‘Rites of Passage:’ Calliope Lemos’s art exhibition opens tonight in Ermoupolis, Syros
Calliope Lemos, whose family is from the island of Oinousses, has close ties to the sea. She has lived and worked in England for the past 30 years, but devotes her summer to Greece and her native island with its maritime tradition. Her paintings and sculptures envision art as a means of expressing the inner processes that lead to self-knowledge and a deeper understanding of humankind’s spiritual dialogue with nature and the cycle of life. Well-established abroad, Lemos has exhibited in London, Pietrasanta in Italy, Tucson and Arizona. This is the first time she has exhibited in Greece and she chose Ermoupolis, Syros, with its strong maritime and cultural traditions. Her sculptures represent a constant transition between opposites, hence the title, «Rites of Passage.» Seeds, ships, totems, phallic symbols, eggs and embryo shapes are the elements in a visual narrative that goes from birth to death, female to male, immobility to movement, and from the earthly to the ethereal. Lemos sculpts elements from nature – clay, metal, wood, and stone. The exhibition opens today, June 3, at the Ermoupolis Municipal Cultural Center. The curator is art historian and AICA Hellas president Effi Strouza, who wrote the bilingual, Greek-English catalog with Andrew Lambeth, art critic for the Spectator newspaper in Great Britain. The exhibition is being held under the auspices of Ermoupolis Mayor and Culture Center president Yiannis Dekavallas.
