Bill Balaskas @ Kalfayan Galleries

While walking through Kolonaki the other day, I stumbled upon an art gallery filled with small architectural drawings. An exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries Athens by Bill Balaskas that closed this Saturday, it involved coloring in a small section of many of Lawrence's drawings of ancient Greek architecture. For example, this image of the topography of the Athenian acropolis:

(Photo via Kalfayan Galleries Athens

The website for Kalfayan Galleries includes the following in its biography of Balaskas:

The exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries revolves around the artist’s new in-situ installation titled “Architecture of Good and Evil”, which investigates the cultural origins of the current socio-economic crisis. The work features an inverted replica of an Ionic column and 172 works on paper. The artist has chosen to intervene on pages from the seminal book of A. W. Lawrence “Greek Architecture” (1957), which depict architectural sketches of ancient Greek monuments. By painting over a single part or shape of each sketch in blue, Balaskas raises questions regarding both the polysemy of symbols and the role played by their monosemous theorization in the formation of a national or cultural identity.

While I'm not sure I'd call Lawrence's drawings "sketches," I'm nonetheless intrigued by the concept - but it's just that, a concept. All of the drawings were framed and arranged at eye-level throughout the gallery, and readily visually accessible but to me, it fell a little short in its intended meaning. How does modifying a 50 year old architectural drawing - and by "modifying," I mean coloring in a little square or rectangle - make a statement about symbols and their place in the formation of a national or cultural identity? And what does it mean to remove such drawings from a book and the contextual meaning they're meant to represent, which is a visual interpretation of scale and preservation?

What would Lawrence think?

The Antikythera Shipwreck

Yesterday afternoon, I took a trip over to Athens' National Archaeological Museum. My goal was to photograph a bronze object for a friend and track down a couple of other objects for my Research Assistant project.

Besides taking care of these things, I was greatly happy (and mildly surprised) to find almost the entire museum open. This included both the bronze collection and the vase collection, both of which were closed on every occasion I visited the NAM last year. Of course, the few hours I spent there wasn't nearly enough time to cover everything. And, just as I was getting ready to leave, my eye caught a small room off the main hallway, where there was an exhibition on the Antikythera Shipwreck.

I'd seen the Antikythera Mechanism before, of course, as well as other sculptures from the wreck, such as this bronze philosopher portrait:

(doesn't he look rather philosopher-crazy?)

But here, everything from the shipwreck has been brought together, including a number of sculptures that had previously been located in the museum's courtyard, and often overlooked. These sculptures, all of Parian marble and thus probably from the same workshop, are really interesting because they show how the seawater and its inhabitants have eaten away at the marble while the parts of the sculptures that were buried beneath the surface of the sea have been preserved. And the display is excellent (thought I probably could have done without the strobe-like "underwater" lighting):

A whole room is devoted to the Antikythera Mechanism itself, showcasing not only the fragments of the mechanism, but the various reconstructions of it, as well as the history and conservation of the object. What I found most fascinating was the display case with the Antikythera Mechanism: not only did it have a digital, 3-D reconstruction projected on the glass, but the lighting was so good that I could make out some of the inscriptions:

The exhibition is up until April 2013, so check it out!

Saturday photo edits

Agios Demetrios, Thessaloniki

Since it's a lovely Saturday, I've spent the better part of the afternoon working on editing my (extremely long) backlog of photos. What do I mean by "editing?" Most of the time, very little. I usually do simple crops, basic color correction, and the occasional conversion to black & white. For example, above is a photo of the interior of the Church of Agios Demetrios, the patron saint of Thessaloniki.

I'm not sure how I managed to miss this church on my previous visits to Thessaloniki. It's one of Thessaloniki's oldest churches, its first inception dating to the 4th century AD. The crypt below the church, now a museum, is said to be the place where St. Demetrios was martyred in 303 AD. The five-aisled present-day basilica has undergone a number of transformations since it was first built: first a small oratory (4th century AD), then a three-aisled basilica (5th-7th centuries AD), then conversion to a mosque in 1493, then nearly destroyed in the great fire of Thessaloniki in 1917. 1949 saw the rebuilding and reopening of the church that we now see today.

I shot this image from the central nave, looking back towards the narthex, because I was quite taken with how the light was softly filtering in from the clerestory above. And, while I thought the original color image was quite beautiful, I wanted to see how it looked in black & white. A few slight modifications to the angle - I shifted the image 0.5 degrees to the left to make it more balanced - and I'm calling it a finished image.

From this...

(2007)

To this...

 (2008)

To this...

 (2009)

To this...

(2010)

To this...

(2012)

It's been a long journey, hasn't it?

Restoration work on the Caryatids

Yesterday's TO BHMA had a short article on the Caryatids from the Erechtheion and the laser restoration work on them that was undertaken recently. The International Institute for Conservation gave the New Acropolis museum an award for their use of laser technology (χρήση τεχνολογίας λέιζερ), an approach undertaken particularly well as it involved visitors being able to watch the process, as opposed to taking place in a lab. Almost two million visitors since December 2010 have witnessed the process of the laser restoration work!

I was a little lost on how the process actually works (my Greek is not so great, and my scientific knowledge is even worse), but from what I remember from actually seeing the process last year was that it was particularly innovative and included a sort of live-screen streaming of the process, so that visitors could watch it occurring but not be affected by the lasers.

The New Acropolis Museum hasn't allowed photos since the first summer they opened (Summer 2009), which is when I took this photograph of the Caryatid's fabulous hairstyles.

Living in Greece

Hey, wanna know what it's like to live in Greece?

Scenario: I am informed that the letter I have from my health insurance company is insufficient for the Greek Ministry of Culture, who are the ones in charge of issuing my residence permit.

Step 1: Call the number listed on Health Insurance Company's (HIC) website. Once you finally get through to someone, explain that you can't give them a callback number because you're in Greece and on Skype. Read every. single. stipulation that must be on the letter that they are to craft (not a simple form letter, but a very, very specific letter that outlines every minute detail of my coverage). Get to the end, and be told that your deductible is $50 higher than what the Greeks allow. Be told that you can switch to a conversion plan, whatever the f that is, and you are given another number to call.

Time: 22 minutes

Step 2: Call the number regarding the conversion plan. After giving all of your personal information (name, SSN, DOB), be asked if your name is Sharon (uhhh...). Be told that you can't do a conversion plan until August 2013, which is no good because I need to apply for the residence permit now. Also be told that you need to speak to someone related to your school's HIC's plan specifically, and be given a third number.

Time: 8 minutes

Step 3: Call that third number. Once you finally get through to someone, explain that you can't give them a callback number because you're in Greece and on Skype. They insist on some kind of number, so you give them your mother's cell phone number (and if they have to call her "back," she can't call you for the next 6 hours because she can't use Skype from her office). Be told, Hey! We can't do anything to change your $250 deductible to $200 or less, but we can tell you that if you get a referral from the Student Health Center, the deductible is only $75 per incident. Insist that the letter you need cannot include per incident, but must be per year. Have it suggested to you that perhaps you can cancel your current plan and enroll in a conversion plan, and by the way here's that conversion plan number AGAIN.

Time: 19 minutes

Step 4:  Call the conversion plan number. Finally talk to someone who understands what you're talking about. But, you're told that any plan you "convert" to will have a deductible higher than $250, not lower than, and therefore there's no point in converting. Be told that you should call the...second?...number once again, and/or your university itself.

Time: 21 minutes

Step 5: Decide to call your university Registrar, who is in charge of student health insurance and coordinating with your HIC. Get her phone number from the university's website. Call the number, only to find that "due to the high volume of calls, it's best you leave a voice mail message with a number I can reach you at." Of course, you don't have a number you can be reached at, because your only number is a Greek cell phone, and who at your uber-rich university is gonna want to call that? So you dig around for this woman's email and email her, asking what a good time for you to call on Skype would be. An hour later, you get a response that she's not actually with the Registrar anymore - as is listed on the website - but she's instead with the Registrar at the BUSINESS SCHOOL, and would you please email x or y instead?

Time: 10 minutes

Step 6: Explode from trying to work your way through a freakin' $50 difference in deductible. I offered to more than one person to pay the difference myself. I pointed out the ridiculousness of offering health insurance to non-university spouses and children, but not offering me, a lowly graduate student on $20,000 per year (actually half that this year), OPTIONS for my shit health care. I will pay you $50 for you to just state on a letter than my deductible is $200 rather than $250.

Step 7: Decide to blog about the whole ordeal, rather than yell at another person at your HIC.

Time: 20 minutes of attempting to calm yourself down through words.

To be continued tomorrow. I am sure.

The Home of the Gods

5 years ago, I was at the base of this mountain as an ASCSA Summer Session participant. I knew at the time that that summer would change me, but the process of it filtering into my brain took months (and perhaps even years when I think about it).

Two years ago this Saturday, I boarded a plane in Philadelphia that was the first step towards an entire year in Greece. This time, too, I had little idea of how much that year would change me. I saw myself grow a great deal professionally, I lost one of my closest friendships, and I came back with a stronger sense of who I was and who I wanted to be.

This Saturday, I'll make the great ascent up this mountain. Gods willing, I won't fall off a cliff. And again, I'll prove to myself this: I know who I am, and I know I can get through anything.

Καλό Μήνα!

Καλό Μήνα, everyone! A traditional Greek greeting on the first of the month. This first day of September also brings us a full moon. I suspect both at the same time is relatively rare. As it may be my last free Saturday in Northern Greece, I decided to take the day off and go to the beach. Well, first I got up at the crack of dawn, ran 3 miles down by the harbor, got groceries, bread, and bougatsa, wrote a little, took a nap, and THEN I went to the beach.

It took two buses and a little over an hour to get there, but it was so worth it. An umbrella, frappe, and pleasant conversation made for a very nice afternoon, and the water was fabulous. As I've mentioned several times, I can definitely feel autumn in the air, so this may be one of my last chances to enjoy the beach in Greece until next summer.

Has it really been a whole week? It took one entirely sleepless night, but I think I'm finally over jet lag. I have a lot to post about, but I just wanted to mention one thing. I found the most marvelous place to eat last week, and have gone back several times for lunch and dinner to go. It's just down the street, and this is what I got for my first lunch there:

Two kalamakia (sticks), a slice of lemon, tomatoes, onions, and brain. The kalamaki on the bottom is obviously chicken, but what's that one on the top? That's right, it's haloumi/χαλούμι!!! THE SQUEAKY CHEESE, IT IS ON A STICK. Haloumi is one of the things that I always miss most about Greece - you can get it at Whole Foods, but it's stupidly expensive. And I actually don't see it in too many places in Greece. But right here, two blocks from my flat, there's a souvlaki shop that has it for a mere 1,90 euro per stick. Heaven is salty, squeaky cheese on a stick.

ΚΑΛΟ ΚΑΛΟΚΑΙΡΙ

When I first arrived in Thessaloniki, I saw signs similar to this one hanging in many of the shops. It announces that certain shops and restaurants are closed until a certain date, usually 20/8 - 22/8, thanks to "ΚΑΛΟ ΚΑΛΟΚΑΙΡΙ" - a good summer vacation! No doubt this is also inspired by the recent holiday, the Κοίμησις Θεοτόκου (Dormition of the Virgin), which was celebrated on 15 August. Many Greeks have taken the week (or two) off from work to travel to their homes or perhaps even the beaches in the Chalkidiki (which is what I myself did last Saturday), a welcome respite from the hecticness of city life.

The quiet during my first week here was quite appreciated, especially since I was so jet lagged, but I'm enjoying seeing the shops and restaurants re-opening for business, and the city coming to life once more. It's a little tough to handle late at night and early in the morning, since I live on the Aghias Sofias square, but I'm adjusting.

ΚΑΛΟ ΚΑΛΟΚΑΙΡΙ, everyone! Enjoy it while it lasts. You know that come winter, we'll be craving those 40° C + days. Or maybe not.

Jet lagged

You would think that after 8 years of graduate school, and with next to no real sleep schedule, I would have no problem with jet lag.

You would be wrong.

Tuesday: arrived
Wednesday: slept all day
Thursday: slept all day
Thursday night: slept 1 hour total
Friday: slept all afternoon post-placement exam
Friday night: slept 1 hour total
Saturday: all day at the beach; didn't sleep at all
Saturday night: caved and took a flexeril at 8:30 p.m.

Coupled with the fact that it is unbearably hot living without A/C, and this makes for a pretty miserable Jacquelyn.

Tips? Suggestions? Sympathies? I know it could be worse. And I know I should give it a week. But patience never was my best virtue.

ETA: I took a flexeril last night, and got a full night's sleep. Life feels so much better this morning!

Arrival

I made it to Greece on Tuesday afternoon, in one piece. The four flights that it took for me to get here were mostly uneventful. So uneventful that I didn't really sleep on the flight from Philadelphia to Munich. This didn't seem like a big deal until I got on the flight from Munich to Thessaloniki and realized how tired I was. The woman beside me, however, decided to speak to me for the entire flight. In Greek. Only. From what I could gather, she and her husband were on holiday in Germany, they only spoke a little German, she has 5 grandchildren, her mother lives in New York, she cooks, and they live in Trikala near Meteora. We spent the entire flight looking at my various Greek documents/papers/books as I explained to her that I would be living in Thess. for a whole month, then in Athens for three months, and I am an archaeologist. So so much for sleep, but I think I probably learned more Greek in those two hours than I have in the past 5 years.

View from the plane on my Philadelphia to Munich flight, as the sun was coming up.

I won't go into the boring details about the adventure it was getting from the Thessaloniki airport to my flat...the $100+ that it cost me to make two phone calls from the airport to my landlord, etc. (currently in dispute with my credit card). My digs are okay - I have a great view, though the room itself leaves a lot to be desired. More on that later.

The Church of the Aghia Sofia, seen from the balcony of my room. Not bad!

In the evening, I took a walk down by the water and bought some groceries from a small store up the street. On Wednesday, I slept the entire day. On Thursday, today, I also slept most of the day, but ventured out to buy some more food and explore a bit more. I found a Vodafone shop, where I bought a new SIM card, and found several markets, ice cream shops, and places to eat. Tomorrow I have the Orientation for my Greek class, including the placement exam, which will take most of the morning.

The Λευκός Πύργος (White Tower) of Thessaloniki, part of the Ottoman fortifications

 

By the way, I'm really liking Instagram so far! Gives a nice little edge to my photos, though I'm still carrying around my DSLR.

I'm off to Greece.

That is all.

Packing & Moving

I'm in the process of packing it all up again to move back to Greece. This is quite wearing, having to move every year. But then I remember why I'm moving, and I feel a little better about the whole darn process.





I've been thinking all summer about Things I Love in Baltimore, and am compiling a list of what I'll miss. It's hard to be positive about this city, which has failed me again and again. I gave it a real shot this summer, and I still came out lagging. But there are many positive, hopeful things about Baltimore, and while I won't miss it next year, I may be just a little less anxious about eventually coming back.





But what I'm going to miss the most? My lovely home, of course. It doesn't look like this now - boxes strewn everywhere, piles of bags for Goodwill and the Baltimore Book Thing - but it will again someday.

A composition of childhood

This is the cookie-cutter landscape in which I grew up. I was lucky - my neighborhood, south of that main road you see running E-W in yellow, was covered in trees, a large lake, and [slightly] curving streets, unlike my neighbors to the North. But the houses were the same split floor plans, one- to two-car garages, some with pools, repeated ad nauseum with the occasional deviation in plan, color, and style.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how landscape works, and how it is crafted and manipulated. Is it merely a matter of convenience that we concoct these suburban landscapes of the same, over and over again? A purely economical motive? Or is it a deep-set desire for sameness, and the familiarity that comes with it?

And ultimately, how does this contrast with what we know about antiquity? How much more often did the Greeks and Romans work with the landscape instead of against it when building not only their homes but their sacred places?

Autumn in Greece

As Spring heads toward the mid-Atlantic, I keep thinking about Autumn for some reason. It's always been my favorite season, but sometimes I feel like it falls off my radar each year as it's also always the season for midterms, fellowship applications, and student conferences. This year was no exception, although seeing as it was my first year back in Baltimore after a year in Greece, I made sure to traverse my neighborhood for signs of Autumn. As Spring approaches, I'll do the same - I'm already seeing crocuses starting to bloom on my regular jogs.

On the other hand, I feel I was incredibly lucky to experience Autumn in Greece last year, too. Before my Regular Year at the ASCSA, I had only seen the summer side of Greece. Autumn of 2010 was my first exposure to a whole new world of temperatures, colors, and light within the Greek landscape. This was particularly evident during Trip III, Central Greece. Here are a few of my favorite images:

A perennial yellow crocus (κρόκος)

Fog over Hosios Loukos

A tree at a rest stop near Trikala

Reds at Meteora

At a tholos tomb near Pharsalos

Sunset over Lebedaia

 The Valley of the Muses

Legs, legs, everywhere

I didn't watch the Oscars last night, but I'm quite bemused about all the hoopla over Angelina Jolie's Right Leg. Apparently it's set off a rash of badly-photoshopped images of her leg invading various situations, my favorite being this one:

I guess it's a bit scandalous, though I hardly see how a high-slit dress could qualify as "scandalous" here in the second decade of the 21st century. But it reminded me of something else once deemed rather scandalous, I'm sure: in the transition between Archaic and Classical sculpture, draped females started to exhibit drapery that was rather...clingy. And over time, more and more of the underlying surface was revealed. Take, for example, one of the Caryatids from the Erechtheion:

This here is a copy from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, but you get the idea. The left leg is more traditionally Archaic, shrouded entirely by the drapery. The maidens from the porch were, after all, rather Archaistic in form - look at their solid poses (since they functioned like columns) and their hairstyles. But right there, oh-so-inconspicuously, the kore's right leg is readily visible under the diaphanous drapery. The drapery is so thin, it's as if it isn't even there. Scandalous in the 5th century BCE? I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Image of the Caryatid from Tivoli is scanned from A. Scholl. 1995. “Χοηφοροι: Zur Deutung der Korenhalle des Erechtheion.” JdI 110: 179-212.

Aromatic Rosemary

One of my favorite occasional blogs, The Cloisters' The Medieval Garden Enclosed, has a new blog post up about rosemary. I learned that rosemary is a member of the mint family, and that it is native to the Mediterranean.

Reading about rosemary reminded me of how we'd find it in abundance in Greece, as you can see in detail above at the Temple of Ammon Zeus at Potidaea in the Chalkidike, and I also remember it quite clearly from Lavrion, where the plant was covered in a magnificent spider web.

Read more here about rosemary, from the Met: The Virtues of Rosemary.

AJA Archaeological Resources for Students

The American Journal of Archaeology has compiled this handy list of links students of archaeology (or for those interested in learning more about archaeology.

Here you can find links for resources in archaeology, including everything from excavation possibilities, to career advice for aspiring archaeologists/academics, to some incredibly technologically-advanced digital resources in archaeology.

dissertation beginnings

Even though I'm not quite ABD, I'm beginning the dissertation writing process this semester by taking a Dissertation Writing Workshop class. In addition, my current fellowship proposal (due in less than 2 weeks, eek!) marks the beginning of a sort of informal prospectus.

Things gathered from tonight's class:
- The process is like an oxygen mask - you have to put your own mask on; no one is going to do it for you.
- "No" is your friend
- Index cards. In the same way that I write out daily to-do lists on index cards, it will be helpful for me to take notes on index cards, one for each book/article. And maybe file them in a box? A sort of addenda to my ongoing bibliography
- It will be beneficial for me to learn to work in small blocks of time. One, because in all likelihood I won't have the advantage of being able to treat the diss. like a 9-5 job. Two, because my ADD-mind works better in small blocks of time anyway. Really, things that occur in small blocks of time is the way for me to get things done.
- Always remember: - BETTER DONE THAN GOOD

I have a daily goal to write every day. Something more than just emails. After a 10-hour day like today, a blog post might just have to suffice. But it's a start.