About the Artists & Instructors

About Nestor Topchy

Nestor Topchy (b. 1963, New Jersey) is a painter, sculptor, installation artist and performance artist. 

Topchy is the founder and the Creative Director of HIVE (Habitable Interdisciplinary Visionary Environment), Houston, Tx. He has exhibited widely, nationally and internationally, at Ivan Honchar Museum Folkculture Kyiv, Ukraine; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Menil Collection, Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum; Evergreen Museum / Johns Hopkins University; La Museo de Nacion, Lima, Peru; Edinburg Fringe Festival, Scotland; Grace Space NYC, among other places.

Nestor learned to write ornate Ukrainian Easter eggs - Pysanky (plural of Pysanka) in childhood, with his mother and paternal family, who immigrated from Stalinist Ukraine as displaced persons following World War II. 

Most recently, Nestor's icinographic works were on show at a solo exhibit at the Menil Collection between Aug 2023 and Jan 2024, between July and October 2024 he was one of the resident artists at the PAC Art Residency.

Topchy currently lives and works in Houston, TX.

Find out more about Nestor HERE.
Find Nestor on LinkedIn.

About Iryna Petrovska Marchiano, PhD

For close to a decade now, Iryna has been collaborating with Nestor as a co-instructor of various Pysanky Workshops and Demos. A Ukraine-native and an adopted-Texan engineer & data analyst by day and an art&craft lover by night, Iryna found true passion in the artform and is a strong believer in the therapeutic power of pysanka writing, coining the term #teraPYsanky.

Iryna is also a co-founder and a spokesperson for a Houston-based non-profit HTX4Ukraine and has previously served as a president and a Board of Directors member of the Ukrainian American Cultural Club of Houston.

Some of Iryna's proudest artistic moments were:

Find Iryna on LinkedIn.