Russian Artists in Tbilisi, Georgia

Georgia is an ancient and small nation balanced on the cusp of the European Caucasus and Asia. Beyond the indigenous Georgian people, who have lived there since Biblical times, the population is international, multicultural, and fluid as travellers come and go, staying sometimes for days and sometimes for centuries. It's marvelous to walk the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, and chat with the people you meet there. Meg and I were three times fortunate to meet Russian artists on the streets of Tbilisi and visit with each for a while. Now I invite you to meet them as well.

The house on Tchaikovsky Street with a plaque commemorating the composer.

One morning we had gone to get some poems printed for a reading at The Writer's House of Georgia. As we were leaving the copy shop, we met an elderly artist who was having prints made of his drawings and we talked with him for a while. This man, Lado, is also a painter though we saw only some lovely drawings. Lado told us he is Russian (not Georgian of Russian descent) and his family has lived in Georgia for many generations. His family, he said, is from the Russian aristocracy, a fact of which he is very proud. We found Lado to be a genial, convivial fellow, easy to talk with. The author of an article in The Spectator had a similar experience one day when he met Lado. The writer describes the encounter: "A self-avowed ‘monarchist’, who feeds the caged peacocks by Meidan Restaurant and takes great pains to show me, through a crumpled series of photographs, the resemblance to Prince Charles that substantiates his claims at lineage, invites me to his painting studio on Tchaikovsky Street." Before we parted, Lado had also invited us to his place on Tchaikovsky Street, so named because the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had spent some time living and working there. On a sudden whim, the artist also presented me with a print of one of his lovely drawings. Unfortunately, because of the time constraints of our stay in Tbilisi, we didn't have the opportunity to visit further with Lado, though we did walk down his street and Meg photographed a plaque commemorating Tchaikovsky's stay there.

The print that Lado gave me.

One day the following week, Meg and I happened upon a beautiful brand-new motorcycle parked in one of the city's many courtyards. As we approached this lovely bike, a woman of about thirty walked over and stood watching us without saying a word. Then a man of about the same age came over and spoke to us. The couple had ridden to Tbilisi from Russia on a short tour of Georgia. We talked a bit about the motorcycle, a brand new Honda Goldwing, built in America. Powered by a six cylinder water-cooled engine with three cylinders on each side horizontally opposed, this Honda Goldwing came with every possible accessory. We talked with the man about this couple's travels, the bike, and ultimately what they do for a living in Russia. (It turned out that, while his English is quite good, his wife speaks only Russian, so she just stood by and listened.) Alexey ("call me Alex") and Anastasia are publishers in Russia of children's books and school textbooks, so we also had an interesting discussion of book publishing before Meg and I continued our exploration of the city's streets

The American-made Honda from Russia.

Later the same day, when Meg and I had stopped for coffee at Double B Coffee & Tea, a lovely cafe near Freedom Square, I spotted a young woman drawing with pen and ink on a large sheet of paper spread across her table. Her art looked intricate and fascinating so I walked over to get a closer look and talk with the artist. Another Russian! This woman lives and makes her art in Tbilisi. We talked for a while about using pen and ink to make fine drawings and about life in general. Meg came over as well. She had noticed another part of this woman's media. She was drawing on the back of a large sheet of wallpaper! The texture of this heavy paper adds almost a third dimension to the drawings, bringing the images additional power. We left the artist to her work and returned to sipping our delicious Georgian-style "Americano" coffee. (The only place you can get a plain coffee in old Tbilisi is at the Dunkin' Donuts - really! - at the side of Freedom Square.) In a short while, the artist got up, leaving her work on the table, and paused at ours. "Don't go away," she said, "I'll be right back." And she left the cafe. We thought she was just stepping outside for a moment, but she put on a helmet and drove away on a motor scooter she had parked outside. About ten minutes later, she gave us one of her smaller pieces (not drawn on wallpaper) to take home with us. I gave her my e-mail address and she brought up her Facebook page on her phone so that I'd recognize it when she sent me a friend request. Her Facebook page has a false name (Nurvady Bumburumpum), she doesn't sign her work, and I don't think she ever gave us her name. Now she is my Facebook friend, this young artist from Russia.