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them. In 1982 he won Barcelona's Joan Miro award for a piece called The Harlequin. He was also exhibiting in Italy and Germany. In 1985 his sculptures and decorations for the restoration of the fifteenth-century Black Church in Brasov brought him Vienna's prestigious Herder Prize. In 1986 work began in Bucharest on an immensely lavish presidential palace. Serban, like all other artists, was ordered to participate. "It was like wartime, when all the men had to go into the army," he recalls. "The outside is quite ugly, but the inside is a piece of art indeed. There are stucco and gold and rococo, baroque-style decorations. But it was a good thing for Romanian artists. We didn't ask the Italians or the Germans or the Austrians. We did it all ourselves." It was such an expensive project that it almost bankrupted the country and hastened the fall of the communists. When they went, the infrastructure that had supported artists went too. Communism was replaced by chaos and near-anarchy. Eventually Serban and his wife and son came to Canada, settling just outside Deep Cove. He brought his skills and experience, but quickly realized there was one thing he hadn't mastered: the art of selling. And for an artist to survive in the dog-eat-dog scramble of the free market, that's perhaps the most important skill of all. This is a problem, because his vision and his thinking are still on an epic scale. As patrons, the communists are a hard act to follow, especially in Vancouver. On a windy December morning he's wondering who might buy his most recent piece. Equinox started with a huge and twisted 400-year-old root that was found in the Yukon river. Serban spent two years drying and cleaning it to bring out what look "Everybody has interesting ideas," Serban says, "but it's hard to translate them into physical form." & Culture Commission of North Vancouver presents Arts Serban's charcoal portrait of Prince Vlad. National heroes were a common in promoting theme a given to artists as such images were useful to the government sense of national identity and solidarity. like faces in the knots. On top, in contrast to the tormented writhings of the wood, a bronze, bird-like shape is poised to soar into the sky. It's a powerful, eloquent piece. But it's also big, and weighs two thousand pounds. Finding a home for it is not easy. Nevertheless, Serban's wife Liana, who is acting as his manager, remains undaunted. "We had a good life in Romania and a good position, both of us," Liana says. "But we saw that they are drowning over there. And we were drowning ourselves. We knew we could make it here, and that's why we came. "We are fighters, both of us." Symposium 2002 & Arts Market Event fifth annual community arts symposium & "Art Fully Exposed" market Saturday February 2, 2002 REGISTRATION D E A D L I N E : J A N . 22nd c a l l 9 8 0 - 3 5 5 9 for i n f o r m a t i o n & to register The 2 0 0 2 Symposium & Arts Market event is presented by the Arts & Culture Commission p _ _ _ _ and sponsored by: I !>'iA' \jtm L ' < » 3 January | February 19