Urban Flowers on the Walls (UFOTW) is a project inspired by the layers of posters on the walls of my birth city, Athens.

While wandering around Athens I often see walls covered by layers of posters.

Those paper layers stay there for years while their colors fade or the glue dries out, so they peel off partially and hang from the walls like a bizarre kind of paper ivy crawling all over them or like a second skin.

My personal interest about the city and the phenomena of urban life is the reason why I decided to design a collection of wearable art pieces inspired by the peeled posters on the city walls.

I was always amazed by the work of Jacques Villeglé who -among other artists of his generation- created art by placing layers of posters and then peeling or ripping them to reveal the posters underneath.

For UFOTW Project I used paper from magazines glued together in layers creating a quite hard surface. In some cases, a piece of wire is used to help the construction be steadier.

I decided to finish my projects by adding a few pieces of metal leaves as an ironic touch since these pieces are jewelry and they «need to sparkle».

The pieces are quite sturdy but since they are made of paper they can be torn and therefore their owners can change their form if they want. This gesture is part of the project’ s concept.

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After reading Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Sapiens” I realized that we are absolutely capable of creating miracles and destroying everything at the same time.  And it seems that we had this talent since …forever. We humans are doing our best to drain Mother Earth. This is something undoubtable. We eat too much, we kill too many, we inject poisons into earth and at the same time we remove everything that can be useful to our lifestyle without thinking about the future.

Will all these natural resources be there tomorrow? How long does it take for them to refresh themselves? What if one day everything derived from earth comes to an end?

What will happen to us then? Probably it will be the end of our civilization. The one that I enjoy at this moment while I have central heating, electric power, internet and a computer to write all these sensitive thoughts about the future. And I just had a chocolate bar wrapped in a plastic package – that I threw in the recycle bin although I know that no one will recycle it. But what to do?

For the last year I went through a recycle and reuse mania not only in my everyday life but also in my art and work. This means that I struggled to produce the minimum waste and to reuse materials. My workshop’s trash bin becomes full every 4 to 5 weeks because there is not much to throw away.

With all these things in mind I started creating paper clay flowers almost a year ago. The paper clay I use is handmade from old newspapers or egg cups that I keep. It is a challenging material because of its texture that can make the sculpting procedure very tricky. But the moment it’s ready and dry you can do miracles with it. You can file it, carve it, drill it easily and it doesn’t break. The objects from paper clay are extremely lightweight and can be painted with every type of pigment.

And then there are all the silver scraps and dust that I keep when I make jewelry. I decided to use these pieces and make organic shapes such as twigs, leaves and thorns. These natural shapes are appealing to me and they give me the freedom to improvise. Most of the times the materials and their shapes lead me to the final design. I just listen to them and they take me where they desire.

The new conceptual jewelry collection of 2022 is again inspired by nature. I named it Scrapllery (from scrap and jewellery) and at the moment it consists of 3 pieces that are actually 4 (!). There is a necklace, a ring and an earring (ear cuff) that can be worn as a brooch too.

All pieces are designed and handmade by me with recycled silver and upcycled paper.

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There is no doubt that the 2020 pandemic changed the perspective of our lives, our thoughts and feelings and for artists was a great opportunity to isolate from the outer world and rethink their art.

In my country the first lockdown began in March 2020. In Greece, during March we see the first signs of Spring, nature gets wild, sun is extra bright and sky blue and clear. Some of us were lucky enough to live in beautiful places where you could find a forest near your house and enjoy the beauty of nature and all stages of its rebirth. During that time I had the opportunity to observe nature and look at details.

By the second phase of the pandemic Greece went through a strict lockdown in the last month of autumn. By this time days become shorter and the weather colder. The trees and flowers I used to observe and admire [during the first lockdown] started to lose their color and strength. The naked branches and the dry bushes changed the scenery. Yellow, brown, black and grey replaced the green and vivid colors while the beautiful metamorphosis of nature left everything to rest and stay quiet for a while. During my walks I became a collector by picking from the ground pieces of dry and dead twigs, thorny branches and flowers. These findings haunted me for a while. They were dead but extremely beautiful and all I wanted was to give them life again. I visualized them perfect, beautiful and alive. Powerful and proud. At that time my soul was trying not to collapse by the fear of the pandemic, the constant deprivation of social life and freedom, the threat of illness, isolation and death. Those dry – dead – dark – fragile pieces of nature gave me hope. My inner self would bloom again and these phenomenal dead finds would be reborn. I came up with the idea of a jewelry collection that consists of pieces made from those dead nature’s findings and other materials. A collection reflecting my deepest feelings of fear, frustration and hope at the same time. My garden of feelings and thoughts would become the “Soul Garden” jewelry collection.

The pieces’ names were inspired by nature and the botanical world.

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