It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Ohio-based artist Aka Pereyma. Widely exhibited in Ukraine and the United States, Pereyma stressed the importance of her Ukrainian cultural heritage to her work, particularly focusing on its folk traditions as a source of inspiration. Her belief in ‘knowing yourself through creativity,’ inspired her to explore numerous media – painting, printmaking, watercolor and mixed media, ceramics, and sculpture – often employing abstracted, colorful, decorative designs. In welding, she produced both small, and large-scale sculptures in scrap metal and other media, exploring animist subjects and geometric forms, as in A Pair, 1994, included in UIMA’s permanent collection.

Pereyma studied at the Dayton Art Institute from 1960-1963, and the Art Institute of Chicago from 1963-1964. While in Chicago, she exhibited with ‘Monolit’ [Monolith] a progressive exhibition group based in the Ukrainian-American community, and later, its successor organization, ‘Vasah’ [in Ukrainian, a salt trader’s cart] in 1967; Pereyma participated in several group shows over the years at UIMA, exhibiting solo in 2005.

A Pair (1994) Steel