Heritage Woven with Process
Sophia Savalas was an Artist and Iconographer whose work had been inspired by her Savalas ancestors. Her grandfather and uncle were Iconographers before her. Sophia’s early childhood was spent at their Greek family farm compound on New York’s Long Island. As a first-generation Greek American, she was nurtured by her large extended family’s involvement in various forms of creative expression - including the Culinary Arts, the Theater, Writing and Poetry, and a unique focus on Art. Her grandfather, Constantine Tsavalas, was taught by the monks in the monasteries of Greece’s Peloponnese region. He was trained in the traditional methods of using egg tempera and a multi-layered technique to create luminous Byzantine Icons. These traditions and secrets were handed down to her uncle, Theodore Tsavalas.
Pleasure-filled recollections of his studio were among her earliest memories; the sights, the aromas,
and the tactile impact of gently gliding her small fingers over the finished icons.
Prominent in her mind’s eye were the beautiful icon images from this prolific creative environment. She carried forward this tradition of bringing unique, luminous icons into existence.
Sophia generated her traditional Byzantine Icons through a multi-layered process utilizing only natural materials. She created an icon from wood, marble dust, clay, natural glues, pure egg tempera pigment, gold leaf and linseed oil. To maintain the heritage of iconic art methodology she never used synthetic materials. Rather than brushing the paint onto the icon it is customary to roll-on the paint, using the petite lac method. Because of the origins of these techniques the process is infused with spiritual symbolism.
Even some of the terminology used to describe the various stages in the lengthy process harkens back to these origins. One step in the process is a garlic-laden breathing technique, called “the breath of God.” This sets the clay on which the gold leaf is placed. Sophia found that there was a meditative “letting-go to the process” that allowed the inherent beauty of the icon to flourish forward. People of many diverse backgrounds are attracted to the energetic ambience of the icons and have opened themselves to the influence of this art form.
As an Artist and Iconographer, Sophia Savalas returned often to her roots for inspiration using her sensory memories to stimulate her own creative expression. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, and many of her works have been selected for private and corporate collections.
Education Woven with Heritage
Sophia Savalas received training in San Francisco art schools during the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s. She continued schooling through San Jose City College, and further received a B.A. in Art and Psychology from University Without Walls in San Francisco, and a M.A. in Art and Psychology from Goddard College in 1982. She studied art with Vladislav Andreyev, a Russian Icon Master, and with the prominent San Jose, CA, artists Luis Gutierrez, Lynn and Harry Powers, and Gay Schy.
During her time of painting, Sophia also worked for twenty years as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Her experience as a therapist gave her a deep empathy for our human condition. Her paintings are infused with a sensitivity of color, shape, and heart that invite us not just to look but to go within and reflect.
Savalas’ self-study and training in art actually began as a child at her family’s farm compound on Long Island, N.Y. Sophia was a first generation Greek-American who was born into a family whose legacy of
theatre and poetry is centuries old.
Savalas believed our earliest memories and recollections of smells, sights, touches, sounds, and tastes shape and inspire our present experiences.
Her Uncle Theodore, who painted Byzantine icons in his art studio on this farm, played a pivotal role in Sophia’s beginning her life study in art. The Savalas clan of artists, bakers, thespians, and self-proclaimed philosophers encircled Theo’s studio. The smells of oil paint, myrrh, coffee, baked breads and pastries, Greek wine, cigars and garlic infused his studio.
The sounds of Greek America in the 1940’s encapsulated this moment in time. Stories rung upon stories, woven thick with jokes and classic mythology. All were orchestrated to be both reverent and raucous as the family strove to keep alive their heritage and eccentricities. Until school age, Savalas actually believed that all people, cultures, and races were the many-faceted tribes and descendants of Greeks.
Her comedic and thespian father, Dimitri, exhorted anyone who’d listen to accept that the true root source of this world and the universe was Greece. Because Greece is geographically small, he proclaimed, Greeks had to spread out to Asia, Africa, etc. All Creation Myths could, therefore, be traced to Mt. Olympus and the “Originals”. Thus, through Dimitri’s extreme creative license Savalas was given to see her world as multi-connected and cross-ethnic.
As her ancestors, grandfather and uncle, once used egg tempera and gold leaf, she also uses this ancient method in her smaller iconic work. In her panels and structures, Savalas works with mixed media of oil, collage, dry pigment, metals, plaster and found objects. The focus of her work is inspired and rooted in Greek Mythology as a source of her unique contemporary visual expression. Her paintings symbolically evoke the trials of the aspiring human soul in quest of a deeper understanding of life’s cycles, challenges, and mysteries.