Svetlana Pchelnikova: biography, personal life, author's dolls and photos

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:47

Every human life has a purpose. And whether this life can be realized as it was intended depends only on the person himself. Moving towards a destination is always overcoming oneself.

Svetlana Pchelnikova is an artist, author and doll collector. President of the Russian Club of Doll Collectors. Member of the British Puppet Association. Honorary member of the American Union of Puppet Clubs. The initiator of the creation in Russia of the International Association of Puppet Authors (MOAK). Publisher of the magazines "World of Dolls" and "Talent - Man and Creativity". Organizer of the International Puppet Show on Tishinka. Organizer of the Estonian Doll House in Tallinn. Laureate of the State Prize in the field of culture for 2016. Initiator of many charity projects, including the Star Puppet Parade project.

They say about such people: "I was born with a golden spoon in my mouth." It seemed that life gave her everything: beauty, money, her husband is a successful businessman, children, an apartment onRublevka. Luxurious life, in which there was only one thing - meaning. And only a terrible accident, which divided this life into before and after, allowed her to find her destiny…

Svetlana

Almost everyone who deals with dolls in one way or another knows about her. The enumeration of her official titles takes quite a long time. It seems that something monumental is hidden behind them, but in fact Svetlana is a very charming open person. She is very beautiful - beautiful with some purely Russian beauty.

She can safely be called the main puppeteer not only in Russia, but also in many Western countries. The author's doll as an art appeared in the world not so long ago. And it is Svetlana Pchelnikova who plays a huge role in its popularization. As a doll maker, she traveled to many countries. Her purpose in these trips was to study the experience of organizing professional communities abroad. Based on this experience, she created the International Association of Puppet Authors here in Russia. MOAK is an organization of puppeteers, as well as just lovers of this type of art, designed to facilitate joint exhibitions, master classes, festivals.

Svetlana is the initiator of many international exhibitions and charity auctions. She is engaged in identifying and promoting emerging artists, studying the traditions of making dolls in different countries, organizing training centers in many parts of the world.

And most importantly, she involves a huge number of different people in the orbit of her activities, infecting them with her enthusiasm. In one of the interviewsPchelnikova said:

It has long been noticed that when people start doing what I do, they are transformed. All kinds of miracles begin to happen to them. It actually makes us better and kinder. Like circles on water, good deeds begin to multiply, disperse. This happens all the time in my life.

Past

The beginning of Svetlana Pchelnikova's biography is similar to many others. She was born in an ordinary Moscow family, grew up like many Soviet children. She studied at the Plekhanov Institute, where she met Kirill Pchelnikov, her future husband. After the wedding, a daughter was born. The country is hungry in the 90s. They are a student. You have to work, study, and stand in wild queues. Then they just tried to survive.

But Svetlana's husband and father quickly got their bearings in the new reality and went into the computer business. She herself began working on the stock exchange. At that time, many people made fortunes, rose to the very pinnacle of success, but then lost everything. Svetlana's family managed to earn and keep their business. After the birth of her second child, she did not return to work. With the money taken from her husband, she opened a beauty salon, which brought in a good income and worked without much of her participation. Grandmothers were happy to take care of children, and Svetlana had a lot of free time, which she had nothing to fill with.

A new life has begun - rich, well-fed… and empty. Beauty salons, many hours of discussions with girlfriends about new collections of bags, expensive cars, restaurants, nightclubs, trips abroad. It then seemed to her thatthis is what real life is. Nightclubs are followed by drugs…

Now it is difficult for her to understand why this happened. Apparently, they didn’t want to get out of the “pack”. It's hard to look at yourself from the outside. She just did what everyone around her did. And it is not known where all this could lead her if life itself had not stopped.

Accident

Husband bought her an expensive car - a Chrysler. The first in Moscow. In this car, she went for mushrooms, but lost control on the way back. The car was skidded. She flew into the ditch at breakneck speed. Rolled over several times. Svetlana was saved by the fact that the door opened from another blow and she was thrown out of the passenger compartment along with the seat.

She miraculously survived. A fracture of the spine in two places, crushed collarbones and ribs, a torn off shoulder blade, numerous fractures of the arms and legs, a disfigured face, and a brain contusion. The verdict of the doctors was terrible. She could be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Clinical death occurred on the operating table, during which she flew to the light and heard a voice that said: "The children need you." I woke up with this phrase on my lips. She determined her whole future life.

Doctors advised to do the operation, but no one gave guarantees that she would not be paralyzed. Sveta refused, saying that she would try to recover herself. I started to study according to the Dikul system. Performed exercises, overcoming terrible pain. And she dreamed about how she would start a new life, filled with meaning and light, which appeared to her in a state of clinical death.

Recovery

The realization that she could be immobilized for life made her wonder how to fill such a life. Svetlana decided to fight. She decided she would do everything in her power to get up. But if it does not work out, she will try to find what she can do even in such a helpless state. And once my mother, having come to the hospital, brought her a tutorial on creating dolls. And from that moment on, Svetlana's life changed dramatically. She remembered her childhood passion for needlework.

Husband brought her a computer. She found on the Internet training courses on the author's doll. That's when I learned how to make them myself. Initially with the aim of developing fine motor skills, it helped to restore the mobility of injured hands. Then I got carried away, began to invent my own models.

Gradually, this occupation captured her. She realized that she had found something that would allow her to create, even if she remained in a wheelchair. It will allow you to bring light, goodness, beauty into the world. And a real miracle happened. She began to recover quickly. Now Svetlana considers this the beginning of her new life. She says:

This is the starting point that has made me now, dare I say it, happy. Because my life has changed dramatically.

As soon as she left the hospital, in a corset, leaning on a cane, she went to the famous puppeteers of Moscow to study.

Svetlana Pchelnikova's dolls got better and better, and one day she sent their photos to a competition in Holland. The answer that came was that her dolls were liked and she was invitedto the exhibition. It was this trip that finally put Svetlana on her feet. And it was there that she found her destiny.

Charity

At that exhibition, Svetlana sold several of her dolls. She managed to earn 5 thousand dollars. She bought with this money a bag that she had been dreaming about for a long time, even before the accident.

And then, in a casual conversation, she learned about children with congenital heart disease who die before they get surgery because their parents don't have money for a pacemaker. The cost of an imported pacemaker is $5,000. Realization of the fact that the life of a little person is worth as much as her new bag costs, plunged into shock! Svetlana immediately decided that she would never again spend the money earned for dolls on luxury items. And she also realized that the number of children she can help depends on the number of dolls sold. The words that she heard during clinical death surfaced in her memory: “The children need you.” Now she knew exactly what kind of children they were talking about.

The idea was formed gradually. In the studio of Svetlana Pchelnikova, meetings of masters, training, master classes were held. And in parallel with this, the idea of charity was discussed, which gradually took on its shape. A clear understanding that, relying only on her own strength, she could help a very limited number of sick children, prompted her to look for an opportunity to unite with other masters. This led to the creation of the International Association of Puppet Makers.

On May 30, 2006, a press conference wasstart of the charity project "Parade of Star Dolls for Children". And in 2007, the project itself appeared, which was supported by many famous people in our country. The idea of the project is simple: the stars of domestic show business, sports, and other popular people come up with an image for the doll and make it themselves. They are given only a blank - naked, without hair, without a face, without history and soul. And then the finished work is sold at auction. All money goes to pay for operations and expensive equipment for the treatment of sick children.

Svetlana says: “You can say we just sell dolls, but buy life.”

And it seems to be true. Each star doll sold costs $3,000 or more. Collectors, fans of this or that famous person, willingly buy these rarities.

All income, all proceeds from tickets, from the sale of dolls, from stories, from photographs - everything goes to support children who need surgery. These are mainly the Bakulev Center, the Department of Emergency Surgery for Children from 0 to 3 years of Professor Shatalov, the Faina Zakharova Life Line Foundation, Give Life to Chulpan Khamatova.

Over the past ten years, more than a hundred little patients have been given life thanks to the Star Puppet Parade for Children project.

Family

She believes that her success is largely due to the support of her family. The older children of Svetlana Pchelnikova from the very beginning helped her as much as they could. Daughter Anastasia completely took over the commercial componentmother's puppet business while she handles dolls, exhibitions and charity work. Son Ivan graduated from the Institute of Economics, is seriously engaged in boxing. Svetlana Pchelnikova calls her husband her main sponsor. Even at the very beginning of her activities, both Cyril and all his friends provided her with all kinds of support. Even through dummies, they bought her first dolls at auctions.

Although a few years ago, Kirill Pchelnikov was seriously ill - he had fourth-degree cancer - he coped with the disease and continued his business. And besides that, he began to restore the Church of Michael the Archangel in the Uryupinsk district of the Volgograd region.

Michelle

But the main pride of Svetlana Pchelnikova, the object of love and tenderness, is her youngest daughter, Michelle. The appearance of this child Svetlana and Cyril considered a miracle. After the accident, after a difficult recovery period, Svetlana no longer hoped for a third child. But I really wanted to. And as she herself believes, as a reward for her charitable work, God sent her a long-awaited child. True, a little ahead of schedule. Michelle was born at 29 weeks weighing 900 grams. And with a broken heart. Svetlana knew for sure that such children were being nursed, so she did not succumb to panic. My daughter spent two months in the hospital, in the incubator for newborns, then she was operated on. All this time Svetlana was there. She had to endure everything that the mothers of the children saved by her dolls go through. And she considers it an invaluable experience.

Now Michelka, as she calls her daughter, goes to school, enjoys drawing and dreams of becoming an artist.