Athens-based art director and painter Christie Photopoulou creates handmade greeting cards for the Maria Callas Museum gift shop, drawing the colours, atmosphere and feeling of the museum’s three opera rooms directly into one-of-a-kind acrylic mini paintings.
Christie Photopoulou was given access to the Maria Callas Museum in Athens after hours, alone. The museum has three rooms, each dedicated to an opera Callas performed: Tosca, Norma and La Traviata. Each room is an immersive environment, designed to evoke the atmosphere of the opera it houses, with distinct colour, light and mood.
“Visiting the museum for the first time after hours, all alone, made my initial contact with the subject and my inspiration process feel very unique,” she says. “I was able to be fully present in the space and take in the details and vibe of each room.”
What she made from that visit is a set of bespoke greeting cards, commissioned by the museum for sale exclusively at its gift shop. Each card is a one-of-a-kind acrylic painting on high-quality paper, produced by hand in her Athens studio under the name C33 Studio. The colours follow the rooms: Norma in deep greens, Tosca in reds and pinks, La Traviata in blue-green. The shapes and forms in each piece carry both the feeling of the space and a nod to the themes of the opera itself, abstract enough to carry atmosphere, specific enough to belong to their source.
C33 Studio greeting cards are designed as mini paintings, each with a perforated spine so they can be easily framed once their life as a greeting card is complete. The Maria Callas Museum commission is Photopoulou’s first mainstream commission and represents a first point of contact between her handmade practice and a wider audience. These cards can only be found in the museum gift shop in Athens.
Christie Photopoulou is an art director and painter based in Athens, working under the name C33 Studio. Her practice spans original paintings and greeting cards produced using acrylic on high-quality paper, driven by experimentation with colour, texture, form and white space.
Website: c33studio.com Instagram: @c33_studio
C33 Studio for the Maria Callas Museum, Athens. Handmade acrylic greeting cards, one of a kind. Exclusive to the Maria Callas Museum gift shop. All photographs: Christie Photopoulou.
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