Name: Emblem of the Faculty of Mining and Geology / Slice of Earth
Author: Lumír Čmerda
Dating: 1967 (1980)
Location: in the interior on the first floor of the lobby of the VŠB-TUO Rectorate building (1980)
Execution: originally a laminate relief on the facade of the Faculty of Mining and Geology in Silesian Ostrava (1967), later a circular carved relief in maple wood with a diameter of 115 cm
COAL MINING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A PASTOR
In 1967, the facade of one of the buildings of the Faculty of Mining and Geology, VŠB Technical University in Hladnov, a district of Silesian Ostrava, was decorated with a relatively small laminate relief representing the emblem of this Faculty. The author, Lumír Čmerda (*1930), was ordained a Hussite pastor in 1954 and perhaps thought he would stay a pastor all his life. Since childhood, Lumír Čmerda has also drawn quite well. At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, he started improving the quality of his art activities by taking evening classes as well as through his own hard work. When Čmerda was forbidden spiritual activities in 1963, he was forced to find a new job, which he was able to find by coincidence in the Ostrava Park of Culture and Rest, and soon he became a display artist. From a self-taught artist, he suddenly started turning into a very promising professional artist, who was soon accepted in the progressive Creative Group Kontrast and later in the official Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists. In the year of creating the relief for VŠB, he was employed by the City of Ostrava’s Chief Architect Department.
Lumír Čmerda’s works for architecture can be characterized as predominantly moving, naively stylized wooden reliefs. The Emblem of the Faculty of Mining and Geology, however, was intended for hanging on an exterior, so the author had to use a more weather-resistant material. Therefore, he chose laminate, which was popular at that time. It is probably his only work made of this material, as he was never satisfied with it. This might have been the reason why artist refused to move the original work from the old building in Silesian Ostrava to the new location in Poruba in 1980 and suggested instead that for the same amount he would spend on moving the art piece, he could make a new relief with the same theme made of the material which he liked better, of wood. Subsequently, the new emblem was hung on the first floor of the lobby of the Rectorate building in 17. listopadu Street, where it can still be found today.
And how did it come about that a Hussite pastor won a contract for a coal mining-related relief? Lumír Čmerda has experienced more during his life than has been revealed. For reasons that led to him to choose a career of a pastor, he became suspicious for the regime. After his studies, he, therefore, did not take up army service but was sent to serve with auxiliary technical battalions, under which he worked in Karviná mines. As it turned out later, Čmerda made good use of this forced work when creating the relief with a mining topic. It would be very much like Čmerda to enrich his work with something else, a certain reference to national history and geography as well as a spiritual dimension. At first glance, we can see a mine with a mining tower, a pneumatic drill, a wheel excavator, but also small figures of miners using traditional tools, an underground rail and a windlass – a piece of history of the mining craft. In the background of the shaft, we can even see a silhouette of a trilobite – a witness of the prehistory of our Earth. Circular shapes on the right are somewhat blurred, but apparently in compositional harmony with the overall shape of the artwork. Thus, the circle as a perfect geometric shape dominates the relief. And when knowing other Čmerda’s works, at least one of them will undoubtedly remind us of a loaf of bread, referring not only to the livelihood that each work brings but also symbolizing Christ’s body received in the Eucharist: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry.” (John 6:35) Lumír Čmerda called this relief Slice of Earth.
