Welcome to Concrete Cravings
by OLGA KOSTROVA…
…wild explorations in concrete, ceramics, metal…
The art of life, the artist, the experiencer…
Olga Kostrova is a contemporary artist / sculptor whose art work became her cause.
Olga Kostrova comes from Ukrainian roots complete with all the blessings and brutality of Eastern Europe. Olga was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1973 into a family living huddled together in a tiny one room apartment. There were 6 people: mother, father, older sister and two grandmothers. Olga says, her grandmothers were heroic women. Fleeing from the fascist army, her mother’s natural parents left their new-born baby on a doorstep a few hours before they were killed – for a single reason – they were Jews. Two sisters found her mother, Lidiya, on the threshold of their house. These women brought Lidiya as their own child, in spite of abject poverty and famine. Olga thank her lucky stars that she grew up in this family with people who could, in those conditions, lavish care upon each other. She says, they gave her the opportunity to understand what is meant by goodness, wisdom, perseverance and strength.
A child adept at gymnastics, puppeteering, painting, and later screenwriting, acting, fashion design, photography and full of personality… Olga studied Finance and Economics only to satisfy her parents and overachieved at one of the first capitalist opportunities in her country. But ART WAS HER ESCAPE…
Uprooted by emigration to Canada she became immersed in the Internet, creating a model that has later become the multi-billion dollar industry known today as Crowdfunding. It was while seeking investors for her tech company that she discovered and adopted California and Silicon Valley where she still lives and works today with her husband Jan Hutchins, former Bay Area TV and Radio broadcaster and Mayor of Los Gatos. And there is always… ART… AS HER ESCAPE…
Today Olga, a self-taught sculptor, painter and mixed media artist provokes, shocks, delights and surprises.
She harnesses a variety of materials (concrete, ceramics, metal, burlap) and techniques to deliver imaginative interpretations in sculpted objects that embody the human emotions and contrasts that represent life in a physical body – beauty and harshness, love and violence, sadness and joy. She evokes by blending opposites in her pieces – sexually explicit and modest, aggressive and subtle, smooth and rough.
NON-VIOLENCE IS HER CAUSE…
Through art, through interventions, through acceptance of opposites, through Love and Compassion…
Olga’s mission is for her art to become a vehicle for change and support her transformational work. Her pieces and facilitative processes get the audience to what is unexpressed within – sexual repressions, rage, grief, loneliness and longings to find freedom, peace, joy and connection.
The proceeds from her art help fund her work with victims of violence and bring her unique tools for emotional resilience and healing practices to every woman, every man, every child who has ever been violated.
Art has saved her again and again from the harshness and cruelties of her own life. She teaches “alternative art therapy” along with the healing modality she created, PhysioEmoDynamics (PED) – a transformational process that uses physical and emotional dynamics (carefully timed physical movements, breath patterns, sounds and managed exercises in emotional intensity) to rapidly recover from traumas by releasing repressed emotions and all the contracted energies of modern life. Her work saved many people from suicide, healed clinical depression, post-traumatic paralysis.
Buyers can support her work by acquiring pieces from the existing collection or commission a unique piece to make their home or garden spectacular.