Vessels of Expression

Instruments and Roads

How can a perpetuated decrease in cultural practice be eliminated?

I invite you to witness my solution.

Wheelbarrow Filled With Dirt, (2021)

Boots, Palette knives, an old cigar box, a photograph of me dancing the Zeibekiko, a Cretan knife inscribed with a brotherly poem, and a freshly painted red dance shoe. All these objects are dirt in my wheelbarrow of expression, used to grow a garden of crops whos harvest of spices creates the secret anecdote to a decrease in cultural practice.

This piece--as a partner to Morning--breaks down the afternoon activity. My procrastination of my schoolwork is brought by the essential need to play music. In the afternoons, you will find me picking away at a lute. Not with a fan brush, however, that is only an homage to the old masters who picked away at their songs with rishas (Oud pick) made from shaved Eagle feather. Omnipresent in my afternoon is the quick switch between Hellenic music and American blues. Symbolic of the American blues, a slide is being used to play the Oud. Although not probable, this combination symbolizes the bridge between two cultures. I am wearing my painting apron and holding in my left hand, the charcoal pencil and stump--just a couple of other ways I find myself in the afternoon.

Step into the scene of my early morning happenings, before the sun, when my room still radiates with twilight. There you’ll find the juxtaposition of my cultural expressions. On the bottom right my phone plays Good Morning Blues by Barbara Dane, indicative of American Blues-Jazz; on the top left, a Greek Briki pouring the morning coffee whose aroma I was raised within. Between these two is my Sketchbook and resting above that is my menacing To-Do list. A Blackwing writing pencil lays above the To-Do list pointing at the American Blues; a Blackwing drawing pencil lays above my sketchbook pointing toward the Greek Coffee cup—a preservation of my culture. Beyond these lay my previous night’s study interests: Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life, Carl Sagans’ Cosmos, and the Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol.

ταξίμι, (Taqsimi) (2021) — ταξίμι, (Taqsimi) (2020)

An Oud overlaps the violin which overlaps a guitar; my vessels in which to travel the endless sea of music. Resting at the edge of the hidden guitar is a page from my own journal depicting dromoi (δρόμοι), or roads; the sheet music, a roadmap for which to traverse the sea of music with the instrumental vessels of sound, has its score come to life as it turns into the streets and goat paths of a roadmap. The page on the left is titled “dromoi” and the page on the right is synonymously titled “roads;” the street signs, notes of the Solfège.

Wunderkammer-Instruments, (2020) — *Wunderkammer-Instruments,* (2020)

Instruments of all types fill this Wunderkammer—a cabinet of curiosity. From musical instruments such as an Oud to the artist's paintbrush, Lightnin’ Hopkins Mojo Hand, and on to the stargazers telescope, there are many eye-fixating objects hidden around these dreamlike cabinets. Using nothing but charcoal dust, a paintbrush, and an eraser, I was able to catalog just some of the many obscure and intriguing instruments that I have come to know as commonplace. Invited into this glowing, mysterious scene, you will find the many ways in which I spread my tendrils of interest; you will notice how in one room, I could store everything from an old guitar slide, all the way to traditional Hellenic instruments—and then some.

Instruments and Roads, (2021) — *Instruments and Roads,* (2021)

A dilapidated Oud peg box’s strings transform into a music score, a roadmap to the world of Hellenic music. That music score, feeds into the lens of a Telescope, a bridge between roads. The telescope is facing and sitting on loose leaf constellation maps, the roadmaps to the stars. Both roads are of Hellenic origin. The paintbrushes, the book, the telescope, the Oud are all instruments; the music score and the constellations are all road maps.

Roadmaps in Maqam, (2022)

This piece is a surrealistic still life of my instruments thrown on top of maqam sheet music. Each of these sheet music pages includes scores of modes called “δρόμοι” which translates from Greek as roads; roads to music. I explored this idea of the sheet music as roads to the melodies of songs in the maqam system, by allowing the lines on the score to turn into roads on the maps. The key in the top left describes the different notes in the solfege as towns, highways, cities. the bridge between music and roads is through instruments. The Risha, or Oud pick, serves as an elevated bridge between the roads on the paper and the roads on the roadmap.

A novel written in a music score metamorphosizes into the δρόμοι (roads) and goat paths that lead the way through the mountains of Smyrna.

In experimenting with roads being the maps for melodies in the modal system of maqam, I decided to take an old book, glue the pages together and hand scribe (on the left) score of the different modes onto oatmeal paper. The compass serves as a symbolic representation of direction as the modes shift and can interweave between different melodies. On the right, past the binding which connects the map of Smyrna and the modes from which the music came, the score turns into the roads and the goat paths of the mountains. In the bay of Smyrna lies a sea of dromoi whose score turns into the roads and topography of Smyrna on the right.

A classic kemençe sits on an open 3-part palette which itself sits atop a pile of maqam sheet music. In the foreground rests my cigar box in which I keep all my charcoal supplies and against that rests a cigarette box filled with toothpicks. This piece combines the motifs of my charcoal work with the activity of oil painting and music.

Self Portraits

Open door final.jpg — *Open Palette Door, (2020)*

This piece, “Open Palette Door,” is done in Oil and on gessoed hardboard. The Artist (myself) is carefully opening their palette door to reveal the cornerstone of creation--the palette herself; here all the colors used in this painting sit. My tainted, broken in artists tools are sitting on the other door, beside my right hand holding an obsessive toothpick. I am painting a study of a Tsarouchi, the traditional dance shoe from the Peloponnese--where my family is from; the shoe hanging beside the painting as reference. In the distance is an open door, lit up in contrast to the open palette door. You are entering my workspace--a dark oil paint-ridden den--and the door is wide open; a light shines on my dark creative workplace. A den where the spawn and vessel of my cultural expression is taking place; free to be observed and noted; learned from, influenced by, and perpetuated.

As an artist in the abstract, I look around the walls of my labyrinth of expression—lost within the boots. That smell of leather fills my nostrils. Below me rest two boots, one new right shoe and one worn left shoe. My expression makes connection with my art materials for they create the expression on the paper. Laces flow out of an old cigar box I use to house my charcoals and create from themselves, a pair of boots running. Bellow all this, a couple of Greek dance figurines hide. They hide where my Hellenic Culture finds safehouse—in my boots.

“Alone With His Instruments”

-Dean Kousiounelos

The scorching light
Illuminates
My twilight darkness

Days go by
And by
Each one in the past
Each In the future
and insignificant

I sit atop a box
Alone in a room
Some might call it solitude

Solitude.
Solitude.
Solitude.

The absence of love?
A period of growth?
Or a gorge filled with dark blue water
that harbors frigid air,
leaving lungs barren.

My hands are constrained by chaines.
Overlooking my instruments,
I yearn to let my soul speak

Solitude.
Solitude.
Solitude.

They are too far to be grasped
I am in limbo, and I can’t find a way out.

A violin stares at me
A lute looks off into the distance
And paintbrushes marinate in spirits

Silent.

They are waiting for me
They are the only vessel
In which I can take on the roaring waves
Of my soul’s odyssey.

Depression.
Sloth.
Indolence.

A violin stares at me
A lute looks off into the distance
Paintbrushes marinate in spirits

Yet there is no bow to slide across the strings
there is no feather to pluck a love song with
and no paint in which to paint my vision onto a canvas.
I am truly
Alone with my instruments.

A 1963 7-up bottle found dug in a forest preserve, a parliament cigarette box housing an obsession to toothpicks, an old cigar box filled with my art materials, a trash can with my paint brushes retired in thinner, and a pair of raggedy old boots creates this still life that bleeds one word: Nostalgia.