Tuesday 29 January 2019

Vally Nomidou



I was very pleased to find out that as part of Frissiras Museum's exhibition 





Studios in Time: Ten Women Visual Artists, a whole room is  dedicated to Vally Nomidou's work. I first came across Nomidou's work in a blog post  by Olga. I was immediately hooked and I subsequently followed Olga's suggestion and travelled to the Athens Glyptotheque where one of Nomidou's sculptures is part of their permanent exhibition. You can see the results of my visit here .

Nomidou was born in Thessaloniki in 1959. She has co-founded the all-female artists' group 'indoors' and is currently teaching as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her life-sized sculptures of women and girls are made out of paper and paperboard.





Her work is exhibited in one of the rooms on the top floor of this quirky and wonderful museum.

I have included too many close-ups but this is work that requires close scrutiny.














Tangled, 2010, (paper)









































Embellished - Mended, 2010 (paper)













































The drawings (mixed media on paper) on the wall are titled Diary 2015-18:
















































Finally, I bought the exhibition catalogue which includes images of Nomidou's work which is not in the exhibition. I am including four here:




Plaster Girl, 2009 (plaster on coloured metal stand)







Little Girl in Bed, 2006 (paper)





Handicapped, 2009 (mixed media)







Ifigenias, 2005 (paper)



Monday 28 January 2019

A delight




I am quite impressed by some of the activities that the town councils in our area are initiating. 'Great Artists for Young Readers' in Palaion Faliron is an example and I came across it during one of my  walks by the sea. I took the tram to the Edem stop which is the beginning of Palaion Faliron and I walked to the end of the Floisvos Marina. In the middle of my walk stands this building which I remember since I was a very young child.




Activities for young children, mainly pre-schoolers, had been set up for both Saturday and Sunday, last weekend. The activities consisted of looking at the work of three artists, Yayoi Kusama, Henri Matisse and Renee Magritte, and then creating art work that was based on the work of these artists.




Dots, dots and more dots while examining and replicating the work of Kusama.




And a pumpkin, too.




Time for a photograph taken by a proud parent.










Matisse's cut-outs. As I lingered by this workshop, I could hear the group leader explaining that 'when Matisse got very old he got ill, and could not stand for hours in front of the easel. So, instead he took coloured paper and started cutting out shapes that he would turn into pictures'.





Rene Magritte next, with lots of examples to inspire the young artists





Art work on the bulletin board




and props





note the hat and apple on the facilitator's cheek




and the dots on the woman's skirt




Two more workshops on Matisse were in progress.

It was sheer delight seeing all those kids finding out about art.