Arts Crafts Architecture Design Residency Lesvos Greece

HERMITAGE SYKAMINEA

CREATIVE COUNTRYSIDE

Andreas Sell is the founder and operator of the Hermitage Sykaminea. The last two summer programs gave rise to the Lesvos Wool and Hermitage Sykaminea Gathering initiatives. Together with Julie Loi, Sell started the wool project in 2020 and organised the Hermitage Sykaminea Gathering in 2022 with EJ William, Eirini Tiniakou and Walter Götsch. In 2023, the residency program of the Hermitage Sykaminea began, for which groups can apply annually with project proposals on the theme of ecology.

The Hermitage is in the north of Lesvos on one of the slopes of Mount Lepetimnos, with view over the sea till Turkey. It is located in an olive grove, two kilometers away from the village Sykaminea.

Lesvos is one of the easternmost North-East Aegean Islands and lies very close to the Turkish coast. This volcanic island rises nearly 1000 meters above sea level at some points. Mountains dominate the island. Almost half of the island are hills with olive and fruit trees. Forests, mostly with Mediterranean pines, oaks and walnut trees, cover about 20% of the surface.

In the east of the island there is a long tradition in growing olives. Along the hills there are terraces forming the base for olive groves in which you find many sheep. Olives and sheep are what farmers cultivate in the region since thousand of years.

The Hermitage Sykaminea Residency provides space for creative work in the north of the island of Lesvos. Residencies of two or three months are offered from April to May and October to November for groups applying with a specific proposal. Applications are accepted from groups of up to eight people from the fields of craft, design, architecture and visual arts. It is welcomed if the work project is related to an ecological theme and has a link to the island of Lesvos, but this is not obligatory. Applications will be reviewed by a jury. Once the application has been selected, the Hermitage Sykaminea will seek funding for the residency. After successful funding of the residency, the selected group receives an application commitment. The group will receive a grant consisting of travel expenses, a daily allowance and accommodation. The scholarship holders are responsible for their own food, mobility on the island and work materials.

The application process 2023 is closed.

Next application period: 01.05. - 31.05.2024

Application deadline: 31.05.2024, 23:59 EET

Applications by e-mail to:

info@hermitage-sykaminea.org

Application documents:

- Individual CV for each group member (max. 2 DIN A4 pages in PDF

format)

- Project description (max. 2 DIN A4 pages in PDF format)

- Portfolio (max. 10 DIN A4 pages in PDF format)

- Indication of the group's website (if available)

- Indication of the desired period of stay between April-May and

October-November

Only submissions of applications that are complete will be reviewed. All applicants will receive a notification with the result of their applications by 31.12.2024 (approximately).

Creative Countryside e. V. is a non-profit association that supports the Hermitage Sykaminea. The association promotes German-Greek cultural exchange and ecological projects on the island of Lesvos with a focus on sheep's wool processing. The board of the association is Orkun Akdag and Ines Schönauer. The Hermitage Sykaminea is an artist residency and a hub for the development of new social forms and ecological developments.

Creative Countryside e.V. was founded in 2022 and has so far been financed by the association members' own funds. From 2023, the association will acquire additional funding to finance stays of international project groups at the Hermitage Sykaminea. The association uses donations to pay for travel, material and subsistence costs for the project groups, as well as publications resulting from the stays, and thus promotes cultural exchange.

Please contact us if you would like to support the work of Creative Countryside e. V. with a donation. You will receive a donation receipt on request.

Thank you very much for your support!

2024

January - March: Winter break

April: HS-Spring Fellowship Program (not confirmed yet)

May - September: Rental season - Book your holiday!

E-mail to: info@hermitage-sykaminea.org

17. - 31. August: Ambidexter Artist Residency

October: HS-Autumn Fellowship Program (not confirmed yet)

November - December: Manufacturing of wool and clay objects , olive harvest

There are 8 bed sleeping places. In addition, other guests can camp in the olive grove. The Hermitage can be rented either as a whole or just the one building (cabin) for two people or the other area with a three bedroom building and the pergola with kitchen living room and bathroom for six people.

The easiest way to make a booking request is directly at our email address info(at)hermitage-sykaminea.org. We will then send you a booking confirmation by email.

The current occupancy is marked in grey in this calendar.

Prices

Minimum stay 7 days.

Between May and October the price is 150€ plus 15% tax per night for the whole place. The cabin for two persons is 50€ + 15% tax per night and for the pergola and sleeping house for six people the charge is 110€ + 15% tax per night. For camping there is an extra charge of 15€ per person. The final cleaning costs are 140€ for the whole place, for the cabin 70€ and the pergola with sleeping house 100€. The deposit is 500€. It is payable together with the rent two weeks before arrival.

Accommodation

- two double bedrooms, each with a double bed mattress

- one room with two single beds

- one house with two single beds and kitchen

- one bathroom

- a pergola with kitchen and communal lounge

The Hermitage Sykaminea offers felting courses for holiday groups. In a one-week course, participants learn the basics of wet felting. Groups of 4-8 people can gain an insight into the craft of washing, picking, carding and felting, after which each participant can take home the felt object they have made.

The following prices apply to the course

Course fee per participant and for a 7-day course:

180€ plus material fee from 30€ depending on the project

Customised courses

We are also happy to organise courses with a different time frame.

Many things are possible, please contact us!

In summer 2020 and 2021, the Hermitage initiated summer programs. Almost 30 artists, architects, musicians, designers, curators and photographers spent time at the Hermitage to work together and alone on projects of their own choosing. Workshops, concerts, discussions, excursions, film screenings, craft and artistic work took place. New collaborations and projects have emerged from the summer programs.

These programs gave rise to the establishment of an artist residency, which received its first group in 2023.

Summer Program 2020

Summer Program 2021

Hermitage Sykaminea Gathering 2022

Autumn Residency 2023

SLEEPING UNITS

HERMITAGE SYKAMINEA

Design: Andreas Sell

Construction drawing: Jens Kühnel

Building permit: Estela Stavrinou

Construction coordination: Jens Kühnel

Seven years after the first timber house, the second one was built in the Hermitage. The design and construction of the building is based on the first house. Here, too, the roof pitch is adapted to the slope and the wooden façade is aligned horizontally. One difference to the first building is that this one stands on pillars that rise two metres above the ground. This created an open space below the wooden construction that provides shade in summer. The use is also different. The house is purely a sleeping house, consisting of three small bedrooms. Together with the pergola, which consists of a kitchen, a living room and two bathrooms, the building forms one unit.

INSTAGRAM

VIEW ON MAP

Felting courses 2024

Gathering point for crafts,

architecture, design and arts

The Hermitage Sykaminea is situated in an olive grove on the slope of Mount Lepetymnos on the island of Lesvos, GREECE. It was founded in 2016 as place for retreat. Between 2020-22 IT has been restructured. It became a gathering point for crafts, architecture, design and arts. In addition to offering the space to groups over the summer months, the Hermitage initiates workshops and seminars in collaboration with partners. Over the winter months utilitarian objects from wood, wool and ceramics are manufactured.

PERGOLA

HERMITAGE SYKAMINEA

Design: Andreas Sell

Construction drawing: Olivier Maarschalk

Building permit: Estela Stavrinou

Realisation: Andreas Sell, construction team Dimitris Grigoriou

Helpers: Thodoris Dimitropoulos, Marco Pinarelli, Casey Ramar

The basis for the first sketches for the pergola was a conversation with the architect Dimitris Theodoropoulos. He described a feeling he sometimes has when walking through space:

„I am thinking of the human and the body as a convergence of lines-borders leaving areas, sovereignities and identities to either sides of the lines. So this very special „knot“ of converging borders makes each individual a place where different forces pass through.“

Applied to the construction of a space, the posts and connections of the pergola could be the lines and knots that Theodoropoulos speaks of in an abstract way.

The first sketches for the pergola result from this conversation and involve Sell´s own experience of straightness and curvature. There is no 90 degree angle in the wooden construction and the wall, floor and roof surfaces do not form a straight line but are curved.

In the course of the design process, the drawings changed a lot. On the one hand, the local conditions, the legal regulations and the feasibility were decisive for this. In collaboration with the designer for wooden structures Olivier Maarschalk, the construction drawings for the supporting structure of the pergola were converted.

After the engineer Estela Stavrinou had obtained permission from the building authority to build the pergola, the construction team Dimitris Grigoriou poured the ground slab and with the help of Thodoris Dimitropoulos, Marco Pinarelli and Casey Ramar the wooden structure was built.

MAP

SLEEPING UNITS

HERMITAGE SYKAMINEA

Design: Andreas Sell

Construction drawing: Jens Kühnel

Building permit: Estela Stavrinou

Construction coordination: Jens Kühnel

The Hermitage Sykaminea is situated in a terraced olive grove. The steep slope creates a large difference in height between the terraces. To avoid having to climb up and down walls, different staircases between the terraces were designed and built.

Wolfram Sinapius designed a staircase made of stone, wood and metal wire, which is easy to build and for which the stones available in the olive grove can be used. Wolfram's staircase became the most built staircase in the Hermitage.

In the Hermitage Sykaminea, utilitarian objects are produced. So far these are wooden chairs, ceramic lamps, felt trivets and wooden blankets and cushions. The special thing about these objects is that they were largely created in collaboration and there was no prior design, but the form was determined during the making.

Likewise, olives are harvested every year at the Hermitage Sykaminea and oil is made from them.

In the future, a grey water reed bed system will be installed for the waste water from the kitchen in the pergola. The basic principle for the Hermitage is that only completely degradable cleaning products are used. The reed beds on the terraces below the pergola will then be used to further purify the water. The construction of the systems is planned for next year. Helpers are very welcome!

Send us an e-mail

and order your furniture

Chairs, benches and high desks made from simple wooden slats and boards.

The origin of furniture making in the Hermitage was to make use of wood scraps. This is how the first objects were made. Later on, more attention was paid to the comfort and furnitures were developed that were comfortable in their simplest construction. The already used material, which finds its new purpose in the furniture, and the simple construction gives the appliance a rough, almost brutal character and in this way creates its own style.

Furnitures can be made specifically for your living space on request. For specifications on the shown furnitures send us an e-mail.

Ceramics is another material used in the Hermitage. So far we have specialised in lamps.

The design of the lamps is characterised by the handicraft process. The lamps are not designed in advance, but their shape is created during the production process.

In the production of ceramic lamps, cracks are provoked, either in the modelling stage or during firing. A broken lamp is either glued during the working process, so that a visible crack remains, or the shards give rise to a new form of the lamp. The broken ceramics challenge us to think anew in the working process and in this way to create a new and unplanned form. The crack that remains in the ceramic refers to this and at the same time to the transience of the object.

The construction of the pottery follows the Korean Onggi technique and the crack in the pottery already found its origins in the Japanese Kintsugi technique.

By now the lamps are fired in a pottery shop in the neighbouring village of Mantamados. In future, a low tech kiln will be constructed and used for the firing.

PRODUCTION - SALES

There are about 60 olive trees in the Hermitage Sykaminea. A rather small olive grove, where the olive harvest takes place every year between November and January. According to the year, there is more or less oil, which will be available from end of this year.

Two years ago we started working with wool at the Hermitage. Since then, we have tried out a lot with the material and also thought about what the manufacturing of wool products could look like on the scale of a small business. Last autumn we launched our first collection of handmade felt trivets which is available for purchase.

The trivets shown vary in size between 30cm (l) x 30cm (w) and 60cm (l) x 40cm (w). On request, trivets with specific dimensions can be made. Available from 20€.

Send us an e-mail

and order your trivet

It is the aim to revalue wool by buying raw wool from farmers in the area of Sykaminea and producing ecological products from it. In this way we plan to bring traditional processing methods into a contemporary environment and revive the small-medium business of wool on the island. Sustainability and ecology are the basis for high quality products.

In the coming autumn, the manufacture of a limited collection of woollen blankets and cushions will start. More about that soon on this website!

Lamp Shade (Ceramic)

33cm (l) x 24cm (w) x 31cm (h), fine red clay, transparent varnish

200,-€

Send us an e-mail and order your lamp

Wall Lamp (Ceramic - Wood)

35cm (l) x 17cm (w) x 50cm (h), fine white clay, white engobe, wood slats

1500,-€

This first prototype is modelled in fine white clay and inlaid with white engobe. The wooden part of the lamp is made of slats and deliberately simple. The two light boxes of the luminaire are reminiscent of buildings with colored light shining out of their windows. lt overlaps on the white surfaces, creating color gradients.

Send us an e-mail and order your lamp

Table Floor Lamp (Ceramic)

31cm (l) x 24cm (w) x 33cm (h), fine red clay, granite brown glaze

250,-€

Send us an e-mail and order your lamp

Table Floor Lamp (Ceramic - Wood), comes together with a wooden stand

27cm (l) x 21cm (w) x 53cm (h), fine red clay, granite brown glaze

500,-€

Send us an e-mail and order your lamp

Lamp with candle / warm object

45cm (l) x 22cm (w) x 30cm (h), fine gray clay, transparent, glossy glaze

500,-€

This object is from the series "In the forest". It reproduces an organic shape and surface, reminiscent of a root or a strange animal. The candle inside the object warms the clay so that the whole object is warm.

Send us an e-mail and order your lamp