gray pattern.
The masks are oversized, just as the ones she saw in Washington, D.C., were, and the eyes are close together because the masks are made to be worn, she explained.
Koloski, who has lived in Freehold Borough for 10 years, is a retired social worker and does not consider herself an artist, but she had an artist’s inspiration when she decided to create the figures.
"I was like a woman possessed. I had to do them. I had to bring out my feelings about the folly of war, the sadness and waste. I was thinking about all of the mothers who love their children and have to see them go to war. I was thinking about the Iraqi mothers whose children will die as a result of this war. What a waste of youth and talent. And the loss of a loved one must be unbearable," she said.
Although her masked people seem genderless, to her they are definitely female.
"They are like the mothers of the world. It’s a bond that is stronger than the divisions between nations," Koloski said, adding that there was another underlying theme to her work. "People matter. You can’t make pawns out of people. They are not collateral damage."
For Koloski, the decision to put together the masked figures did not spring to life out of a vacuum. She has made dolls in the past and has created many fabric dolls based on people that she knows and other archetypes. It was more like a coming together of her anxiety over the pending war, her compassion for others and her need to express herself.
"I like to do hand sewing," she said, adding that her dolls are not baby dolls, they are more like one-of-a-kind art dolls.
Artist Florence Hill, who organized the Women’s History Month exhibition, said she loves the masked women.
"It grabs you from wherever you sit in this room and the message is straightforward and simple," Hill said.
For Koloski, the message is no more war. She feels passionate about that and like many people she feels helpless to stop it and anxious much of the time.
"I know that when I feel passionate about something, I have to express it somehow," she said.