March 24-End of April 2004
Educational Section-Workroom of Fine Arts
Works by the students of the 2003-2004 period
Art Space “8”, 8 Chimaras St., Rethymnon
Rethymnon, March 23, 2004


Upon the coming of spring, the children celebrated their creations at the Art Spacee “8” of the Centre of Contemporary Art of Rethymnon (now Contemporary Art Museum of Crete). They are the terrific little ones who know who Miro and Zogolopoulos are and can identify works through shapes and colours as well as create the sky with the stars, reducing it to their size and space, judge, compare and build two or three-dimensional plastic principles.

They were the permanent students who followed the Art Workshops of the Centre of Contemporary Art of Rethymnon. They were the artists who are presenting now and until the end of April  at the Art Space “8” (8 Chimaras St.) works made from various materials, people, gardens, cities, architectural parts, theatres, actors, may wreaths, compositions with mixed materials, entirely their own sensations and feelings.

It was a year’s work registered in exercises-games through which the children perceived the colours and the value of each, their identity, light and its unique ability to intervene and give subsistence to colour, the shapes, the volumes and their vacuities, the courses which can make a point become line, the circle, the rhythm, the cat, the bird, man, pleasure. There were many stimuli.

Since its creation, the Centre of Contemporary Artn of Rethymnon, considered art education a matter of primary importance. Its productions had as a guideline the relationship between the child and the work, are accompanied by special guided tours and educational programs which are addressed to all the children in the city who either come to the exhibitions venues accompanied by their teachers or by their parents. Seminars are regularly organized for this purpose for the elementary school teachers as well as conferences of art education either in collaboration with the Pedagogical Department of the University of Crete or with foreign institutions with similar interests. At the same time, events and happenings are organized which explore art issues touching on social behaviour issues as well.

The event “Painting the Sea” taught the children of Rethymnon how to handle colour as well as how much garbage is accumulated on the beaches. The wish trees (greatly helped children and young people express their wishes last September) or the work “Garbage” which was erected on the Venetian harbour from all the thrown away boxes and papers in an attempt to clean the area.

The exhibition included videos and photos of various events, the children’s work occasioned by exhibitions and games which took place, solving riddles (i.e. the history of engraving through the material of the exhibition by the same name).

The centre does not aspire to produce artists but citizens with aesthetic education, knowledge and opinion on art, receivers and collaborators in what we call CULTURE.

The works of the children, the young people and the adults were organized in the units in which they worked, such as ”The Labyrinth and the Scriptures”, “With soil and Water” in the Pottery lessons (Voula Gounela-Frosso Bora), “My city”, “Painting one another”, “Disguises”, “I write nature” in the painting lessons, of installations, of mixed materials, of engraving (Konstantinos Kalfountzos, Chrysoula Karadaki, Amalia Peraki, Yiannis Stefanakis, Kostas Christidis).