>30.09.2018<
Two times I had the chance to meet Eileen Botsford. She was born in Athens but brought up on Syros island. Her master was in Fine Arts at Slade School of Fine Arts in London and she didn’t come straight back…
She names her activity as land art and community art. 
The first time we meet she showed me an exhibition of the project that she initiated. ”Cruises" is about Boat Trips: A Visual Exhibition from the Cyclades and the Dodecanese. The purpose of this action taken by Primary and Secondary Schools of Leros, Lipsi, Kos, Syros, Naxos, Milos and Thira was the journey of imagination through artistic creation, the cultivation of artistic expression with emphasis on insularity and the common insular origin of students. Moreover, she wants to eliminate the distances between the greek islands through artistic expression and exchange of ideas, experiences and information among students.
The second time she took me to see some cracks that were (still) filled with golden mud. Filling the gaps was part of the project that she had with underprivileged children. Usually these kind of children knows their lives as being cared and worried about. Her project was to give them the opposite experience since they were filling up the cracks in the weals in the town with “gold”. This act was also having a memory when Chinese were glowing broken ceramics with gold.

More about her on:
Website - Eileen Botsford
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>27.09.2018>
“If you dont see where you are going, you go where you see”
Mimi - Martoulas Dimitris was born and lives on Chios island which is only 2 miles away from Turkey. Already as a child he wished to have a farm and be independent. "I love challenges AND if I fell like doing it, I DO IT. Living sustainable in peace with yourself in harmony and with nature is philosophy he is practicing every day...

Mimis brought us to his “soul brother” Dimitris on island Samos. “The place leads your mind and after you can do a lot“. Dimitris lives creative and independent life, routed in nature, which is the land of Samos and also seas of Mediterranean. Dimitri will tell us about his universe in his coming story...

A few days ago we landed on Syros, the capital island of the Cyclades group in the Aegean sea.
It is not biggest of them all. 
It is not situated in the centre.
It is neither greener nor does it have more diverse resources than the other islands.
It has a very particular history that dates back centuries and when the Turks took over many of the neighbouring islands. Syros was wealthy enough to pay the Turks to let them free.
Hermopolis, the capital of Syros, was for a short time the capital of Greece, as well as the country’s most important port. The island even features an university department and the first high school in Greece was founded in Ermopolis.
There are around 25.000 people living in Syros all year round. 
Just like every island has its own mineral formation that creates the pulse of life, Syros is one of a kind. For islanders, this still feels like the “centre of the world”.

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