Notes From The City: An Abundant Life - Listening To The Earth

I wrote about Tassa Theocharis Ganidou two years ago after meeting her in person when she came to New York City to participate in the Museum Of Arts and Design annual art and design exhibition and sale "LOOT, MAD About Jewelry" in April of 2018. She is from Greece, but I had known about her work because we had been following each other on Instagram, and I was drawn to her philosophy and to the way that she created stunning and unique pieces of jewelry that were sculptures and wearable art, using gemstones and metal to envision images from nature that could be worn on the body and in that way bring the wearer closer to the earth and the natural world.

When I began to develop the Love & Plenty project to help restaurants get funding to provide meals for people in need, one of the key parts of it was that I wanted to incorporate Artists into the work that I was doing. I've worked with Artists for many years in Public Relations and Marketing and planning collaborative events that often take place in area restaurants or in some way combine culinary arts, and so it seemed a natural fit to invite Artists into the project to collaborate and help them sell their work with a portion of the proceeds going to the restaurants for meals. In the early weeks after the shutdowns happened in the tri-state area, I heard from Tassa through Instagram, asking me how I was doing. When I told her about the project, she immediately sent me a link to an article on Debra Rapoport's page about food waste and recycling and asked if I had heard of her. Debra is well known and well respected as an Artist and as a food and sustainability advocate, and so I had heard of her, but because of Tassa we were able to connect on Instagram. Tassa had met Debra when Debra was in Greece teaching a workshop at Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum where she had an exhibition, and Tassa had created a sustainable hat that was inspired by the messages Debra shared. The hat I saw on Instagram was made completely from the pieces of produce and other products that normally would be thrown away - the skin of a banana that had been carefully dried, towels that had been dyed with turmeric, and other parts of fruit that usually would find their way at best into compost. Instead Tassa had created something so beautiful that was such a work of genius that I asked her if she would like to be a part of the project I was working on.

A few weeks went by, and Tassa began to post about another piece she was working on, hand dying silk for a new vision. When she posted her creation, it was a flying fish made from hand tooled silver with a gemstone eye and the hand dyed silk as its feathery fins. She tagged me in her story and so it was the first thing I saw when I woke up and checked my Instagram messages in the morning, and as with all of her pieces it was so beautiful and unique that I sent her a response asking if this piece could be a signature piece for the Love & Plenty project. There was something very special about this fish, the fact that it was made from a combination of silk and metal, the resulting textures and colors of the hand dying and hand tooling and the fact that it is flying. The Love & Plenty project was inspired in part by the story of the Loaves and Fish, and it also is a project that is designed to encourage and inspire and help people to feel freedom and to fly through their creative life at a time when we are being shut down and restricted in travel and from doing the things that we need to do as humans like sharing a meal with friends, visiting with people, and wandering freely as we wish.

A basic message that Tassa has on her Instagram page is, "look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better!" I think that Tassa has such a beautiful connection and vision that when we look at her work and wear it, we too can find a way to reconnect to the earth and the natural world around us.

Tassa Theocharis Ganidou
Photograph Courtesy Of The Artist
https://www.instagram.com/tassa_theocharis_ganidou/