16-year-old Vanja Mia Schwartz and her grandmother step into the stone carvery in Sakskøbing to the regular beat of a hammer. A man in a blue boiler suit is bent over a two-metre-tall voluptuous marble statue lying on the ground in front of him, bulging and majestic. The draped clothes wrap around the snow-white body, its hands frozen on top of the heart, and a small dog, head on its paws, rests by its feet for all of eternity. Its name is ‘Fidelity’. The statue in the shape of a woman usually stands beneath the Liberty Memorial in Copenhagen, the ray of stony sunshine inspired by the Egyptians currently being renovated and rejuvenated by the stone carver clad in blue.
Vanja absorbs the moment. Inhales the dust, watches it flicker in the sunlight and fall into each crack and onto every surface in the form of a fine powder. The regular beat of the hammer is music to her ears. She enjoys the precision of the man’s hands and his attention to detail.
For the first time in a long time, she feels at home and at one with the world. It’s like something clicks inside, and she smiles as she whispers a phrase that will change the course of her life. Her lips craft a sentence that, without her realising, will guide her along a crooked educational path and lead her on a complicated journey to her goal:
“I can get a job as a grownup after all.”
The art of sticking out
Vanja was born on July 26th, 1974, and just like her name, she was one of a kind. A girl who didn’t feel like she fit in and didn’t see herself in any of the people her age.
“I’ve always felt like the odd one out. ‘Vanja’ is a Russian pet name for my dad’s name, ‘Ivan’—it’s something I’ve always had to explain. My mum came up with it. Probably more because my gran thought it was ugly than anything else,” Vanja Mia Schwartz says with a hint of a smile.
Her father left her and her mother, and Vanja didn’t see him again until she was an adult. But his name remained, and the little seven-year-old girl sometimes introduced herself as ‘Mia’ because she didn’t feel like dealing with other people’s confused looks.
But it didn’t take her long to realise that it wasn’t her name that made her stick out.
“My classmates didn’t like the same things as me. When they bought their first Duran Duran LP, I bought Chopin’s piano concertos. When they put up posters of Nick Kershaw, I was looking at James Dean. I had a spiritual experience with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor—and I don’t think the people my age knew what a spiritual experience was,” Vanja says, leaning back with a sigh.
“It’s never easy being the odd one out. I was teased, called names, accused of being too ambitious, and I wasn’t invited to any parties. But the loneliness taught me to feel comfortable as an outcast. And the music I listened to was a conversation. It made me feel seen on a deep, emotional level,” she says and smiles.
Sensuousness and the desire to create
Vanja’s ‘otherness’ and the many hours she spent by herself led to various other joys and strengths. A sensuousness and a desire to create, which she’d been drawn to from a young age.
She found happiness in cine film, pictures, and drawing. And in nature.
Even though she, her mother, and her stepfather lived on the fourth floor of a building in Hvidovre, Vanja had a view of a plant nursery, an old boarding school with decorated cornices, and horses in the fields—and every night, she would say goodnight to the sun.
“Somehow, I’ve always felt connected to nature, the sun, and the things that were in this world before me. When I pick up a children’s book, it’s like I get in touch with who I was when I first read it. The feelings I had when I read that particular book. All of a sudden, I remember what it was like to be me at the age of six or eight,” she says. She goes on to say that it wasn’t a pleasant experience for her when her mother decided to move to a newbuild in Brøndby that was devoid of history.
“All the scenery changed. Everything was wrong and nothing stood out. There was no more nature, and everything was level. It was a ploughed field covered with houses. The nature had been destroyed, and there were no bushes. No trace of what had been before me. I felt like I was floating in mid-air, completely disconnected, and I was really sad,” she says.
Worse still, they were further away from Vanja’s grandmother. The grandmother who had always been there for her, understood her creative tendencies, and done what she could to give her unique and different experiences. Like visiting the stone carver and the Liberty Memorial in Sakskøbing.
