With Love from Greece to You
We're an Alaskan/Greek couple living a simple life in a small village on the Greek island of Lesvos. We grow most of our own food and produce organic rain-fed olive oil in our high mountain permaculture farm.*
Creativity is a natural part of our lives. We spend most days outdoors, in the mountains, by the sea, in the olive grove or in the gardens. Everywhere we look there are creative processes generating beautiful work. We can't help but be inspired to do the same.
The isle of Lesvos, only five miles from the coast of Asia Minor, is teeming with an astonishing variety of plants and animals. All year round, the Lesvian mountains are redolent with the smells of wild herbs, edible greens and wildflowers. So rich is the island's wild diversity that the disciplines of biology and botany were born here in the inquisitive minds of the philosopher Aristotle and his friend Theophrastos.
This nourishing, magical island has a strong tradition of art and poetry. In ancient Greek mythology, Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet who had the ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music. After his death (and dismemberment), legend says that the head of Orpheus was swept ashore on Lesvos, still singing, along with his lyre, and that the birds here sing more sweetly than anywhere else. (There are a lot of them too).
Here too roamed Sappho, the 7th century BC lyric poet who was celebrated in the ancient world as the tenth muse. Her style of poetry - written in first-person, deeply emotional and full of passion - was completely unprecedented. A few fragments of her surviving poetry hint at her erotic love for women and so our island gave its name to that persuasion.
Lesvos is abounding with natural treasures and we love to collect them, ponder them, live with them, and create with them. The area is rich in castaways and one can easily find things like old clay roof tiles or some discarded hand-carved wooden shutters. Her endless beaches are strewn with wave-softened pottery shards, a huge variety of seashells, quirky driftwood, and bright sea glass. Wherever we roam, I always have my camera in pocket to capture whatever's too big to carry (the sea, olive trees, livestock, etc.)
We make our creations from materials we gather, grow, forage, find, or recycle. This is a way of life for us and we are always on the lookout for something interesting. Making do with what we've got fills our days with discovery and constantly renews our creativity. Our shop was born because we love sharing our little everyday adventures and the magic of our island.
*We lost most of our olive trees to a wildfire on August 30, 2015 but there's a silver lining. Our olive grove is now a gigantic wild herb garden. :)
