Head of Thalia in Tiffany Blue, 2022

Tiffany’s Landmark Building, High Jewelry

I’m hoping you can see the catalog named “George Petrides: Recent Work 2019-2021” which has a Tiffany blue cover with a photo of a clay head. That is the predecessor of your piece! I made that clay head by hand, then fired the clay in a kiln, and at the time of the photo she was heading to a Greek foundry to be cast in bronze. Through Peter Marino’s recommendation and acceptance by Tiffany executives - all of whom I thank warmly  - she got cast in bronze and found her way to your 7th floor!

Let me go back in time: as you can see in that catalog, I did smaller figures, palm sized heads, and lifesize heads of family. In 2021, I decided to explore making larger heads, over lifesize, male and female. As a student of sculptural masterworks, I chose a head by Auguste Rodin from The Burghers of Calais as a starting point for the male and Thalia, a Roman marble copy of an earlier Greek sculpture, at the Musei Vaticani, for the female.  I started by copying the female head in clay - you can see me working on her on page 16 of the catalog. Then the piece started transforming itself - without my conscious effort - into my Mother as depicted in a black/white photograph from Athens, Greece around 1950, after the Nazi Occupation and Greek Civil War, when she was about age 20. Looking at the finished Head of Thalia she said "It brings me back to a simpler time, when I was with my cousin in the garden of my aunt's home in Athens. She and I were talking about what the future might bring us".

After making your head in bronze, I kept working on the piece, enlarging the head and adding a bust below the neck. She became one of six Hellenic Heads, an exhibition traveling around the world to 8 cities, now at the National Hellenic Museum, Chicago through January 2024. Big Sister Thalia will then travel to Venice to be shown alongside the Biennale Arte 2024, a 5 minute walk from the Arsenale, from April to November 2024.