Patty Loew:
Interesting story. The next report you chose features a woman with an interesting history.

Liz Koerner:
She really is interesting. Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic is from a mountain village in Croatia. As a child, ethnic conflicts turned her country into a battlefield. She came to the United States in 1970's with an old world tradition for her new life in Mazomanie.

Liz Koerner:
For Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic, creating embroidered eggs is more than artistic expression. It helps her feel connected to family in Croatia and to happy memories from childhood. It's also a way to cope with some of the difficulties that have come her way.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
I think it is just something so simple that means so much.

Liz Koerner:
This style of decorating eggs is unique to the area where Stephanie grew up, south of Zagreb in Croatia. It's called “pisanitza.”

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
“Pisati” is a Slavic word for writing so it would be like pisati. You know, like writing with a thread.

Liz Koerner:
For hundreds of years children were given these beautiful eggs at Easter. Stephanie learned how to create this art form from her mother. On a visit to the old country, Stephanie discovered that this art form has almost died out.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
This thread you would grab from this side.

Liz Koerner:
She's keeping tradition alive here by teaching others, including her granddaughters Madeline and Lauryn.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
I give them plastic needles and I put the thread on and they are doing it and they're so excited about grandma's eggs, you know.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
You're making one for me? You darling.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
I'm going to pass the tradition on because I think that we need to look back and where we are from, you know.            

Liz Koerner:
Stephanie grew up in a mountain village in Croatia, an area where faith and art go hand in hand. The traditional pattern embroidered on the eggs is called a “God's eye.”

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
We would call it “bozje oko” which is “God's eye.”

Liz Koerner:
The beauty of Stephanie's intricate creations is even more remarkable for the effort it requires from hands crippled by rheumatoid arthritis.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
I have severe rheumatoid arthritis for 30 years now and I have plastic knuckles and I have plastic elbows and metal knees and spinal fusion so I'm like the bionic woman and my hands have little nodules which are normal for people with arthritis but not so many. It doesn't bother me, you know, except sometimes people look at them and they are afraid of them or something or like my little granddaughter says to me, one time she came to me and she hugs me and she kisses my hand and she says, “Oh, Bacca, I love your hands but you know sometimes when I look at them, I feel like running. They look like monster's hands.”

Liz Koerner:
A sense of humor and a passion to create often carry her through difficult times. While healing from elbow surgery, Stephanie couldn't manage the two-handed art of egg decorating. Instead she took up a paintbrush. Inspiration again came from her childhood.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
Oh, my first painting is the painting of my mother in my house making the eggs. She is sitting there by the table and we are sitting around waiting for the eggs to be done. We were very poor and so to have an egg for one person was like a special gift. We were a big family and close family. My great grandmother, my grandma, my mom's dad and my dad's father, my grandfather, lived together and then five children all in one room house with the dirt floor.

Liz Koerner:
Another early painting depicts a favorite Easter memory.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
In that painting you'll see “wasmenka” which is the Easter fire that is burned at 4:00 in the morning and all of the children and all of the people in the town, they come and are united in this particular moment in prayer and hopes for a better future. It was such a magical moment, you know, that it stayed with me for up to today and I will carry it until I die because it was just so beautiful.

Liz Koerner:
Stephanie's beautiful memories are also colored with sadness. Stephanie grew up in a region of Croatia ravaged by war.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
A lot of men lost their lives in the war there. Therefore, the region was the poorest region and most households were headed by women.

Liz Koerner:
It was poverty that forced Stephanie to leave her homeland. She found a job in Germany, then moved to America in the early 1970s. She's traveled far from her childhood home and faced a great deal of physical hardship along the way. But through it all, crafting her eggs has been a constant, a way to keep going through good times and bad.

Stephanie Lemke-Vuljanic:
This is what I think is important to find in life, just something to do for the times when you don't feel like doing anything. You know, don't give in. You just go on, you know.

Liz Koerner:
Since this report first aired in 2005, Stephanie has had some tough times. She had a head-on collision when her car hit a patch of ice. Her recovery was very slow but she's still very upbeat. In fact, Stephanie is teaching her third granddaughter the art of Croatian egg painting. Stephanie is also about to publish a children's book online in the very near future.

Patty Loew:
Best of luck to her. If you would like to see more of Stephanie's work, log on to our website at wpt.org/inwisconsin. Liz Koerner, thank you for sharing those reports with us. Really enjoyed them.