Female figures in a heartbreaking, silent plea. Two swans court, shaking their tanned tender necks. A woman’s face contorted with unspeakable pain. The black horse is looking at the sea. On warm August evenings this year, on the coastal road where the heart of Psaropuli in Evia beats, a leisurely walk of holidaymakers found an unexpected starting point: an open exhibition of wooden sculptures by the self-taught sculptor Antonis Morfoglou, dedicated to which he used burnt olives as raw material from a fire last summer. About 20 works became the connective tissue that connected destruction with creation and life with art, a reminder and at the same time an exit, a tribute and a pilgrimage, a reminder and an underscore.

Every night it was impossible not to stop, look again, notice new details, remember. Mr. Antonis is there to talk to visitors to explain. He was not in the village during the days of the fire. When he returned, he recalls, he began to roam the scorched lands. It was in these wanderings that the need for this exhibition was born. He began cutting and transporting wood to his workshop. One year he worked on them with an axe, an axe, a saw and a chisel. The fire was already sculpting shapes and outlines, “there was an aesthetic effect arising from the destruction itself, my own intervention was little. The big picture was already there, in front of me, if I tried to change it, I would destroy it, ”he admits. He tells me passionately about this work of his, which he regards as the most representative of his nearly thirty years of stone work—his outdoor work exists in Santorini, Sifnos, Gia, Mytilini, Mani, and elsewhere.

He got acquainted with stone carving in the late 80s. The reason was a trip to Tinos, where he visited the house of Giannoulis Halepas. He ended up staying there for a month. He slept in an old car and worked day and night. He has lived permanently in Vasilika since 2014, where he also has his own workshop, where he is now preparing his new works, the theme of which will be birds.