A Lesson in Carving

If you’re in Greece, you can already engage with gorgeous views and experiences. Ruins, art, a beautiful Mediterranean landscape – this country has got a lot to offer. But if you’re a CYA student, you have another opportunity to take part in something truly extraordinary: learning how to carve marble at one of the oldest studios in Greece.  Let me give you some directions: if you’re standing in front of CYA, make a right onto Fokianou and then walk all the way down to Eratosthenous.  If you have time, stop for a pastry from Kekkos, and then continue along Arktinou until you pass a blue and white taverna. From there, follow the road upward past a furniture upholstery store and a leather maps store and antique shop.  Passing a few cats on your way, as well as some opaque windows, you’ll see an opening on your right. With soft light emanating from its wrought iron door, it’s almost level with the ground so you could walk right past it and not even notice. But don’t miss it – this is where the magic happens. Upon going through this door and down the steps, you’ll leave behind the hustle and bustle of Athens and enter into the art world of ancient crafts and, in this particular case, marble carving.  If you come in on a Tuesday, you’ll also see a slew of CYA students hammering away at slabs of rock, learning how to use chisels delicately and strike with accurate force.

Every semester CYA offers students the opportunity to take a weekly marble carving class, taught in a studio in our neighborhood.  I and many of the people I now call my close friends jumped at the opportunity to take part in this beautiful and historical tradition.  As an art form, marble carving is something that many people only see as the finished product: a sculpture in a museum or ruins on ancient soil. But here in Athens, I’ve had the opportunity to see marble close up and create a piece of art completely from scratch.  Working in the beautiful studio owned by Dimitris, and with the help of his son Giannis and friend Paris, I’ve been exposed to more marble than I ever thought was possible in my lifetime. I’ve gone from drawing a design to imprinting it onto a nearly 20-pound slab of marble to carving away at the said marble, and it’s been absolutely spectacular.Walking into the studio for the first time, I didn’t know what to expect, but Dimitris is probably one of the kindest people I’ve ever met and shares his love for his craft every time we enter the studio. In the very first lesson, he walked us through the different rooms and showed us past students’ work, as well as speaking to us about the history of marble carving and why it’s so important to him.  One of the funniest things Dimitris told us the first time we met him was that by the third lesson students are usually pretty good at carving. As someone who hadn’t done any serious art since high school, I had very low expectations that I would improve so quickly, particularly after my first carving session. But I can confidently say that this past Tuesday when I was at the studio, I found myself carving with ease and felt much more confident about where to place my chisel. While my lines still aren’t as clean as that of professionals like Dimitris, Giannis and Paris, I can definitely see in my own piece of marble how my work has improved.

Looking at a slab of marble, it’s pretty incredible to realize that you have the power to create a work of art with just a chisel and hammer; it doesn’t seem like either of those objects would be strong enough to cut stone.  But the even cooler thing is that it’s not just the chisel that does it, it’s the pure force of your own hands as you move around the marble surface. Going to marble carving every week has given me a sense of what it feels like to do art that is intrinsically connected to a country’s culture, one that is filled with the most spectacular stories that are all crafted through art.

This article was originally published for and by cyablog.net

Have You Ever Hiked Through a Gorge?

Hi! My name’s Alexandra Strong, and I’m a Tufts student studying abroad in Greece this semester.  After a hectic first month in Athens, I’ve finally settled into my new home here, but I’m realizing that it’s already October and I only have three more months here!  Time is moving by pretty quickly, but I’ve already learned so much from this beautiful country about different people, cultures, and landscapes.  While I’ve had tons of fun every day in Athens so far, my favorite activity was hiking through the Imbros Gorge in Crete.  

As one of the many incredible experiences CYA gives students here, we all went to Crete a few weeks ago to visit some archeological sites, look at some monasteries, and explore the history of the island.  I learned so much about Cretan history as well as got to walk through some amazing sites for my archeology class and see the ruins I was actually learning about.  On one of the last days, we all went on a hike through the Imbros Gorge, a beautiful land mass in the south of Crete.  As someone who had never really done any hiking before, I was excited to be outside and had no idea to expect from the day.  But even before we were halfway through the gorge, I was awestruck with the beauty and experience of walking among all these gorgeous rock formations.  The twists and turns, the trees, seeing the sky through little crevices of mountains up above–it all created such a serene picture that I absolutely loved.  Even though there were about 150 students walking through the gorge, as well as many other tourists making the hike, it was strangely quiet, which was so interesting to me as someone from a big city.  But there was something nice about how quiet everything was.  I got to look around and actually take in my surroundings.  As a whole, Greece has a different soundscape from cities in the US.  The more autonomous spaces in Athens are more based in the noise of cars and traffic, but even if you just walk down a street away from the main road, it’ll be much quieter.  Everyone lives in apartments here in the city, and the buildings are constructed so that they block out sound, which is pretty incredible to think about, because when walking you don’t even notice that the noise has dwindled.  On the islands, there’s a different kind of soundscape, it’s not as populated by traffic noises.  In Crete specifically, the wind was the loudest thing I heard, and I even saw it making waves on the water, it was that strong.  In the gorge, I could hear it whistling through the trees and the crevices in rocks, which was pretty cool to experience.  

 

On top of the beauty of the gorge, I was also walking through it with people that have now become some of my closest friends in this program.  Our trip to Crete was a mere three weeks after we all arrived in Greece, so we were all still getting to know each other, but the walk through the gorge gave us all a chance to talk and connect to each other.  There’s something about walking that makes people more willing to open up and share stories and identify with one another.  We talked about our colleges and universities back home, our families, experiences outdoors, sports, friends back home, families, and our favorite past times.  I had some of the best conversations of my life walking on those narrow paths, and when we all got back to Athens I came home with way too many bug bites for my liking, but some really strong friendships too, which made the bug bites pretty okay.