Evgeny Sashko: a person, an artist, a teacher

Baklyskii Pavel Vladimirovich Senior Educator, the department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Pacific National University 680035, Russia, Khabarovskii krai, g. Khabarovsk, ul. Tikhookeanskaya, 136 000462@pnu.edu.ru Other publications by this author

Baklyskaia Larisa Evgen'evna Docent, the department of Design of Architectural Environment, Pacific National University; Educator, Khabarovsk Technological College 680035, Russia, Khabarovskii krai, g. Khabarovsk, ul. Tikhookeanskaya, 136 lb2811@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Sashko Evgeny Vyacheslavovich (09.01. 1950, Jin-Zhou, China - 22.01. 2018, St. Petersburg), artist, teacher, methodologist of drawing. 

Introduction. With Evgeny Vyacheslavovich Sashko, one of the authors of the article worked together for about forty years, and the acquaintance took place, albeit one-sided, back in his student years. At the beginning of that time, he seemed to be a difficult person, not easily approaching, knowing his own worth. Of course, this author, who entered the art and graphic Faculty of the Khabarovsk State Pedagogical Institute, looked up at the last-year student of the khudgraf Sashko from the bottom up. He was amazed at the filigree expressiveness and accuracy of the solution of his posters at the exhibition of works of the SHDD (school decorative art) course on museum subjects, and Sashko seemed to this author then the embodiment of an unattainable peak of skill.

With the passage of time of joint work at the Department of Fine Arts of the Faculty of Architecture of the Khabarovsk Polytechnic Institute, the time of cooperation and the strengthening of unanimity in the methodology of teaching drawing to architects, this cooperation led to a strengthening mutual understanding, collaboration in methodological disputes and growing friendship.

From the heights of knowing what your friend lives by, empathizing with his problems, his experiences of what is happening with the world, with the country, with the teaching of drawing in Europe, the world and our country, you can try to write about him, about his personality (Figure 1) and about the influence of his figure on the growth and formation of young architects and designers of the architectural environment in the city, the country and other parts of the world, where his students and pupils have left.

Biography. His father, Vyacheslav Vyacheslavovich Sashko, is a military pilot, an attack aircraft, a participant in the Great Patriotic War. In the family archive, a small pocket-sized photograph of the father, who took off in flight uniform, has been preserved (Figure 2). On the front side of the chest portrait made in the studio, there is an inscription typed in typographic font "2nd Baltic Front, Vainode, 15. XII. 44.". Military awards on the chest speak about the bravery of the pilot: the Order of the Red Banner of Battle, the Red Star, the Patriotic War, medals. In one of the battles he was shot down, captured, released by Soviet troops, continued to fight. He was presented for the award of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, sent to participate in the Victory Parade, but neither one nor the other took place - the fact of capture affected. 

Yevgeny's mother, Alexandra Matveyevna Sashko, also a participant in the war, worked in the pilots' club. They got married in Derbent in 1946 . Soon the young family moved to the People's Republic of China, to the new place of service of its head. Evgeny Vyacheslavovich Sashko was born in the post-war period in a military garrison in the Chinese city of Jin-Zhou, where he lived his first 16 years.  In 1966, the family settled in Khabarovsk. After being discharged into the reserve, the father continued to lead the most active lifestyle, was a mining fisherman and traveled a lot with his son.

 Evgeny Vyacheslavovich graduated from secondary school in Khabarovsk in 1967 and in the same year entered the 1st year of the Art and Graphic Faculty of the Khabarovsk State Pedagogical Institute. Among other disciplines, he immediately singled out the drawing, later telling the author: "You know, I immediately realized that this is mine, I can do it." At the end of the course of study (diploma No. 517127 dated 10. 06. 1972), as a graduate of the military department of the Khabarovsk State Pedagogical Institute, he served a year in the army (14. 10. 1972 - 05. 11. 1973) on the basis of the Red Banner Amur Flotilla. The service was accompanied by an active design activity. At the end of the service , senior sailor Sashko worked as a wood painting artist (12. 12. 1972 - 20.06. 1974) at the Khabarovsk Sawmill enterprise of the Regional Fuel Industry Department of the Khabarovsk Regional Executive Committee. His activity was successful, he was appreciated. But fate called him to a different artistic activity. In 1974, he was hired at the Khabarovsk Polytechnic Institute, where a new specialty "Architecture" was opened in 1972, as a drawing teacher at the newly formed Department of Architectural Design in 1974, which was headed at the beginning of its formation by Mira Ivanovna Gornova (1974 -1977), and then Nikolai Petrovich Kradin (1979 - 1987).  Initially, Sashko was accepted as a teacher with an hourly wage and a single place of work (08.10. 1974), then enrolled as a teacher in the staff of the department (23.03. 1975). In 1976, a new structural unit appeared in the structure of the KhPI - the Department of Fine Arts was formed ^{[1, p.171]}. Vladimir Filippovich Baburov was appointed the first head. He was an interesting man who came out of the galaxy of "young geniuses" of the khudgraf of that time (I. Zakharov, V. T. Sakhatov, A. P. Lepetukhin, S. N. Zolotarev, Yu. I. Bykov). He was a well-known sculptor and jeweler in the city, as well as one of the many friends of E. V. Sashko. As a result of his election by competition (04. 07. 1980), Sashko became a senior lecturer at the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture of KhPI. 

In the same year, a tragedy occurred in the family of Evgeny Vyacheslavovich. 07. 11. 1980 Father Vyacheslav Vyacheslavovich Sashko died of a heart attack. It happened on the left bank of the Amur River, where a father and son spent a day off at traditional fishing spots. The son carried the deceased father on his shoulders several kilometers to the boat.

Since 1980 and subsequent years, the department has been experiencing upheavals associated with administrative troubles, disagreements in the leadership and plans to liquidate the architectural faculty, which does not fit well into the specifics of the work of a technical university. In 1985, the recruitment of students for the first year was discontinued, and in 1986 the Department of Fine Arts was disbanded. Most of the teachers moved to another job, the few remaining worked as part of the Department of Architectural Design, and then the Department of Architecture. After the dismissal and departure of the head of the Department of IZO Alexander Ivanovich Ikonnikov to the Khabarovsk State Pedagogical Institute for the last more than two and a half years of the existence of the department, Evgeny Vyacheslavovich Sashko , by order of the acting head (06. 04. 1981 - 08. 09. 1984). In 1988, as a result of the efforts of the architectural community of the city and the region and in connection with the changed market conditions of architects, recruitment for the specialty was resumed. For the cycle of fine disciplines, this almost two-year period has become a time of rethinking the accumulated experience and searching for new methodological solutions in teaching drawing. In 1992, there was another perturbation in the life of the Department of ISO. She became a full member and a separate unit of the department "Fundamentals of Architecture and Fine Arts". 

The following years are not outwardly filled with notable events. Of course, the name of the university changed, the Department of ISO was organized again. But for Sashko, they were a time for developing and practicing the working skills of a teacher and an artist. This is the time of improving pedagogical skills, the steady growth of authority and the creation of their own school, the time of education and training of students who are masters of their craft. 

Lifestyle and work. Life and work were inseparable for Evgeny Vyacheslavovich. In all life manifestations, Sashko was natural and organic. The main thread for him was the personality of his father, he wanted to be like him in everything. His father taught him not to admire nature, but to live in it, tirelessly study, feel and be friends with it (Figure 3). His father was an amateur painter, was a skilled woodcarver, inlaid his carved works, achieved the effect of picturesqueness in colored inserts in a wooden carved frame. In everything he did, one can see the desire and the need to achieve his goal. And also the desire to reach the essence of things and phenomena, the need to study the properties of materials, to gain skills to work with any new material.

The son inherited this quality from his father. So, he said about himself that he knows everything about fish (Figure 4). With the same degree of certainty, he could say this about the properties of wood and some other materials that he happened to encounter in his own artistic and pedagogical practice. From year to year, his personal practice made him more and more a professional needleworker, more and more comprehending in the forms of language the composition and content of actions leading to the goal being pursued.

 Sashko easily acquired friends, never rejected anyone outright, was always even in communication, very rarely short-tempered if he suddenly felt that they were trying to neglect him. And even then, some out-of-the-ordinary reason was needed. His reliability as a comrade has always been appreciated by his companions. This was especially true during the field summer practices in drawing and painting. Students and their parents spoke about him like this: "For Sashko - like behind a stone wall." 

The whole life of Yevlen Vyacheslavovich from the very beginning of his scientific, pedagogical and creative activity was subordinated to the task of teaching students visual literacy and educating them to be responsible for the results of their work.

A new team, students who need to be taught not just to draw, but to draw as architects should be able to draw – all this prompted the neophyte to seriously study the basic drawing program, which was then the program of the Moscow Architectural Institute, and to create his own cathedral program of the course "Drawing". Fortunately, it turned out that the principles of linear-constructive drawing ^{[2, 3]}, the possession of which is primarily necessary for an architect, were already familiar to Evgeny Vyacheslavovich firsthand (Figure 5). Came to the court, as they say. For many subsequent years, he was the main generator and conductor of linear-constructive drawing positions at the Department of Fine Arts. During these years, a special style of teaching by E.V. Sashko has been developing, which can be called the pedagogy of cooperation ^{[4, p. 189]}.  This style consisted of the skills of a talented draftsman, teacher, guiding and stimulating the student to find his way to solve any set creative task ^[5] and personal charisma, the basis of which has always been innate intelligence, tact and respect for the interlocutor, regardless of the status of the latter.  Even his first students, who have been in the architectural profession for a long time, note that the peculiarity of their relationship with the young teacher E.V. Sashko was the complete confidence in the correctness of his actions and confidence in his competence inspired by him from the very beginning of training. And those who studied with Evgeny Vyacheslavovich many years later say the same thing (Figure 6).

The fact that on the eve of the cathedral meetings devoted to the sacred issue of approving the candidates of the reduced teachers, he was sent on a long business trip to improve his skills at the FPC of the Moscow Architectural Institute testifies to how eager the leadership of the faculty and department were to keep Yevgeny Vyacheslavovich in their ranks as the most necessary specialist. In total, from the beginning of his work at the KHPI until the end of the 1980s, Yevgeny Vyacheslavovich took a course of study under the FPC MArhI program three times, which allowed him to get acquainted with the teaching staff of the FPC, and with friends-cadets and to fight live in this experience-rich environment, which is essentially a real process of improving his own qualifications. It is impossible to compare this stormy chatterbox, where everything is mixed with everything, with a routine picture of its own department with its usual way of life.

Creative and pedagogical activity. Evgeny Vyacheslavovich Sashko's professional activity was not limited to teaching drawing, but, like his personality in general, was very versatile. So, from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Evgeny Vyacheslavovich, as part of a group of enthusiasts of the department, participated in the "We design ourselves – we build ourselves" movement. Teachers and undergraduate students created a student design bureau, where they developed playground projects, and in the summer they carried out these projects in a tree. These interesting sites were built in the urban areas of Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in other cities and towns of the region ^[6]. Evgeny Vyacheslavovich, as a connoisseur of wood, consultant and master practitioner, could not stay away from this useful and necessary business.

Another example that characterizes the breadth of E. V. Sashko's interests was his research work on the identification, full-scale survey and pasportization of historical and cultural monuments of Yakutia, the Chita Region, the Khabarovsk Territory and the EAO ^[6] under the guidance of Professor N. P. Kradin, which he carried out together with P. V. Baklysky and other teachers of the department.  Evgeny Vyacheslavovich on long business trips, in addition to his regular duties as a photographer and researcher, successfully performed other related duties of a business trip. No one was better able to pitch a tent, make a fire and feed his companions with his own caught fish.

In 1992, a new ray of light appeared in the life of Evgeny Vyacheslavovich. The empty room of the former radio class in the attic part of the central building was given to the department for the equipment of a mock-up workshop in it. Behind the scenes, without registration by order of the University (since 1992 – Khabarovsk State Technical University), the leadership was entrusted to him. E.V. Sashko spent a considerable amount of personal time on the arrangement and equipment of the workshop with new tools for professional layout of historically existing architectural forms, involving the staff of the department in this work and looking for opportunities for contacts with knowledgeable specialists inside the walls of the university and outside them.  A great help was provided by the former dean of the faculty, head of the Department of "Building Structures" V. A. Kravchuk, who shared the funds of the department, thanks to which manual woodworking tools were purchased for the mock-up workshop. Evgeny Vyacheslavovich put a lot of effort into finding stationary woodworking equipment, agreeing with the heads of laboratories that have machines ready for decommissioning and suitable in size and capacity of the mock-up workshop on the transfer of these capacities to the workshop. He did not stop before buying the necessary equipment at his own expense, he found materials thanks to personal connections.  

At that time, thanks to the well-established work of the workshop, the department had no interruptions in the exhibition activities of the ISO cycle and in the layout of wood by students both when studying architectural monuments and when creating layouts for their project. Some, perhaps, by-product of the workshop's work was the formation of an exhibition and gift fund of students' works, and the works of its head, who made the workshop popular in the administrative circles of the university.

Somehow, most likely quite naturally, the workshop accumulated rarities acquired in the course of research activities among urban and suburban buildings and gifts from friends or guests of the workshop, which eventually became a small museum (Figure 7).

Developing the methodology of layout and helping students to master it, Evgeny Vyacheslavovich achieved in this form of artistic creativity the expressiveness of his works and the accuracy of the layout of the original (Figure 8).

 Sashko's personal mock-up activity began with helping students, then continued with the development and verification of his ideas about the process based on photographs and measurements. From the first relatively simple objects, such as, for example, the travel tower of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery (Kolomenskoye), made according to the materials of Professor N. P. Kradin, individual objects of the Albazinsky Fortress (Figure 9), Yevgeny Sashko began to turn to smaller in size, but rich in details wooden forms, such as the chapel in the name of St. St. Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra of Lycia, standing in the station building in Harbin.

 The chapel-kiosk was commissioned to the performer by the Orthodox community of Russian Christian emigrants who once moved to Australia from China. The materials (mainly photographs) were provided by the customers through one of the former graduate students of the Faculty of Architecture of KHSTU (Figure 10).

The result of this work was the appearance of author's models, the last of which – the model of the triumphal arch erected on the Cathedral Square of the city in honor of the arrival in 1891 of Tsarevich Nicholas (the future Emperor Nicholas II), was made by Evgeny Vyacheslavovich for the opening museum of the Central District of Khabarovsk in 1997 (Figure 11).

 Another field of activity of E. V. Sashko in the late 1990s - early 2000s was the management of student creativity with active personal participation in the field of ice sculpture (a kind of plastic in winter natural materials: if you want – ice, if you want - snow, if you want – icicles with a drop).  The main time of the head was occupied by the preparation of tools for performers: the manufacture and sharpening of traditional cutters, the adaptation of know-how for possible actions with the material, the development of technological operations, the evaluation of the results and the effects of material processing. This kind of artistic creativity was instilled in Khabarovsk from the moment when Nikolai Egorovich Zaveryaev (also, by the way, a friend of Yevgeny Vyacheslavovich) became the world champion in ice sculpture (this was then the title of the winner of the international competition-competition in this type of artistic activity). Later he was appointed to the position of the Chief Artist of the city. Following the head (in the literal sense of the word), S. N. Loginov, Khabarovsk artist, member of the Union of Artists of Russia, associate professor of the Department of Art of the Pacific State University, author of the coats of arms of the city of Khabarovsk and the Khabarovsk Territory, honorary citizen of the city of Khabarovsk, becomes a multiple winner of international competitions (world champion in ice and snow plastics).

The main activity of Evgeny Vyacheslavovich – teaching drawing to students of architects and designers - also could not but affect the recorded results of his activities. A large number of exhibitions of student works (Figure 12), diplomas celebrating the fruitful work of the head, whose name sounded all over the country, could not but result in printed publications.

Evgeny Vyacheslavovich loved to draw and was able to teach how to draw (Figure 13). Even in publications where his authorship is not indicated, his influence on the structure and content of the publication is undeniable. Thus, the textbook considering the methodology of entrance tests by drawing and containing examination tasks, recommendations for exam preparation, exercises and examples of exam papers of applicants, was certainly developed under the influence and with the participation of E.V. Sashko ^[7]. His contribution to the development of the theme "Architectural Fantasy", which is the final task and the basis of architectural design, is invaluable (Figure 15).

 Three printed works, jointly with P. V. Baklysky and other colleagues, were published in the publishing house of TOGU. All three works record the results of the long-term work of the draftsmen of the ART cycle, regardless of the administrative affiliation of this cycle at one time or another to a particular administrative structure, in three important areas of drawing research by students of nature and the language of drawing. The first of them is actually an illustrated course program (2009), which includes not only relevant at the moment, but also other tasks that are possible in this course and were once used in practical activities (familiarity with the language structure of this activity) ^[8]. The second work, focused on the program of summer practice assignments in drawing (2016), shows the student the way to successfully solve practice tasks and acquire the skills of compositionally complex work from nature when studying architectural monuments in a historically formed environment or elements that make up this environment ^[9]. The third work (2018) is a collective monograph devoted to the review of the works of students of different years, made from nature on the streets of Khabarovsk and in its immediate vicinity and collectively constituting a "portrait of the hometown" ^[10]. In each of the three works, E. V. Sashko participated as an inspirer, co-author of the idea, participant in completing the illustrative component of the layout and graphic design of the publication (Figure 14).

The last two works were published without the personal presence of Evgeny Vyacheslavovich Sashko in the city of Khabarovsk. In 2014, the university management decided to liquidate the mock-up workshop, restoring a radio class in this room. Sashko was ordered to clean the room, which he was forced to do. Having lost this basic connection that kept him at the university, having given away the exhibits of his museum, having put the tools under the protection of financially responsible persons, that is, having taken them out of service and not hoping for an improvement in the situation with the load of drawing teachers, E. V. Sashko 31. 07. 1914 filed a letter of resignation on his own in connection with retirement. In the same year, he left with his wife to St. Petersburg to a new place of residence with his children. Three years later, on January 22, 2018, 68 years old from birth, he died in his apartment after returning from a forest walk.

The former layout workshop, which never became a radio class, remains in disrepair to this day and is gradually being destroyed.

Nota Bene

• About
• Bank details
• Partners
• Contact Information
• Private policy

 

For authors

• Agreements
• Author's area

 

Our Services

• Translation of articles
• Publishing Services
• Library

 

Other

• How to write an article?
• Journals in the list of the
  Higher Attestation Commission
• Mobile app

 

Our sites

• Aurora group s.r.o.

© 1998 – 2024 Nota Bene. Publishing Technologies. NB-Media Ltd.