Lycabettus

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 7

This painting was the third I started… but the seventh to finish! Many people have asked me how long it takes to finish a piece of artwork, and the answer is harder to provide than they might think because I’m usually working on multiple pieces at a time and each one’s process and progress looks different.

The substrate for this is once again papyrus, but for the first time I experimented with using crackle paste. This was particularly experimental in that you’re supposed to use crackle paste only atop rigid surfaces, and papyrus is flexible. This meant that as the crackle paste seized, it actually buckled the papyrus beneath, leading to less dramatic cracking in the paste but creating a very irregular topography and shrinking the overall dimensions of the papyrus. Painting a relatively detailed and representational subject on this surface was really difficult, which led to me fighting with it for weeks. I might’ve even abandoned it, except every visitor to my studio remarked on how much they looked forward to seeing it finished and that it was already a favorite! Eventually, I made peace with it and could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am really pleased with how it turned out; my studio guests were right to urge me to complete it! Also from a completionist angle, my Mount Lycabettus tortoise times were always spent with two tortoises - I painted the larger, presumed male tortoise on the antique tiles, and this papryus piece depicts his smaller, presumably female companion. It feels nice to have finished portraits of each of them.

This is a tentative title: Heritage, acrylic and crackle paste on papyrus, 15.5x21.75", 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic and crackle paste on papyrus painting of a marginated tortoise.

Phoenix Athens Residency Artwork 6

After my sparrowhawk photoshoot the second day with my new field biologist friend, I thought I might want to pay homage to the spotting scope’s field of view by working on a circular composition. Dimitri helpfully found me some wood-and-cardboard spools in the neighborhood trash, and he salvaged them. After taking them apart (they were bolted together), there were two wooden circles on each end. One was flush with holes for the bolts and center, and one had an extra central wooden ledge around the center along with the requisite holes. The Phoenix Athens residency director Dimitri is really into working with concrete, and I like trying new media so I embraced his suggestion to test it out!

I cut down a piece of masonite and glued it to the back, and then put some mesh over the top of the holes to help strengthen the cement’s fill of them. I then mixed up the concrete and added some crushed local snail shells I had collected on Mount Lycabettus as well.

The concrete adhered pretty well, but it wasn’t very level on the surface. I filled in most of the worst of the cavities with matte medium and then went to work drawing and painting atop it! I decided on a composition with three of the Eurasian sparrowhawk chicks, and I added a subtle dark vignette as another nod to the spotting scope.

I confess I am very nervous about how any of these rounds will handle the transit back, as they slightly exceed the width of my largest suitcase; it is flexible, so I can squeeze them in, but I can’t really do anything about their getting hit on those two sides. I can pad out the top and bottom, at least! I’m hoping they’ll be OK, but if they break, I hope they break in such a way that I can try to patch the pieces à la the archaeological fragmented displays I’ve admired in Athenian museums.

This is Realms, acrylic, concrete, and crushed snail shells on recycled wood round, 17.5x17.5x.75”, 2023.

Shelby Prindaville's circular acrylic and concrete on wooden panel painting of three Eurasian sparrowhawk chicks.

Week 3 in Athens

That Monday was another studio day!

The next morning, I went back up the morning at tortoise time as I figured it couldn’t hurt to get some more tortoise photos, and I was still wanting some more hoopoe shots - I had seen the hoopoes out at both late afternoon and early morning, so I thought I might as well attempt both at once. I indeed got some more tortoise images, and then spotted a Eurasian jay from afar. After some time wandering and watching, I then found a hoopoe to photograph and with time, this one let me get relatively close for a spell before flying off. Then either another or the same Eurasian jay showed up in a tree above me. After that, I found another (or a previous) hoopoe, and this one seemed to truly understand what I was about. Occasionally, an animal I encounter seems to get that I’m not a threat in any way and am in fact someone they might want to show off for. After we spent some time together, this bird made direct eye contact with me and then sunbathed, which when performed by hoopoes has led to some long-term misunderstandings by ornithologists and bird enthusiasts due to their remarkable behavior. They spread their wings and flop onto their stomachs, and then recline their head all the way back until they are worshipping the sun. It is WILD. I am reserving my photos as I plan to paint and I think sharing reference imagery kind of spoils some of the magic in my artwork, but you can google it! As I was leaving, I met Giselle the puppy again, and she was determinedly enjoying herself despite her owner being several hundred meters away yelling for her to come. I gave her a swift cuddle!

That evening, I went with the other art professor to see a "new artists under 40” exhibition, and we met up with the other, former artist in residence (who stayed beyond her residency to vacation) and had dinner and visited a new-to-me neighborhood.

On Wednesday, I spent time in the studio and then attended a different, massive contemporary Athenian exhibition (50 curators were involved!) in the evening. Then Thursday through Sunday were all studio days since I knew I was going to be spending some significant tourist time in the following week.

The images in the below gallery are Giselle, and some photos from the second exhibition I attended!

Second Week in Athens

I had a studio day on the 19th. I tried to sand more of the tiles with the rotary sander attachment, but the sanding pad gave out after the first one. Dimitri suggested I buy a different, heavier-duty ribbed sanding head, and we went to a neighborhood hardware store to do so. They didn’t have it in stock, but ordered it in for me and said it’d come in later in the week. Then on the 20th I set an alarm for 7:30am, as I was told by people I asked on my previous mountain visit that the tortoises are most active and likely to be seen around 8-9am. Waking up so early and then doing an intense hike first thing isn’t my favored order of events, but I kept telling myself I had a date at “tortoise time” and it helped! This time, I entered the mountain from the place I had exited on my last visit, as I’d been told that it’d be more likely to see tortoises on that side. I had dropped GPS pins on some fountains that I had hoped might attract some tortoises who wanted a drink, but neither had gathered any as I checked them.

I wandered a while without any sightings, and eventually my path crossed with a worker who was swapping out garbage bags. I assumed someone who follows all the trails swapping bags would be a great resource, so I asked her about turtles (in my experience, few people who primarily speak other languages know the word tortoise as most languages just have one word for both turtles and tortoises, and turtles is the much better known English option). She didn’t speak much English but the word and my mimicry of them worked, as she did clearly understand the question. She managed to get across that they are here in general but she didn’t know in specific where any might be, and then she summoned another fellow I’d seen several times over and together they discussed my desire to find turtles, had a meandering conversation that included the local fox that can sometimes be found at night, and eventually lasted long enough for another passerby to arrive - and when they included her in the query, it turned out she was headed for a spot where tortoises frequently hang out in the morning because people feed them lettuce (as she was planning on doing)!

We walked together with her dog to this new site, and it turned out she is British, lives in Athens, and recently spent some time in the USA as well, so we had a lot of conversational topics to explore. When we eventually arrived, we were in luck! There were two tortoises already feasting on some lettuce, and she added hers to the mix. I took a bunch of photos, and after a spell a hoopoe showed up so I paused to photograph it. This hoopoe didn’t let me get as close as my previous one had, but my camera settings were way better, so overall I got a few decent shots. Then I went back to photographing the turtles, but by this time a group of locals showed up to add fruit to the pile and they had a bunch of dogs with them, one which would not stop barking at anyone who wasn’t in their group (including me), so I didn’t hang around too much longer though I did make the acquaintance of Giselle, a cute, friendly puppy, when she plopped herself into my lap while I was trying to photograph the tortoises.

The next day, I decided to visit the National Archaeological Museum. It is an immense collection that takes several hours to explore, and while I did the whole thing at once, I think there’s a limit to how much you can really register and retain, and to do it properly you might want to do it in three or four visits. I really enjoyed seeing how they exhibited partial finds (like frescoes or vases that were broken, needed to be pieced together, and were missing segments), and I was reminded of how beautiful oxidized bronze is. My one complaint is that they have no water fountains anywhere; you have to order and pay for water in the basement cafe (which has a permanently long line) or drink from your hands from the bathroom sinks.

I then spent more time in the studio! The new sanding head came in on Thursday, and I picked it up that evening. The next day, I tried it out on a piece of concrete first to get the feel for it (and it powered through the concrete). I then tried it on a tile, but it just buffed it so that too was a no-go. In between all of these and my previous attempts, Dimitri and the other artists in residence tried to help brainstorm but also kept suggesting that what I wanted to do was impossible. I credit my ceramics knowledge with the fact that I knew it wasn’t! I bought a new velcro head and 4 sanding heads of 40- and 60-grit, and went at the tiles again. This time, I got through almost all of the top layer of the glaze (but left a lower layer intact but now much more receptive to paint)! It turns out, the brand new sanding pad and velcro head were successful (though I also still think liquid/cream etching acid would have worked a treat). I did need to use a new sanding pad per tile, as the irregular surface meant I needed to use the very edge of the pad to get into the lower areas and that quickly ate up the perimeter, but the pads only cost 50 cents each so that was a reasonable expenditure. I went back to the hardware store and bought another 6 pads, and sanded away.

On the 25th, I decided to visit the Sunday Monastiraki flea market and then walk through the touristy shops of Plaka. The flea market was a bit of a disappointment, in that it’s mostly fixed tourist shops, a few antique stores, and a handful of street vendors, but the tourist shops throughout both neighborhoods went on and on. Most of them sold approximately the same type and range of goods, but every so often you could find one that had different wares. The prices in these neighborhoods were astronomical though. A tablecloth I liked cost 80€, a decorative plate cost 26€… it was clear you’d pay a large markup for anything you wanted. The main tourist shops included olive wood stores (featuring various cutting boards, serving tools, games, etc. made out of olive wood), jewelry stores, shoe stores, general tourist shops with shot glasses, mugs, dishes, statuettes, bags, and T-shirts, and edible gift stores with boxed baklava, halva, teas, and olive oil. There was also the occasional bookstore and art gallery mixed in.

My First Week in Athens

I arrived in Athens on Monday, June 12th in the late afternoon, and by the time I got my checked luggage and took a taxi to my residency, it was around 6:30pm. I greeted my hosts and their two artists in residence. The residency director, Dimitri, showed me to where I’d be staying and mentioned he didn’t have time to prepare it as he would have liked but hoped it would be acceptable and that he knew I wanted access to A/C (I had requested that if possible given that it can get up to 104°F/40°C in the summers), which this apartment has. Then we went out for drinks and invited a field biologist friend of Dimitri’s, as I had asked to have him show me some of the local fauna and flora on the nearby Lycabettus mountain. It is also the highest point in the whole city (and is inexplicably titled a hill here, as in Lycabettus Hill, but I assure you - and have photographic proof - that it is not!).

I returned back home and went to bed. I awoke in the middle of the night and discovered a large cockroach, so the next morning Dimitri brought a can of spray over. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bigger infestation than the can of spray could resolve, so he then spent hours patching crevices and holes in the place with cement, caulk, and tape, and finally a couple days later an exterminator came. Since then, I haven’t seen another (fingers crossed)! In the midst of dealing with that, my bathroom plumbing also flooded the place with contaminated water, and we’ve since had three plumber visits - I now have a brand new toilet, too. I’m hoping that was all my bad luck for the trip, right at the beginning!

I’ve had great luck, too, though! On my second day here, I went up Lycabettus with my new field biologist friend (somewhat confusingly for narrative purposes, he’s also named Dimitris so I will just refer to him as the field biologist). He brought his very nice birding photography gear, including a tripod and scope, because he has been observing a sparrowhawk nest and was happy to show it to me. It was AMAZING. I had a great time observing them; I’ve seen both adult and baby raptors up close before at LSU Vet Med, wildlife sanctuaries, and/or zoos, but to intimately see a healthy, wild sparrowhawk family through a scope was magical. We then climbed to the top of the mountain at sunset to get a bird's eye view of the city and the Acropolis.  A few days later, I went on a five-or-six mile walk around the Athens city center and the base of the Acropolis with one of the other artists. I next visited the National Garden, as I was hoping to find one of the native tortoises. I did not, so I went back up the mountain the following afternoon to try to spot some, but then heard from other people in the trails that they're mostly around in the early morning.  However, the trip wasn’t wasted as I then ran into a Eurasian hoopoe. Unfortunately, I had the wrong camera settings still running from the previous evening and didn't realize it, so those photos are not usable.

Interspersed between all of the above events was studio time! I began work on two different sparrowhawk paintings on papyrus and have been trying to get the surface of the 19th century tiles I acquired in Amsterdam to become more receptive to paint, as I want to use my OPEN Acrylics atop them and would like the resultant work to be relatively archivally stable. First, I tried hand sanding to no success. Then I tried a rotary sanding attachment on an angle grinder, but the surface of the tiles is not actually flat so it left a lot of pockets of shiny glaze. I decided to see if I could find a store capable of etching my tiles instead, as etching liquid/cream or sandblasting would uniformly work on irregular surfaces. I took the tiles to a glass store that told us they could sandblast them, but when I arrived it turned out their sand was far too fine and it would not result in the type of more open surface I was looking for, so they sent me to a sandblasting factory. There, they assured me they could do it and that I should come back the next day to retrieve them and pay. However, the next day it turned out the glaze was too hard for their sandblasting material, and they could not do as I’d asked after all.

The food here has been uniformly delicious, and Athens is in my opinion the most vegan and vegetarian-friendly city I’ve been to, which has been a very pleasant surprise! I knew the Mediterranean diet would lend itself pretty well to my vegetarianism, but there are an abundance of purely vegan restaurants around and several servers have proactively offered vegan modifications to vegetarian dishes.