Alexey makes real masterpieces from “combat” scrap metal in the garage.
Photo: Dmitry STESHIN. Go to Photobank KP
GARAGE KITTY
About ten years ago, one of the Donetsk blacksmiths forged a rose from shell fragments that had flown around the city. The rose was aesthetically ideal, and the material and circumstances in which it appeared imbued the product with many meanings: the unofficial name of Donetsk is “the city of a million roses.” I saw how in the 14th they were doused with industrial water from fire trucks in an attempt to save them. The city was dying of thirst then, but the roses on Pushkin Boulevard were more expensive and could not be abandoned. No one thought to say: “It would be better if the water was distributed among the people.” Ten years have passed, steel roses have become a top-class souvenir and have appeared in the apartments of most fellow citizens associated with Donbass. The continuation of the theme simply suggested itself.
The other day, during the “break” of one of the units fighting on the outskirts of Avdeevka, I came across a strange installation assembled from fragments of the war. Each element was a specific object, a piece of equipment or ammunition. I was fascinated, walking around this installation, looking at it from all sides. One of the fighters commented: “It is “Mudrik” who makes such things in his garage. Appreciated?”
“Mudryk” – “in the world” of Alexey – I found him in a garage in an inconspicuous village between Donetsk and Makeevka. At that moment he was welding the scabbard of a burnt-out bayonet to the casing of a high-explosive shell, shattered by the explosion. The garage cat (that’s his official status, judging by his flea collar) stared at the weld without blinking. Lesha noted:
– He always monitors all technological operations. He loves to work and weld the tire machine. It seems to me that the kitten does something alone in the garage at night.
NOT TRASH, BUT ECO
“This is not “war trash,” Mudrik explains to me, “it is an “echo of war.” Once, one of the commanders I knew asked me to make “something like this” as a gift. There are lots of military metal lying around; I was also given a whole jeep made of military iron. Everything, of course, is deactivated. Not immediately, but he developed a technology for painting and dyeing (without this, the feeling of “war trash” remains attached, but there is no “echo”).
Alexey shows me “large-scale installations” based on an RPG (anti-tank grenade launcher), a machine gun and a Kalashnikov assault rifle:
“This gun has already had a lot of problems, but I also made additional cuts in the barrels and bolts, and welded everything that moves.” This was brought to me from Artemovsky’s management. The scheme is simple: they bring me iron and say: “Lesha, make something beautiful out of it!”
And this is a very accurate phrase: making something beautiful out of terrible and dangerous rubbish. There is some magic in this.
In the village where Mudrik lives and works, there is an Alley of the Fallen in memory of the villagers who died since 1914. Instead of a monument there is a granite boulder. The administration asked to make some kind of installation on this boulder and Lesha is already mentally preparing for work. The object should be large to minimize the likelihood of stupid vandalism, an attempt to “break it as a souvenir.” Someone promised to bring a door from a captured armored vehicle, and one of his friends promised to bring the wing of an enemy plane.
I personally have already contributed to the future monument. I found a place in Avdeevka Koksokhim where the Banderaites had an American-assembled Mk47 Striker grenade launcher and collected a bag of used foreign cartridges with fragments of adhesive tape for future installation. There is still enough material for creativity in Donbass.
Read Dmitry STESHIN’s exclusive report on Avdeevka Koksokhim in upcoming issues of KP.
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