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Meeting the ceramicist Lydia in her studio was a core encounter. Not only for the craft part, but to spend days with another craft person from an another country. We both love our material, and even though our practices looks different we share the challenges in our experience, as the economical aspect, throwing and identifying as ceramicists. For me it was grounding to sit down in a new vibrant city, and work with clay. We shared experiences within our practices, what we produce and how. Lydia made me feel very welcomed and our days were filled with work and talking, not only about craft. For me, this is essential when it comes to build relationships. We planned our future and really hope we can meet again, both I Thessaloniki and Stockholm. We spend a lot of time in Lydias studio, we focused on throwing and Lydia wanted to learn how to throw big. I also showed her how I work with color stains and color my clay, and make marbled pieces when throwing. We ended up throwing some vases, which I later included in my collages, turning it into different AI pieces.
I visited Cube and they gave me a tour, I had a meeting with the women being responsible for my program. I made it clear that I needed time for my self to discover the city, all the museums and have time to work on my own. For me this was important, to be able to work on my own in my own pace, and to discover the city, which was crucial for my work. I walked and walked, I wanted to get to know the city, and to view the city's architecture. I visited a lot of museums, spending time watching and reeding. big part of my eventual work is based on pictures that I mix with pictures I make in AI. I also had a meeting with two ex football suporters from Paok, which turned out to be amazingly important to get yet another view on the city, the political history and up on that, the historical and current football climat. And of course, Evita put me together with Lydia the ceramicist which turned out to be a match made in heaven.
Meeting Lydia was a core relation, we worked and talked. Evening time I made collages the eventually was printed on fabric and is now on the way to become big quilts. The images represent not only the Menades, which was the topic I was working on, but my whole trip and the meetings I experienced during my stay. I got all the help I needed to be able to pursue my work.
