She grew up in Hrušov near Galanta, graduated from a vocational school of mechanical engineering in Myjava. It taught her precision and skill, which she used both in her job as a toolmaker and designer, and in her artistic creation, which is based on traditional homemade crafts. Her parents were also skilled - her father, besides being able to weave...
She grew up in Hrušov near Galanta, graduated from a vocational school of mechanical engineering in Myjava. It taught her precision and skill, which she used both in her job as a toolmaker and designer, and in her artistic creation, which is based on traditional homemade crafts.
Her parents were also skilled – her father, besides being able to weave a basket, make a birch broom or wooden rakes, also embroidered pictures and wove carpets. That’s why, already at the age of fourteen, she started crocheting, sewing, and doing patchwork, and persevered in it into adulthood.
The year 2000 was a turning point for her when the newly established Craft School of the ULUV began offering craft courses to the public. During a children’s holiday course on making a corn husk doll, she learned how to make it, and since the ULUV was looking for instructors for the Craft School, she led this course the following year. Soon after, she added instructing a course on decorating Easter eggs, and eventually became a full-time instructor at the ULUV Craft School.
She then embarked on a phase of discovering other craft techniques through courses organized by the ULUV. By completing them, she found that, among traditional materials – perhaps also due to her lifelong experience in mechanical engineering – wire and metal suited her best.
Alongside corn husk dolls and Easter eggs, she soon began teaching courses at the ULUV on making wire jewelry, wire techniques, and artistic wire processing. During these fruitful times, she co-founded the wirecraft club Džarek at the ULUV. The club helps enthusiasts of wirecraft mainly through the exchange of experiences, and she remains a member to this day.
In the field of metalworking, after completing a basic course at the ULUV, she has been professionally growing through the summer jewelry academies led by the jeweler Hana Kašičková, which also influenced her current focus on authorial jewelry. Among the techniques she learned at her academies, she prefers hammering and etching with acid (both by hand and photolithography) in her work. Furthermore, in 2016, she completed vocational studies in goldsmithing, which she also enrolled in out of interest.
“In terms of the influence of tradition on my creative work, it is primarily determined by the materials used – wire, copper, brass. From metal, I create a wide range of women’s ornaments – bracelets, rings, necklaces, brooches, hairpins, earrings, with or without stones. I prefer working on brooches with motifs of animals and birds; hairpins are popular with people. Ideas come to me in the process of creation, but customer feedback is also crucial to me. With wire, I prefer to go for plastics; I don’t enjoy making utility items. I create based on topics that we have developed in Džarek, or in the wirecraft civic association we also founded. What attracts me to wire plastics is that I design them myself, and the result can sometimes pleasantly surprise,” confesses Olga Obertová about her current work.
In wirecraft, she tries to express herself exclusively through two types of wire – blackened and galvanized. On the contrary, she does not shy away from color in metalworking. Her husband helps her a lot in her work – both with a deep understanding of her creative fervor and technologically in making prototypes. Olga Obertová’s products are characterized by original artistic handwriting and high quality, based on the principle of not letting go of anything she does not like from her hand.
In 2011, she was awarded the title of master of folk art production in the field of wire production.
Source: Mikolaj, Tomáš: Masters of the New Millennium [online]. Bratislava: Center for Folk Art Production, 2020 [accessed May 29, 2024]. Available at: https://uluv.sk/kniznica/digitalna-kniznica/