“Tranquility, simplicity, humbleness, no bragging or arrogance"

 

Recently I posted this amazing photograph by Stratis Vogiatzis and many commented on how much they loved it. Visiting the wonderful blog of Pia Jane Bijkerk last week I was delighted to see that she had actually taken the time to really explore the background of this photographer having found his work on several other sites around the same time. That seems to be one of the blessings of the blogosphere - the way different people feature a subject and perhaps bring to light a different angle. 

NB: Click to enlarge this image and text for reading or see below!

These images all are from the photographer's book "Inner World".  You can read more on this photographer at YATZER as well as at the photographer's website.

Text form Yatzer:

Mastihohoria (Mastic Villages) is a series of photographs by Stratis Vogiatzis dedicated to the villages of the Greek island ofChios, which is famous for the production of mastic, a resin obtained from the mastic tree known as the "tears of Chios". His book “Inner World”, published in 2009, unveiled the amazing world of those traditional villages that once based their whole existence on the valuable crystal “tear”, shed every year by the infamous mastic trees.

Stratis Vogiatzis is a Greek photographer born in Chios. Self-taught and talented, he has been working as a freelance photographer since 2003 engaging himself in various projects both in Greece and abroad. He has covered stories in Kosovo, India, Beijing, Morocco, Iran and Palestine, among other places, always showing an interest in refugees, NGOs and minorities. His studies on political and social sciences and his volunteer work in different places around the world go hand in hand with his projects as a photographer. In 2003 he participated in the photography book on Kosovo refugees, published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR].

“Mastihohoria” is a different project taking into consideration Stratis Vogiatzis’s bond with the island. Looking closely at his photos one can sense the emotional power of a photographer who is looking back into time and space of the abandoned villages of his own birthplace. The journey for the completion of the project might have lasted for 2.5 years, but it transcends the sense of an ongoing lifelong journey between the photographer and the Mastic Villages. His photographic journey into the inner world of the Mastic Villages was not only a journey of images, colour and light. It was a journey into his own inner world; a world of memories.

From the artist himself:

“My wandering into the inner world of the Mastic Villages also meant wandering into my own inner world, a dive into the world of memories and history and at the same time a plunge into the depths of my own soul”. Stratis Vogiatzis

Stratis Vogiatzis himself describes the whole project as a mystic experience. At the beginning, however, his approach was simply architectural. Gradually the colours of these villages amazed him, evoking his senses. He was overwhelmed by the energy, peoples’ stories and by the objects’ souls. A meditative aspect was ascribed to the photographic procedure, as he remained in some houses for hours until the right moment for the right “click” arrived.

As Stratis Vogiatzis says “I could still feel the people, their presence and their stories which were crammed into the corners of every room and even though the people were absent, they declared their presence in an intense and at the same time mystical way”. There is an erotic relationship between objects and time. Most of the times that Stratos tried to move objects in order to achieve the best possible photographic results, he ended up to their original place in their perfect, almost primordial order.

Every room in this album is a portrait of its owner.

In the introduction of the "Mastihohoria-innerworld" book, Giorgos Pittas wrote:
“Tranquility, simplicity, humbleness, no bragging or arrogance, emerge from Stratis’s photographic world, thus conveying to us a message, which is crystal clear.”

This quote by Pittas I have used in part as the title of this post. The text above all comes via the Yatzer site. 

a place to inspire a dreamy or musing state...

finding 

these orange thongs 

left sitting on the stairs 

into the pool at 

Bronte Beach 

on Monday

somehow seemed

to signify 

one was entering 

a sacred space... 

leaving ones shoes 

at the doorway

as a mark of respect

perhaps years ago

I became attached

to this place 
when visiting sydney

for many
a reason -

living in melbourne 

from '88 to '00

on return from

london was not

a difficult adjustment 

considering climate 

and geography -
but one thing 
missed living 
so far south after 
growing up 
in the sub-tropics
was this sensuality 
of summer swimming and 
abundant shades of aqua,
blues, greens,
 greys and blacks
that the water 
would shift in and out of
as the days became nights 
became days
 and the 
weather cast its vote.

hours of reverie 

and lazy times 

given to the 

company of friends, 

books and  

saturation for the senses.

...drawing the water, 

noticing the 

movement of light and 

seeing more,

over time,

more and more,

over years, 

learning to 'see'

the microcosmos 

and macrocosmos.

leaving the teaming 

city behind for the 

most private of 

dreaming 

spaces

and yet

not

held 

in 

awe...

a 

pool

so

quietening

and yet 

in a place

so part 

of the fabric

of a 

larger

world 

to be stilled 

by a place

so urban,

so visited,

so loved...

so shared.

a quiet mystery

that one could be 

so absorbed, 

so deeply enchanted.

That one's

private

world could be

richly fed

when 

so surrounded 

by a multiplicity of 

others

and their dreamings

and musings and laughter 

and sorrows.

time out down south... part one

 

Ferdinando - his story coming soon on the homage blog...

... more on these thongs and where i found them next post!  Sydney was rejuvenating ... and both old and new... more soon!

Jason Karolak

Just in from a late flight back from Sydney... no time to download photos now... excellent few days is all

I'll take time to say now - back with more on that later.
Something waiting in my email in-tray was on this artist's latest work - so I'm quickly posting some images for you! This is a series of works from artist Jason Karolak whom I wrote to some time back (pre-blogging days)  after seeing his work which I was quite fascinated with.

Untitled (p-1006)  Oil on Canvas  73 x 83 inches

Untitled (p-1007)  - Oil on canvas  75 x 85 inches

Untitled (p-1005) 2010  Oil on Linen 14 x 12 inches

Untitled (p - 0918)  2009 Oil on linen  14 x 12 inches

large and small works

Tomorrow will be a busy day catching up after being away 5 days... looking forward to visiting blogosphere friends very soon and seeing what everyone is up to!

Ciao,

S

time to reflect...

'cross-sections of rainforest fruits' - Acrylic and ink on canvas, 90 x 120 cm

close up

'Continuum' - acrylic and ink on canvas, 90 x 90 cm

close up

I had time to take additional photographs on the weekend at the show at Embiggen in Noosaville.  I mentioned in this earlier post that much of the work for this show came about since starting the residency in February. Around mid March I was feeling very pressured to realise visually all this new imput from the seed lab and time in the gardens and researching. Hunkering down the weeks saw me leaving the studio less and less in order to make something of this 'stuff' -  bewilderingly fascinating 'stuff'!

I took the work to Noosa April 16th and left it in the capable hands of talented artist/ graphic designer/ bookstore proprietor Warren Bonett who made the curatorial decisions after I left.  Given the intensity of the month painting I was not 'seeing' the work and had run out of time to do linger over decisions. For this reason I was able to photograph work at leisure on Saturday afternoon and think a little more about what was there.

The top work and others in that vein had been kept aside in a separate area - a wise move with new work pursuing various tangents of thought. The 'Continuum' work was challenging to photograph due to the luminous pearlised sheen. The raised line of the continuous paint flow from a large syringe was one visual thread competing for attention with the submerged pale-coloured ground and white ink drawn cross-sections of rain-forest fruits.

A year long residency can seem indeed a generous amount of time... but often motifs and ideas I have worked with have taken months or years to evolve into fully resolved works as I am not replicating what I see but often slowly moving into a more intimate knowing of a way of seeing and thinking.

More images will be added to the studio archives blog here.


POSTSCRIPT: 5th May - Around three years ago I was working on this material below which may be viewed more easily if you click to enlarge. I was attempting to juggle teaching 4 days a week with part time post grad work. The balance was not right and medical issues prompted a timely full-stop to all that by November. These works on paper were what was coming through as the year evolved.

This is a closer look at the bottom row. The ideas ere bigger than my time or energy permitted exploring as large canvases although it may be evident the compelling nature of this work that was the flow on of an an extremely intensive 5 years of solo painting. My work in 2005 had been extremely structured and tight and exacting so these represented a seam (as in underground layer - like coal) that had always been there in my journals and art practice ...but a seam that I never ventured to paint up large and run with.

Illness may create a profoundly useful space for reflection ...I just remembered I called this post 'time to reflect' ... this added-on bit is the bigger story to the work Continuum. In a sense I have had a couple of years away from that previous intensity of focus on painting. Whilst not well I did mostly smaller works, working with ink often, and I certainly did not  get back to where I had left off till painting for this April show in terms of the flow of thought for the abstractions I had been attempting to give shape to. The other rich seam that I tapped of course is the seed  and pod forms... In 2006-7 I spent a lot of time in school libraries (in breaks) researching New Science journals and such points of departure. Obsessed with micro and macro realms, hidden structures, the idea of everything being made up of particles, the notion that one can peel away layer after layer of reality to get to an ever smaller living thing captured my imagination completely. Then the move to Brisbane where the surprise of the abundant vegetation fixed my attention on trees laden with seed pods everywhere I went...and the ground covered with pods spilling out seeds.  The link between the micro - macro thinking and the seeds merged during this first year in Brisbane - connecting as well with more pragmatic and everyday concerns about the future of biodiversity and seeds at the core of my personal focus.

above: working with paint from a syringe required speed and control. This work on paper had a wonderful raised line - unable to be seen here - a low relief surface so to speak - very tactile.

Above: Drawing with the left hand to music - using oil pastels and a large art journal. This is a discipline I have employed at times over years to get started again after breaks, and certainly in my classes and workshops in the last 20 or so years to get energy moving before facing the blank canvas. Whether working with children or adults it felt important to dedicate time to the deliberate intention of bringing one-self to a receptivity for complete presence of mind. When teaching I would watch the shift in focus and the readiness it produced - knowing this well from my own experience. Working with music in this particular focused way has always been intensely informing - adding an important layer to my mark-making and thinking around the work I've been doing. 

Rhythm and the animating force or pulse is a perennial theme  - long hours at the piano from age 8 till leaving home at 18 permeated my sensibility and desire for continued immersion in that now familiar  sense of rhythm and pattern, structure and formlessness, the palette of rich colours and moods found in discordance, syncopation and the subsequent resolving of tensions .... or not. Music was the substance that shifted me into a whole body experience of the rhythms at the core of the universe. And painting was they way I wanted to evoke what was felt and experienced.

Less and less time at the piano from my 20's on  pushed me to compensate through this different engagement with the music - seeing it as somewhat liquid world - fluid, ever-changing, pulsating...and drawing from that. Always the music had to be without lyric... classical, or world music, jazz...the genre less important that the place it could take me. All this other work has flowed from that.

below: 2007 - a work on this 'continuum' theme that was realised on canvas... 60 x 60cm . The photo is not aiding viewing this image ... but a bright note I am off to stay in Sydney for 5 days at the home where this painting hangs and will attempt a better photo with some details whilst there.

Sincere thanks to Altoon Sultan for generous and thought-provoking comments that prodded this quite timely reflection which I added on to the initial post. Altoon has an excellent blog Studio and Garden where she brings her maturity of vision to the everyday concerns of living well in the rhythm of the seasons and the relationship between studio and her world. Her work is held in eminent collections and she has continued to quietly unfold her vision throughout a long and significant career with great steadfastness and insight.

propagating in the pineapple state...

I loved this indoor pineapple farm put together by Vicki (an artist you can see more on in the next post). Queensland is sometimes identified with pineapples which grow in abundance in this region north of Brisbane. Ginger and macadamia nuts are also well suited to this climate. I apparently arrived too late to see the dozen(s) of pinapple tops lined up in glass jars on the table. I loved trying to photograph these with my not so trusty camera ... (my intimacy with the instruction book is not significant either!)

Ok I think you get the picture... with or without good camera technique - and photo-shopping skills. There's something about seeing plants taking root like this that I find very compelling!