Michael Andryc
Contemporary FOLK ART POP
Grandma Anna Andryc
(187​6? - 1966)​
Left: Michael Andryc (age 10) in Coventry, RI, with his godmother Maggie Pasternack and grandmother Anna Andryc, right.
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Right: "Andryc's Grandmother" in a room with a view of the textile factory where she worked. (The factory is a frequent motif in Andryc's work, symbolizing industrialism and pollution of the natural world.)
The 90-Year Itch (My Grandmother in Hollywood)
Acrylic on paper, framed
14"x11"
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From the Bernalillo Signpost
By Oli Robbins, Arts Editor, 2016
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Many artists assume alter-egos. For Marcel Duchamp, it was Rose Selavy (translated in English to “Eros, that is life”), and for German surrealist Max Ernst it was a bird named “Loplop.” For Michael Andryc, it’s his Polish grandmother, Anna. Michael, a self-proclaimed “sophisticated primitive post-modern artist” (yes, he acknowledges the inherent irony of such a title) admits that as a child he was “deathly afraid” of his Babka Anna Andryc, in part because she spoke a foreign language in a time when “no one wanted to talk about their origins before coming to America,” and because she was a woman more tenacious than the era allowed . . .
' She was such a strong woman—married three times—something which was unheard of in those days. One husband even mysteriously disappeared.' Now Michael enjoys hiding behind her in his paintings, traveling with her on outlandish adventures. . . .
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