A few different dates to see my continuous line art performed live in a children’s theatre show, accompanied by award-winning flute player extraordinaire Kalliopi Bolovinou.
If you book tickets for Tuesday the 7th or Weds the 8th of March, you’ll see the amazing Francophone actors Olivier Francart and Juliette Manneback fresh-faced and ready for their first performance of DELPHI right in the heart of Brussels’ European Quarter, Place Jourdan: Le Senghor https://www.senghor.be/event/delphi/
However, if you book tickets to come to Le Columban on Sunday March 26th in Wavre, you’ll get all of the above AND you can bring a toy to exchange with other toys available… https://www.columban.be/portfolio/delphi/
Whichever show you choose to see, I can’t wait to see you there, over-excitedly wave to you and your kids in the audience and share my art with them afterwards. I hope they’ll be inspired to try some continuous line art themselves, making their own: that’s even better!
Look at us being paid to do what we are the best at doing… our art!
Generously funded by «Un Futur Pour La Culture» at the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, my manuscript and continuous line illustrations for this children’s theatre play called DELPHI and our packed multidisciplinary application scaffolded by all of Kalliopi Bolovinou’s musical theatre experience, linguistic skill and wisdom
has been lauded by the panel of judges as “among the best ranked.”
Then the Kaleidoscope production team paired us up with such an incredible human, who also turns out to be a fantastic actor: Olivier Francart will be joining us in a theatre, art & music workshop on stage at Ecole No 8, Avenue du Bois de la Cambre, (Uccle) this Friday.
Then again on stage at Columban Theatre (Wavre) 20-24 June.
Hopefully with actress Cecile Delberghe too.
We already workshopped at the gorgeous Théâtre Mercelis (look at the frescos!) until covid knocked us out.
But then PointCulture swooped in, offered us offices and the SACD Author’s Rights granted access to their co-working spaces…
So here we are, developing what we do best, with theatres and office spaces and actors, and the rough date for the next residency in Brussels is…(drum roll please)… The Senghor theatre in November!
To all those asking me when the final show will be: Spring 2023 is the official answer, The Senghor will have the 2022-23 program finalised in May and only then we will know the exact dates, that’s the way it goes in theatre, apparently.
Let’s just celebrate for now; quality children’s theatre is back on track!
Thank you for all the birthday wishes. What year is it? Look at my body and you can tell. “Count the rings as you would on a tree. (38!) Count the ridges on the cumulus of my skin.” What to do with all the lines on my body? Make continuous line art of course! The trailer is below. The full theatre performance of the whole journey is in production. Let’s hope we can invite you safely soon.
*quote from Jeanette Winterson’s poetic prose
I’ve developed over 70 versions of my comic book DELPHI illustrated all in one continuous line. I’ve given away a few and have 65 left. One live performance was for Clique Art with violinist Eugene Feygelson and the other for TEDx with flautist Kalliopi Bolovinou.
Iris Haidău will come over and document them before I give the rest away to any families who want them (as children’s bedroom art or colouring “books”).
All these scrolls remind me of the ancient library at Alexandria.
If anyone says artists are crazy, you can confirm, nod your head wisely, and say you are friends with one very crazy artist. Right here. It’s TRUE.
I was invited to join the TEDx stage only 17 days before to our performance.
My previous musical collaborator was half a world away. To develop this global stage performance during a pandemic, I needed some closer award-winning talent. Enter Kalliopi Bolovinou. I text messaged Kalliopi, who at that time had only briefly begun teaching our young daughter eurythmics. She was curious to engage with my project. We learned how to work together at a rapid pace thanks to her incredible ability to communicate clearly in multiple languages (both human languages and musical languages). I, too, quickly learnt her ability to express wisdom, humour and empathy in speech and harmony is utterly unparalleled.
This is appropriate because in Greek mythology, her namesake Kalliope is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the harmony of her voice. So I might just take this precedent as an excuse to wax lyrical with some eye witness report of her epic skills.
It took barely any time to onboard her with regards to the scope of my DELPHI project and we began rehearsing together, building our live art and music performance, developing it at record speed and finessing it as we went.
Kalliopi understood the educational elements immediately, the complex meta levels of the theory, philosophies, bereavement therapies and feminism at core, and was able to adapt her music style (classical training rehearses elements of a score) to a more immediate method (rehearsing the entirety every time) to fit with the unique continuity of my continuous line art performance.
She was inspired by the people we interacted with and the content of the storyline and developed her own bespoke response to the art with a gradual crescendo from Debussy’s Syrinx to a modern segment of a composition called “Ascèses” for solo flute (1967). The composer is André Jolivet. The original publication has 5 parts. Kalliopi performed No3 and No4 during the 8 minutes she developed for our show.
This is how she describes the music she developed, in her own words:
“Music is one of the most powerful forms of international expression; it breaks down all barriers by overcoming languages and transcends national borders. [I’ve] chosen classical and contemporary music for solo flute, inspired at the same time by composers, traditional dances and songs from key countries on DELPHI’s route: the Celtic points of Brittany, the islands Greek, African plains, Russian winter… to create a living narration of traditional tales. The music chosen comes from eminent composers, but also segments meshed and recomposed […] on traditional themes accompany the emotional journey of the story, the flute blows air into the lungs of the illustrated story, giving it life.”
We worked hard to make sure our collaboration mapped the music onto the art and the art supported the flow of the music and that our entrance onstage would be in synch with the theatricality of a live storytelling performance.
Kalliopi even taught me how to illustrate a stage direction diagram with French subtitles!
We struggled to offer flexible solutions to the never ending changes that occurred during the preparation of this event. The global pandemic cause the audience numbers to decrease, tickets to be returned, a livestream video option to be brought in and the venue to be changed three times! We had to rearrange our lives and our family’s lives and our children’s schedules and our work schedules, all in the name of our art and music.
We were not welcomed to rehearse on stage until the day of the TEDx event and even then the producers didn’t give the time to do a full 8 minute run through. We had 3 minutes to check out microphones and our stage positions and check the audio and lighting etc was all in place to our professional standards.
Please note all the mask wearing and even the hand sanitiser on the table. The precautions necessary to make this event covid compliant were incredibly stressful. I’m so lucky I had such positive professionals on all sides.
I will share Kalliopi’s biographical history here while also sharing images of her incredible performance on the global stage we shared.
Kalliopi Bolovinou began her music studies early in Ioannina, Greece and Athens and then trained abroad. She holds the Superior Diploma in Flute and the Superior Diploma in Musical Writing from the Athens Conservatory with the highest distinction.
She obtained her Masters at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Mons in Belgium in the class of Marc Grauwels with great distinction.
Then her Superior Diplomas in flute and piccolo at the Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris in the class of Mihi Kim.
In addition to her flute studies she also studied Musicology at the University of Athens.
She is also interested in the practice and expression of contemporary music.
She is studying Contemporary Music at the Conservatory of Gent with the Belgian contemporary music ensembles “Ictus” and “Spectra”.
As a teacher, Kalliopi trained at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and at the Dalcroze Institute of Rhythmics in Brussels. She teaches flute at the International School of Brussels (ISB).
She won 1st Prize at the Lions Club National Flute Competition in Belgium and she represented Belgium at the Lions Club International Flute Competition in England.
During her studies, she had scholarships from the Greek state, the Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Thessaloniki (Megaro Mousikis in Thessaloniki, Greece) and the Onassis Foundation.
She has worked as an orchestral musician in Greece and Belgium in different orchestras and has performed as a soloist with the National Orchestra of Greece, the Symphony Orchestra of the University of Athens, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Athens and the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia. In the contemporary scene, she has collaborated with several ensembles, notably the French ensemble “Multilatérale”, with which she recorded at IRCAM in Paris works by the French composer Jacques Lenot (disc Chiaroscuro).
She participated in the creation of works by composers such as Yan Maresz, Matteo Franceschini, Mark Applebaum, Jacques Lenot, Yiannis Kyriakides and she participated in several festivals and workshops in Belgium, UK, France, Greece, Italy.
His interest in chamber music led him to collaborate with Belgian and foreign artists in flute and guitar duo, flute and piano, flute quartet. Within the Kaleidoscope association of which she is a founding member, she works in the multidisciplinary show “Balkan Project” which combines the arts of music, storytelling and illustration around the culture of the Balkan countries together with the storyteller Belgian Bernadette Heinrich, Spanish illustrator Teresa Arroyo and Greek guitarist Yiannis Efstathopoulos.
My favourite moment was in the dressing room after our event when Kalliopi said to me, “Thank you for letting me develop something creative with my altoflute.” In case anyone was wondering, all this has clearly been on big excuse to let us hear her altoflute’s voice ring out!
We thought it would be pretty rockstar to use the opportunity of this TEDx stage to practice our stage performance while developing a collaborative show together and in the short time of our rehearsals for this performance we ALSO built an English language AND French language application and dossier of the project to share an educational performance for schools here in Belgium.
You can see the development of that project on Kaleidoscope, Kalliopi’s musical theatre production company webpage here.
Working here on #TEDx with an awesome bunch of people just like me: positive-thinking perfectionists, and it feels like a family. Due to the pandemic, the whole thing has changed locations a handful of times, tickets have been restricted/ returned, and every 3 seconds we wonder if it will even happen. Weirdly, all the uncertainty has an upside: I don’t feel so stressed! I feel just as invested in the quality of my work as I always do, but less invested in whether the event happens exactly the way expected or not. Is there a word for “I have no hope, I have no fear, I am free”?
If you prefer to listen to your podcasts on YouTube here it is!
“This is way more than I ever expected. I’m speechless.”
TEDx & arts event manager extraordinaire Dimitra Pappa witnesses my continuous line portraits for the first time.
My exhibition MISSFITS will be on show at the TEDxULB event on October 22nd 2020, Brussels, Belgium
promo code TEDXULB2020 on tickets Maison Du Bois, Vrijwilligerslaan 2, 1040 Etterbeek on OCT 22nd.
Viktoryia Sinkovec asked if I would be her first ever guest on a new podcast about the arts here in Europe. We had an actual tea party and a good quality talk about my upcoming live art performance of DELPHI for TEDx. I did some portraits of her while we laughed.
T: It’s art, and it’s tea, and it’s an arty party. And this is October 2020. This is our first episode today. I would like to introduce Viktoryia Sinkovec. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
V: Thank you.
T: Viktoryia is a Belarussian in Belgium, a multinational mother, lawyer, yogini, journalist, and art lover. Or, just lover?
V: A lover. Always a lover.
T: A lover not a fighter.
V: Tamar Levi, she is an artist, a painter, a children’s book author, based in Brussels, and learning French.
T: That’s right! Trying.
V: Trying. She grew up in Alaska, educated in UK, and she accidentally fell in love with a Greek man who brought her to Europe.
T: The hairiest Greek man I could find!
V: (laughter)
T: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited that we were able to find the day we could do this, in advance of this big event next week.
V: Yeah, what is this big event that you’re talking about?
T: So, I was invited to do a performance for a TEDx conference which means it is organized by ULB, a university here in Brussels.
V: Yeah.
T: And, they will be having the normal TEDtalk speakers, but they invited me to do something a bit different: which is a live art performance.
V: How are people chosen for this event? Are they really special? What makes you so special?
T: I’ve been questioning this myself. What am I doing here? And why? I was trying yesterday to come up with a percentage for this. (Tea cups clattering.) Is it 70% who you know and 30% how good your work is?
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: Or is it 70% how good your work is and 30% who you know? I don’t know what the percentage is on this, but I think a lot of it is about who is in your community.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: And how you engage with your community over time and if you’re bringing quality work to your community space regularly you get known for doing a good job.
V: Yeah.
T: But you also have to be extroverted enough that people know they can reach out to you, find you, and introduce you to do things. So there is a weird mix of being a quality creator, but also stepping outside of your studio enough that you can create the relationships that move you into spaces that can share your work. It’s very, very tricky to take the hat off of the isolated artist, and put the hat on of “I’m going out into the world again.”
V: Especially now, in the Covid times.
T: Yes, oh my goodness.
V: There are a lot of restrictions now. So how will it look like?
T: It was originally going to be in a conference space, at Flagey, in the centre of Brussels. And then, so many people were interested, that they were expanding the event, and moving my artwork which was going to be on the walls and entering into a new space which was the Museum of Belgium.
V: Oh wow.
T: So it was going to be in a huge museum, which is very prestigious, and I was very excited to present my art on the walls of a museum! However, Covid hit and this pandemic happened, and they had to limit the ticket numbers. So they were no longer able to present it in the museum space.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: and now they are doing it in what I think what used to be a Belgian beer factory, maybe? Or some sort of old manufacturing building, that’s called La Maison du Bois.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: It’s near the university. It’s still a huge space, but it has fewer (guest) numbers and they are more spread out. And that’s how they’ve accommodated the pandemic.
V: It sounds quite interesting. If it’s an old place, it’s authentic, for an artist lover.
T: I was expecting it to be a chateau because it’s called La Maison… and I entered and I thought, oh! This looks like a factory that has rebranded as a chateau!
V: (laughing) And who will perform? You and someone else? Or is it just you?
T: I will be presenting a series of artwork on the wall of the event. AND I will be performing for the audience with a flautist–
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: — who is an award winning flute player named Kalliopi Bolovinou and it’s our first time collaborating together. So we had less than 10 days… My previous collaborator is based in London. His name is Doctor Eugene Feygelson, and he played the violin in our last performance. But, being based in London, he couldn’t commute to Belgium, as easily as we used to. The world has gotten smaller.
V: Yeah. Doors are closing.
T: Yeah. So, people we are engaging with, need to be our neighbours.
V: So, what’s going to be your story? What will you tell us?
T: This is the trailer for a graphic novel, that I’ve illustrated all in one line. The name of the book is DELPHI. It’s about a little girl whose mother passes away and she goes to look for her myths and legends in every culture around the world. This book almost wrote itself because every culture has a story about looking for someone you love who is not here. And, it was very easy going into the British library and finding folklore after folklore that told the same story about missing someone you love and going to look for them and trying to bring them back. However, I wrote this story along the arch of traditional grief. She goes through anger and denial, and eventually through a catharsis.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: The book is similar to all the books I’ve illustrated or coauthored in the past, they have an educational tool at the heart of them. This book is what’s called “thanatalogical,” it’s about the concept of death. It’s to be used when a child is going through an understanding of what is death.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: Perhaps a family reading it together can get to the catharsis point of grief, and bereavement and understand how to, as a family, move forward, with a positive perspective.
V: So, this will be the message on the wall? You’ll send it to us people?
T: The October 22nd event of the TEDx conference is the trailer for the larger graphic novel.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: I was asked by the gallery that I just had my last exhibition in, to do another performance in September. I was trying to think if I would do something different, and I decided, no, I must complete this book and bring the next chapter forward.
V: It’s very deep. Especially for kids who are not educated enough about the topic. Like that.
T: Right. I feel that Victorians talked a lot about death, and very little about love. And we (modern people) talk a lot about love, but not a lot about death. So, when death does come up as a topic, parents tend to go blank and not know how to process it in discussion with a child.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: As a children’s book author, I use my home library a lot to explain things to my kid. If she needs to work through anger, I’ll pick up a book about cooling down, breathing and calming down through anger. Or if we are going to the dentist, I’ll pick up a book and we’ll read a book about going to the dentist. Figuring that out together. Or the day before school starts, we’ll read a book about going to school and what is school all about. I feel like, to me, it is an amazing tool to have a book that you, as a parent, do not have to come up with the best words right on the spot. But having someone who has spent nearly 15 years working on this project–
V: Yeah, it’s a lot.
T: — it means that I can gift it to parents and know that I’ve saved them that task.
V: Do you think that the project you’re going to paint on the wall will be useful for kids? So, kids could come and join and see your performance?
T: This is the introduction. I had done, let’s say the practice version of it previously, with my collaborator the violinist.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: Children were present in that audience.
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: I feel that perhaps 5 years old and above, could sit through 10 minutes.
V: Yeah.
T: Depending on the child, maybe younger, but that would be up to the parents who are experts of their own child to know whether they can sit through.
V: Yeah, it’s true. What do you want to give through your message?
T: I feel that illustrating big ideas has been the practice that I have brought forward through my career as a children’s book illustrator, always working with big, big ideas that are complicated and need some visuals. The thing that I want to bring through this message in the performance next week, is the continuous line method, with live music–
V: Mmm hmmm.
T: — can be very exciting. Very interesting. A lot of people have never seen anything like this before. I hope people will be excited to see live art happening, and engaging with classical music, improvised for a performance. Going on the theme of the classical music, I would love for children to be more engaged with classical music.
V: That’s true, yeah.
T: If I mix it all together!
V: If I might ask, do you think you will go into a meditative state, while you are performing?
T: I would like to think that I would! Because I need to blank out all of the faces that are looking at me and I also need to stop the critical thinking side of my brain and allow myself to fluidly go into my art, on the creative side, of my thinking. I would love to ask you as a professional who shares breathing techniques, if there’s anything you could share with me, as advice. Do some art therapy for the artist!
V: Yes, I understand. I think what would help you on the spot is bring your awareness to your breathing. That’s how it helps to switch off the mind. You start drawing. But you bring all your attention to your breathing. You inhale. And you exhale. And you can repeat inside yourself, inhale, and exhale.
T: (deep breathing)
Then you can also use the thumb of your right hand, and do the alternate nostril breathing? You know the technique? It’s like a U-turn breathing, where you inhale and close the right nostril, with the thumb and you inhale with the left nostril. Then you close the left nostril, with the index finger and exhale through the right nostril…
T: (deep breathing)
V: …and inhale through the right nostril, and exhale through the left nostril. And you keep going. Just before your show, you will feel the difference, just before you arrive, rushing with all your tools, then you take 10 mihnutes before theshow, then you start breathing, then. You breath out, and all the tension will go away, you will feel different, your nervous system will calm down, you will cool down.
T: Mmm hmmm.
V: Or if you need to do something on the stage, you can also just close the left nostril, and breath from the right nostril…
T: (deep breathing)
V: …and this will bring all your concentration back.
T: To the nostrils.
V: You will no longer feel distracted by any noise, it is going to be just you, and your board, and your love, and—what will you use to draw?
T: Well, this is the dilemma, if there are more than 250 people, I would need to be drawing bigger.
V: Yes.
T: I’ll have to be using a darker, bigger ink. I’m not sure if I can enlarge my images, because it takes a big physical movement to enlarge it very big. I’m hoping to do a test run, on Saturday morning with the paper and the boards that will be part of the performance next week and see how big I can do it. One of the things I worry about, as an artist, is if I enlarge it too much, if it will lose some of the detail that gives it the quality that I like. It’s going to be a work in progress, actually, a work of progress in public, on stage!
V: I’m sure everyone will love it. Because it’s new. I haven’t seen anything like that in TED. Maybe I’m wrong, because I follow TEDtalks, but to me, every talk is special. So, the message that you want to send to all of us, is going to be special. It is special, it’s different, it’s coming from your heart, you want to share, you want to bring this message to every person sitting in the room and outside in the world.
T: Thank you so much and thank you for the breathing techniques that will help me get through the stage fright. Thank you for your time today.
V: Thank you so much for coming! Let’s have a little bit more tea!
T: Yes!
V: Cheers! Enjoy the afternoon, we wish you a pleasant day. Our company, we’re the Art Tea Party, with Tamar and Viktoryia.
Together: Goodbye!
Ready for some crazy artist stuff?
I started this DELPHI project when I was 23. (I’m 37 now.)
I’ve researched it for months and years in the British Library in London & written it as an 18 chapter young adult novel (for ages 9-12), re-designed it as a graphic novel (12-18) in Berlin, and for the last two years in Brussels developed it as a live continuous line art performance with live classical music for kids (ages 9-18). I carried all my materials across 5 country moves and copy-edited countless digital drafts and scripts, (maybe 80 versions?), storyboarded like a maniac as you can see (60 versions and counting).
The original trailer took approximately 5-7 rehearsals (?) was 6 minutes long (violin by @EugeneFeygelson), the current trailer is at 10 minutes (flute by @KalliopiBolinvou) and we are now on our 3rd rehearsal of this new collaboration.
The first gallery to feature this show was Clique Art (in 2018) and the current event will be for TEDx (2020) with view towards a possible third performance of the next chapter (in Sept 2021) for Art Base (?).
I don’t know how many pens I’ve worn down to their nub and how many markers have dried up all their ink. Started out with black ink pens, Uniball Vision Elite, and ended up with Sharpie Fine Points (such a lovely true black), but will probably have to start using their W10s (lesser true black) because the bigger audience needs to be able to see the line better.
My first fans were friends and my mother. The current fans are just under 2300 heads. The live audience expanded to 700 people but due to Covid19 is now down to 250, but still need to see more clearly from the back of a much bigger auditorium than the original audience which was sized around (+/-) 75 humans.
This is what a non-digital work in progress looks like, people. I’m not sure how an artist fits in this post-pandemic new normal, or how they ever fit in this ridiculous world in the first place, or why this world encourages the fine arts but refuses to value them… but this is what it looks like to stick with a strong creative vision (for all its flaws) with stubborn mule-like dedication to your chosen art (for as long as it takes)….
Promo code TEDXULB2020 on tickets Maison Du Bois, Vrijwilligerslaan 2, 1040 Etterbeek on OCT 22nd.
Today I was interviewed by Viktoryia Sinkovec for episode one of her exciting new podcast called ARTY PARTY. We discussed art and drank tea. (Get it? Art Tea Party?) I’ll share the podcast here when it gets released.
Viktoryia is a Belarussian in Belgium, multilingual mother/lawyer/yogini/journalist and art lover. Well, she corrected me, lover in general!
We talked about the arts in Europe, my upcoming live art performance for TEDx. Viktoryia gave me some fantastic breathing techniques to help calm stage fright.
These breathing techniques provided some much needed art therapy for the artist, here.
We had a delicious tea party and a good giggle about her big black microphone.
While we were recording her doorbell rang with a delivery of art supplies!
A great opportunity to do a couple of portraits of her in action.
I did not know she was recording this timelapse video while we were recording a podcast, while I was painting her portrait, while we were drinking tea.
An Arty Party, indeed.
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Brief Bio
Educated in London and Cambridge, Tamar has published as an author, illustrator and editor of multiple award-wining books designed for families, classrooms and doctors. Her prized artwork is highly collectible, commissioned by private collectors, sold at private auctions and exhibited in galleries around Europe.
