Michel Welt and Roos Vinck are two artists from Groningen in the north of the Netherlands. When they have time off from work, they travel the world, sleep in their van, and leave their mark with large-scale murals, also known as graffiti. Their latest creation now adorns the walls of the 1st Comprehensive Secondary School. Chalandriou and is called the “tree of wisdom.”

“Our friend Jack Lack recently created a mural in Athens and told us it was a great city for street art. We had already crossed Europe and thought that Athens would be our final destination. We had never been there before and we wanted to see the old Greek culture and the new street art scene,” Michele Welt tells APE-MPE about how the wandering began, which eventually led them to high school in Chalandri. He is a graduate of the Minerva Academy in Groningen with a degree in Autonomous Visual Art and, according to him, his style is “a mixture of street art and modern with motifs and natural elements”, which is reflected in paintings, posters and murals.

Roos Vinck, the other half of the artistic duo, grew up “near the forest of dreams and with many dreams in my head, in the northern part of the Netherlands, in Emmen”, and also studied at the Minerva Art Academy. The two creators contacted the Awesome Athens Experiences team who organized the 1st Street Art Festival in October and that is how they arrived in Chalandri, where many schools now have art on the walls as part of their complete renovation. “It was a fantastic experience,” Roos Vink tells APE-MPE, adding, “We are very happy that the school had the courage to give us the opportunity to make such a large mural. And they gave us complete freedom to draw whatever we wanted.”

Hymn of joy and bliss

The work, as the artists themselves explained, is “a hymn of joy and bliss”, which is expressed through the orange tree and its fruits depicted on the mural, as well as in the surroundings of the school. Orange flowers are symbols of love and have also been called the fruits of the gods or golden apples. In addition, the central place in the graffiti is occupied by a young woman surrounded by an orange tree as something precious, with a hint on the part of the artists that “nature works therapeutically in the soul of people” and a reminder of the need to protect it, “both in Greece and in the planet as a whole.” Commenting on the mural, Chalandrio Mayor Simos Roussos noted that “in times hostile to youth and the needs of the times, our absolute priority is to improve the conditions and environment in which our children live and learn.”

As Michel Welt explains, “it’s too cold in the Netherlands right now to paint outside, so the beautiful weather was another reason to come,” adding that the municipality of Chalandri took them in, offered a crane, materials, and a huge painting wall. . “We have added 260 square meters of art and we hope this will have a positive impact. We tried to mix different techniques and styles so that everyone has something to see. We hope to inspire children. If this was our high school, we would love it,” says Roos Vink. In fact, “the reaction from the people in the neighborhood was very positive. They brought us coffee and a handmade cake,” she says, and concludes that “street art is an extremely important art movement of our time.”

Source: APE/MPE.