I just finished a visual art residency at Skopelos Foundation for the Arts—a wonderful organization that provides residencies for visual artists, and also organizes an annual youth film festival. The Foundation’s studio overlooks incredible views of the Aegean Sea---water dappled with electric blues and greens, flowers, fig trees and craggy coastline. Every morning I would make a short but what felt like nearly vertical walk to the studio from the guesthouse where we were staying.
We also (thank goodness) had a rental car to explore the island. To drive to our guesthouse from the town, our little vehicle would climb, climb, climb as the hills got steeper and curvier. Roads intersected at alarming angles, and cars emerged from what appeared to be cliffs, but were actually intersecting lanes that dropped so precipitously as to be invisible from the main road. Nearing the end, we had to make a sharp left onto a smaller road, at a point where other cars were entering from below. The turn took us up an unimaginably sharp incline. (The thought process as one was driving went something like this: First: please don’t let there be cars entering the roadway from any of the intersecting drives, and then, as one is scanning for other cars, thinking “what gear should I approach this in? Downshift into first and torque my way up the cliff? Stay in second, which I somehow managed to finally go fast enough to get into as I avoided people and motorcycles and parked cars—and gun it to give the little car momentum for the climb?)
After the left turn was accomplished, the already narrow road split, with one side dropping down to the right so sharply that it appears one would pull a Thelma and Louise if you took it. The other side —our route—requires you to cut another sharp, sharp and fast left onto an even steeper grade, (if your gaze stayed straight you would see only the bright Greek sky with a big homemade cross in the foreground, letting you know that someone did do a Thelma and Louise at that point). Climbing further, engine straining, one comes to a final set of curves, first right then left, fingers crossed that any motorcycles, or terrifyingly—trucks---are not making the same turn in the opposite direction, coming down the same skinny road at the same time. Finally— mirabile dictu---we would cut across a blind curve to enter the gates of the place we were staying.
Or perhaps the most miraculous thing is that this drive became normal, second nature. Old hat. Easy Peasy. Humans are endlessly adaptable.
People often ask how my writing and my visual art connect, and I realize that one point of intersection (cue reference to earlier driving descriptions...) is cultivating awareness of the linguistic and symbolic aspects as well as the physical properties of materials I use. Another commonality is research.
Both were part of my work in Greece. Before I arrived I researched things produced in Skopelos. Not surprisingly honey, wine and olive oil are historic products. Slaked lime (for a brilliant whitewash) was also once made in kilns on the island. Also not surprisingly, marble is common. As it happens, honey, wine, olive oil were also ingredients in ancient Greek recipes for paints. Olive oil is a great medium for powdered pigment, honey increases paint viscosity, and red wine makes excellent ink. So I made paintings by mixing pigments with olive oil, wine and honey, as the ancients did, and using red wine to draw with.
But beyond their physical properties these ingredients have poetic resonance. Part of my preparation involved revisiting Homer, who speaks famously of ‘the wine dark sea’ and describes Nestor’s speech as “sweeter than honey from his tongue.” He later describes, “casks of well-ripened wine, fit for a god to drink” and heroes “anointed with olive oil.” These materials were literally site-specific—all made on the island--but also metaphorically, historically, and symbolically rich.
In an effort to marry the reality of a place with the history and poetry associated with it, I made photos and videos in which I poured local wine, honey and olive oil over traditional ceramics atop marble slabs, finishing by dusting them with blue and white pigment.
I also couldn't resist, given the views, of making some paintings using modern acrylics on canvas.
I need to do more editing with the videos, which I really loved making. In future newsletters I’ll be able to link to some. But in the meantime, I will leave you with lines from Homer:
“And now have I put in here, as thou seest, with ship and crew, while sailing over the wine-dark sea to men of strange speech...on my way to Temese for copper; and I bear with me shining iron. My ship lies yonder beside the fields away from the city... Friends of one another do we declare ourselves to be, even as our fathers were, friends from of old.”