MEMORIAL TO THE FALLEN HEROES OF UKRAINE - FOR CYM - BY AGRISCULPTURE

For Amy Lewis Sweetman, it has been a true honor to be commissioned by the Ukrainian American Youth Association - CYM - an international organization spanning 14+ countries, to design and create a Memorial honoring the Fallen Heroes of the War in Ukraine.

The design process started with a desire from the organization to have a stainless steel shield, etched with the two Winning Drawings from CYM's Student Design Competition along with a Memorial Text, honoring the Heroes from CYM who lost their lives within the ongoing War of 2014 with Russia.

Inspired by Amy's previous plasma cut steel sculptures, CYM also specified that Nature had to be incorporated into the design. Conceptual development yielded a composition of Ukrainian Wheat and Ukrainian Poppies - as a garden - enveloping and holding the space - for this Shield. Thus the concept for this Memorial was born - Shield in a Garden of Wheat and Poppies.

Wheat is the sustenance - the rolling farmland - the breadbasket - the yellow on the bottom of the Ukrainian Flag. Poppies - in Ukraine as well as in America - are the flowers of remembrance. There is also - a friend within this landscape - a native pollinator to the Wheat and Poppy fields of Ukraine - the Old World Swallowtail Butterfly.

"Metal Lace" is Amy's own site specific specialty art style... and within this "Ukrainian Metal Lace" one may find nineteen Ukrainian Poppies, fifteen Ukrainian Poppy Seedpods, eight stalks of Ukrainian Wheat and one Old World Swallowtail Butterfly. Each element is hand drawn and completely unique within the structure made from 3/16" thick plasma cut steel. Amy enjoys using technology and tools to create her works of art, and... Amy will never allow computers / technology / AI to overtake the most critical parts of her creative process... the alchemy... the synapses... the connections through time and space... of love and war...of mind and heart.

This sculpture came from the depths of Amy's heart.

Amy acknowledges and salutes the eleven people (thus far and please no more) from CYM who lost their lives - fighting for what they truly love and believe in - God and Ukraine.

Тепер друзі мої, спочивайте з миром.