Vera Nakonechny

Vera Nakonechny was born in Germany to Ukrainian parents. The family immigrated to Brazil, where she began to learn embroidery from her mother. In 1962, they settled in Philadelphia, home to a large number of people of Ukrainian descent. There, she studied at the Ukrainian Women’s League of America and with artists such as the late Eudokia Sorochaniuk, a 1999 Heritage Fellow.

When Nakonechny was finally able to visit Ukraine in 1991, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, she found that many traditions were being lost. “The Communists really did a disservice,” she told an interviewer. “If you were caught doing things, you were considered a nationalist. Many people got deported for doing their own art. For self-preservation, they didn't teach. Now there is a generation that never got taught.” And even after the ban was lifted, she said, many remained fearful of sharing what they knew. She has since returned a number of times, both to learn and to teach. “Ukraine has twenty-two different techniques of embroidery. In that, there are 200-some stitches," she says. “It's complex.” Aided by apprenticeship grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, which also honored her in 2007 with its Fellowship in Folk Arts, she has studied with masters at Kiev’s National Center of Folk Culture’s Ivan Honchar Museum, where she is an associate, and has sought out elderly women in remote villages to learn from them. At home, she’s recognized as a master teacher and has passed along her knowledge to both her daughters.

Nakonechny is known particularly for her stunning headdresses and her beautiful beadwork, weaving, and embroidery. Her work has been featured in exhibits both in the U.S. and Ukraine. Her honors also include a 2008 Pew Fellowship Award from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage and the 2011 Leeway Foundation Transformational Award.