Lady Demeter, giver of splendid gifts*

Practical workshop for the building of a traditional oven, with V. Leac

Saturday, 1 April 2023, 11 am – 6 pm

The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, Siliștea Snagovului

A traditional oven in the garden is a place to celebrate the harvest, the beginning and end of seasons (as unpredictable as they have become), to gather people around its fire and fresh smell of baking bread, to provide food, stories and shelter.

Manufactured at the Station from bricks, clay and crashed glass, Demeter is the sister of Grandpa Asimov, the oven that V. Leac built in 2016 in the Tranzit Garden in Bucharest. A poet, a gardener, a cosmic imaginer and a craftsman, Leac is now invoking the ancient goddess of the crops and the grains, merging her benevolence with the texture of materials that are coming also from the earth, inviting us to see the oven as a place of collective nourishment and gratitude.

We invite you to take part to the construction of Demeter, so that you can later on enjoy her gifts.

The workshop is organised in the frame of the project ABC – Architecture, Biodiversity, Culture. Building ecological institutions for culture. ABC is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

*Quote from the “Homeric Hymn to Demeter”. Translated by Gregory Nagy