NEW YEAR 2013

Reviewing and comparing children’s drawings on a predefined theme is full of surprises. How many differences in presenting one motif, how many different proportions between the learned and imagined, inherited and transformed, between stereotype and creation! How many self-portraits of children and especially teachers, how many interrelations of affinities and indifference, compliance and elusion! For this stamp which had the intention to invoke Santa Claus or whatever other name such good being who at the end of old and at the beginning of the new year distributes earned and unearned presents might be named, all kinds of Santas on sledges with reindeers were offered, but also those on motorbikes and in aeroplanes, those with multicoloured treats but also those with iPods and iPhones. The technological reality found its way and entered on equal foot into a tender frame of an old story, securing by new attributes the persistency of old meaning, hope for joy and wonder!
Not necessarily is the artistic value (artistic handwriting or a technique) of a work reason for its application on a stamp. The adaptability to a small format, the density and clearness of a message, its „visibility”, unexpectedness, and many other features influence the final choice. There are therefore no winners or losers: maybe to another purpose the result would be different. This time and to this purpose, on a small indented surface that will travel the whole globe there will be the depiction by Sara Šaravanja, a 7th form pupil from Slavonski Brod (teacher Snježana Bošnjak). It is not the first time that just from this town we get especially interesting works. A tender spirit of Ivana Brlić Mažuranić keeps he furnace of children's imagination safely glowing in Brod, while the tradition of –urđa Vilagoš, awarded and proclaimed the best art educator in the world will be felt for a long time in Brod’s schooling system.
The majority of New Year depictions takes place at final stop, be it a white wood, multicoloured town, kitchen of one’s birth house or a chimney through which the Santa finds his way into it. Sara Šaravanja depicted the first stop. That heaven wherefrom the presents fall, that deep connection between celestial bodies and our calendar, between our lives and wonders that are always expected from above. In a moment of happy intuition she condensed in her image a whole series of archetypes and myths. By appearing and disappearing, growing and melting, the Moon is for all peoples the symbol of transformation and growth, transience and recurrence, death and immortality. Some have created thereof a symbol of happiness, some get married exclusively in the days of young moon. The moon is also a guide in the night sky, the guarantee of a right way. Moon patches have been read in different parts of the world in different ways: as dogs, bunnies, girl with two buckets, an old man… and each of them has got its own symbolic meaning. As an old man...? As the Moon Man, as Santa Claus? … All that foresaw little Sara while lighting star systems on the dark blue sky background, adding also green colour of hope, renewal, buds, new growth… The presents in abundance mark a desire for a new cycle, New Year, to be also abundant in number of happy days.
The authoress of this text once had an impression that the Moon was a relay through which the future descended to Earth. On this postage stamp this future is desired and foreseen as something good.

Željka Čorak