BEHIND THE BADGERS
My name is Erzsébet Lehoczki (dear foreigner Visitor, I appreciate if You try to call me by my name, but I'm fully pleased with Elisabeth or Lis as well) (relatives and friends call me Bözsi anyway, which may be also difficult to pronuance /bøʒi/.So lets keep it simple;)
I live in Budapest, capital of Hungary (not Romania (it's Bucarest)), East-Central Europe, European Union, Northern Hemisphere. Born and raised here, I'm trying to deal with all the pros and cons of my circumstances with a deep love for my language, the capital and land, and mostly for the people around me.
After graduating I studied silversmithing (as a 52 kilogramm heavy girl!), enchasing, embossing, filigree-many technics of the trade. I also studied international protocoll. Then spent 5 years at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, as a metal designer student. Got a nice golden pin and a warm but honest "well-done" for my final work, a trophy for a literature award (see here )
And now I'm trying to deal with all the pros and contras of my new circumstances, picking up colors and views every day to translate them into jewellery, and enjoying one of life's most inspiring period as a mother of 2 little girls and a boy.
BUT WHY KISSING BADGERS?
I have a big fat Hungarian family.
Compared to other big families, maybe its not "that" big, but I always felt like its big enough for me.
From my mothers side we are 12 cousins and we used to celebrate Christmas together at my granparents' house. Years ago, as a silversmith student I took my first good-enough-to-show workpiece to the Christmas gathering.
It was a small silver bowl with some Scythian motifs enchased on its bottom:
a panther and a deer, entangled together in wrestling.
I asked my dear relatives to tell me what they see on the bowl to know how visible my figures are.
They all tried to figure it out, "its a tree", "its some nonfigurative stuff", but no one succeeded.
Then one of my elder cousins just took a quick glance and said "what else would they be: kissing badgers!"
After this when people asked me what kind of things I'm doing I started to say "kissing badgers-kind".
