User:Ylembersky/sandbox

Yelena Lembersky in the mountains

Yelena Lembersky (Russian: Алёна Лéмберская, b. 1969) is an American writer, an artist, and an architect. She is a granddauther of a prominent Soviet artist, Felix Lembersky (1913-1970). Her memoir, Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour: Memories of Soviet Russia, co-written with Galina Lembersky, will be published by Cherry Orchard Books, Boston, in 2022.

Early years

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Born in the Soviet Union during Brezhnev administration, Yelena Lembersky spent her childhood in novostroiki, the newly-built neighborhood, studded with graying block-panel high-rises on the outskirts of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), the USSR. She began to learn English at the age of eight. At the age of thirteen, she began to study art at the First City Art School. After finishing high school, she enrolled at Mukhina Art Institute (now The Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design). In 1987, Yelena and her mother emigrated to the United States, reuniting with Yelena's maternal grandmother, Lucia Lemberskaya, the widow of artist Felix Lembersky. The family resettled in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a university town and the home of Ardis, the legendary publisher of censored Russian and Soviet books. Yelena continued her studies at the University of Michigan, earning a double Bachelors of Art and Science in 1991. The same year, she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to persue her Masters of Architecture at MIT.

Published work

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Yelena Lembersky's first published work is Felix Lembersky: Paintings and Drawings (Феликс Лемберский: Живопись и Графика, Moscow: Galart, 2009) an art catalogue in English and Russian, a compilation of artwork, essays, and archival materials related to the artist. “Being and Beings: Anthropomorphism in the Art of Felix Lembersky”, appeared in Cardinal Points Literary Journal, vol. 4, (Brown University) in 2014. “Bears Came to Town,” a short autobiographical story about a teenage Russian émigré’s first days in Ann Arbor, was published in Cardinal Points, vol. 10, in 2020. Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour: Memories of Soviet Russia is a memoir co-authored by Galina and Yelena Lembersky, a mother-daughter due, about their life in Leningrad, their struggle to escape Russia, the refusenik years, and Galina's imprisionment at the notorious Kresti prison and Sablino labor camp for women. “Unsparing, with devastating clarity, this extraordinary mother-daughter memoir is like a drop of ink that seeps into every crevice of Soviet life in the 1970s and 1980s," (ChaeRan Freeze, author, Brandeis University). Cherry Orchard Books is an imprint of the Academic Studies Press (Boston).

Work and personal life

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In addition to writing, Yelena Lembersky worked as an architect in Boston, Cambridge, and Ann Arbor. In 1998, she joined Mark Horowitz at the Uniterra Foundation, as a director of Lembersky Center for Art and Society, organizing exhibitions and eductional programs centered on the art of Felix Lembersky. , She lives near Boston with her husband and two children.

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