Katie Samol | The Chronicle
Where words may fail, art speaks. For Mason High School (MHS) senior Lana Fediuk, this has been the case. Lana is a refugee from Ukraine, and she moved to the United States (US) with her family in 2022. She moved to Ohio knowing no English, and since then, has spent three years in an English Second Language (ESL) class. Now, as a senior, Lana is in English 4. Her passion for art has blossomed throughout high school and helped her express herself throughout her journey.
Lana’s journey to Mason was set into motion on Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Lana’s mother, Julia, decided they should move to Poland, where conditions were safer.
“[My family] moved on Feb. 26, 2022, to Poland,” Lana said. “My mom worked there, and we lived there [for] about a month. [On] the third day, I [went] to school [because my mom] said that I need to study there, we don’t know how much time we will live there.”
Lana was one of almost 3.5 million Ukrainians to cross into Poland within the first two months of the full-scale invasion. For the Fediuks, their time in Poland did not last long.
“The first couple of weeks, I was in regular Polish classes, but then a lot of Ukrainian immigrants came to my city, and this school made [a] personal class with all Ukrainian people,” Lana said. “After that, my mom saw the news that [Russia started] to [get] aggressive [toward] Poland, and we made a choice to move [to Ohio].”
Lana, Julia and Lana’s sister, Iryna, moved to America on April 15, 2022. Because her family had to immigrate through the border to Mexico, and there were no direct flights, the journey from Poland to Cincinnati required at least five flights.
“My uncle and my aunt by my mom’s side [have] lived here for 19 years, so it was the easiest way to adapt,” Lana said.
When Lana and her family arrived in Ohio, they lived with this aunt, who held a similar mentality to Lana’s Mom regarding her education. American education posed its unique challenges for Lana.
“I went to school one week after arriving here because my aunt said the same thing that my mom did: I need to study and socialize,” Lana said. “It was hard because when I came here, I didn’t have much English. I know just ‘hello’. I don’t know how to communicate with people, how to say that I need something or [need] support. It was hard.”
Lana was living in Morrow, Ohio and attending Little Miami as a freshman, and then moved to Mason two months into the school year. She said a very kind teacher tried to understand her, and that through Google Translate and some other students’ help, she was able to be better understood.
“It was hard, but now I’m so glad that they helped me,” Lana said. “Ninth grade was so hard because I didn’t speak [English] at all. I [would] just go [to school] and try to figure out what I need to do.”
In Lana’s second year at MHS, she said she took a class that changed everything.
“Sophomore year opened my door to Digital Image Design (DID),” Lana said. “It started to give me the words. If you don’t know [a] language, and you can’t talk with people, you can communicate with them through [art].”
Kayla Robbins is a Ceramics I, II and III teacher at MHS and has previously taught other art courses. Lana was Robbins’ student in Digital Image Design I, Digital Illustration and Cartooning.
“I met Lana in DID,” Robbins said. “I co-taught it with Mrs. Cattini [and] she was on Mrs. Cattini’s side, but she stood out to me immediately.”
Robbins remembers Lana asking a lot of questions and always staying ahead in the class. She said that when Lana is excited about the art she is creating, she is very motivated. Her art pieces do not all revolve around a specific theme, but rather, she explores new techniques and styles during her artistic process. Through her art, Lana is able to capture her emotions in an irreplaceable way.
“When I feel that, ‘Right now I need emotional support,’ or, ‘I am sad,’ ‘I’m so happy,’ and I have motivation to draw something, I do,” Lana said. “It’s gonna work when something happened in my life that broke me, or it makes me happy, because I’m gonna replace this moment in my picture.”
Robbins emphasized the value she believes art holds as a vehicle for personal growth and a form of self-expression. She said art offers a space where you can express feelings you may not want to share outright.
“Whether you’re trying to talk about an experience you’ve had or a memory, or healing through trauma, it’s always good to put those feelings into your art,” Robbins said. “I think that’s another form of self-expression. It’s kind of like secretly showing little bits of you through your art.”
While Lana moved to America with her mother and older sister, her father Volodymyr did not move with them. Volodymyr still living in Ukraine has been emotionally difficult for her and her family.
“In 2016, my mom and my dad divorced,” Lana said. “From that time, we [have] lived separately. Right now, he’s in Ukraine. We talk a lot. We FaceTime, but he can’t move here.”
Currently, Ukrainian men between the ages of 23 and 60 are not able to immigrate. This is to ensure the country has a large enough population for national defense in the ongoing war.
“I was sad to say goodbye and [I] don’t know when [I] can meet him again,” Lana said. “Maybe it’s never gonna happen because life’s short, and when I’m here, I don’t know what’s happened with him there.”
Lana said that in her family, she is closest to her dad. Their strong relationship has made the separation that much more difficult.
“It’s sad to understand that maybe tomorrow I’m gonna be alone without my dad,” Lana said. “It’s my whole life, because I have a closer relationship with my dad so it’s a little bit upsetting to think about. Maybe there are some bad things and he just doesn’t want to tell me [so] that I’m not worried.”
Lana recalled the conversation she had with her dad when her mom first decided to move to Poland. She and her sister are half sisters with the same mom, and Lana holds a special connection with her dad, being his only daughter.
“The first couple hours [after] I told him that I [have] gotta move to Poland, he said that he doesn’t wanna give me the permission to leave the country, because I’m his only daughter,” Lana said. “But [after] the couple of times we talked to each other and he tried to understand that it [was] dangerous, he said okay.”
Lana said that while where they were going to live in Poland was only two or three hours from where they lived in Ukraine, the US was a different story. That distance was harder for her dad to approve.
“Then we got into a fight with each other, because he did not want to leave me, he did not want to give me permission to go to the US because it’s too far,” Lana said. “We fought a bit with each other, but then he understood that it would be better for me, and he gave me that permission.”
Now, as a senior, Lana takes two classes at MHS, Statistics and English IV, and spends the rest of the day working as a waitress at a steakhouse in the area. She does not know what her future holds, whether that be pursuing art or not, but she knows she wants to secure a degree to better her future. No matter what she pursues next, Lana knows that the passions she explored at MHS have left her life forever changed.
“DID class was the best thing for me,” Lana said. “It gave me the motivation to talk with people through the pictures, [to share my] emotion through there.”
