One of Jozefa Rogocki’s early memories is a video of an old woman, dressed in black, holding an egg coated in dark wax.
“She removed the wax and revealed these stunning colors on the egg,” Rogocki recalls. “It was just an amazing process to see.”
This was a pysanky egg, intricately decorated in an Eastern European folk tradition that is at least a thousand years old. For Rogocki, a 2025 Midwest Culture Bearer awardee based in Lansing, Michigan, it is a direct link to her Polish heritage.
“Pysanky eggs always caught my imagination with their mystery and magic,” she says. “When I’m at art fairs and children see the eggs, you see that wonder. I love seeing my work through their eyes.”
Rogocki grew up in England. Her father immigrated from Poland before she was born, and Rogocki saw pysanky on the Easter postcards sent from their family there.
She attended art college and received her Master’s, specializing in installation work, mixed media, and site-specific pieces. (Some of this work even incorporated eggshells.) But it was her own immigration journey that led her back to pysanky.
“It wasn’t until I came to the U.S., where the Ukrainian and Polish immigrants had established their cultures and communities here, that made it accessible,” she says. “[Growing up,] we didn’t really celebrate that heritage. I wanted to raise my children with those connections.”
Mastering an Artform
Inspired by masters like Detroit-based Roman Seniuk, Rogocki started applying her art skills to eggs, moving through “clumsy beginnings” to learn precise techniques generations in the making.
A landmark in her career was the chance to learn from Helen Badulak, author of Pysanky in the 21st Century and one of the country’s foremost pysanky masters. Badulak invited Rogocki and her family to stay at her Pennsylvania home.
“As my mentor, she gave me tools, materials, and photos of eggs in her museum collection for me to continue to practice and to be inspired by,” says Rogocki. One lesson she learned from Badulak: don’t be afraid to push traditional art into new terrain.
Now 25 years into her pysanky practice, Rogocki is a recognized expert. She displays breathtaking pysanky at art fairs and cultural festivals and offers workshops for delighted newcomers, with or without Polish heritage.
Like her mentor, Rogocki creates original designs alongside traditional ones, drawing on imagery from Poland’s pre-Christian roots. Finding a balance between innovation and tradition comes down to intention: “My intent is to make an object that does have some talismanic power to it, that does have layers of meaning and isn’t purely a decorative object,” she says.
Eggs can be a challenging and beautiful medium. “The egg is already carrying a meaning in itself—a rebirth, the cycle of life—before you even start putting your own meanings and interpretations onto it,” says Rogocki. “I think it’s the tension of the fragility and the power of that symbol that makes it so interesting to me.”