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This week’s interview is with Nikola Triantafillou and Christos Apostolopolous.
Nikki and Christos recently collaborated on two pieces exhibited at Scale Model Challenge, around the theme of the Holocaust and Theresienstadt camp. Models for which they were rewarded with golds in the master class
Lets here from them now:
Chris
All right, welcome Nikki and Christos to the Model Philosopher.
Nikki
Thank you. Chris, thank you for inviting us.
Christos
Thank you for the invitation.
Chris
We were talking before we started recording about how quite often it’s fun to prepare a big project for a show like Scale Model Challenge. And it’s something you might work on for months or even a whole year before you take it along. And I’m really interested in the sort of storyline of, of how that goes. Now when it’s one person doing it, that’s one thing.
But when two of you decide to collaborate, there’s obviously a lot of negotiation and discussion from the conception all the way through to the execution. So I wanted to kind of dig into that and find out what it’s like to work together with a friend on something a bit special for a show like this. So the project we’re to be talking about today is two pieces that you did for Scale Model Challenge. Before we get into sort of the storyline of how that happened, can you just tell us what the pieces are and give us a kind of description. Obviously, there’ll be photos put up with this show when it goes out.
Christos
The first piece was a scene from the Theresienstadt concentration camp, which was a camp dedicated to Czech Jews. It was called a “family camp”, and it had very different barracks and working times and all that stuff from other camps.
So it was me who, how to say… I want to find something different out of the box. And I saw a poem which was written by an inmate and decided to do it as a vignette because when I read it, it brought to me many strong feelings and emotions, And I said, “this is one thing that I would really like to do as a tribute to these people”. But when I started reading and searching about the Theresienstadt camp, I found out other interesting information, and I decided to do also a second scene because in that camp there were some people who were art professors, and they were elderly, and they decided to make some art classes for the children of the camp to keep them occupied during the labour hours. It was like a hidden school inside the camp which had the children paint whatever they wanted to do, like trees and animals and their houses and stuff. And I found a very nice painting from a small girl which had a field of grass and a butterfly.
I have a thing about butterflies and I thought that would be my second piece because I really wanted to do that. And I found also a picture that they have in the museum of Theresienstadt which is a suitcase monument.
It did inspire me to do the second scene. It was very, very strong. And I decided not to add an animal, an insect like a butterfly, but to draw the painting on one of the children’s suitcases.
Nikki
It was actually hand-painted on the showcase. And actually, that’s the second piece, a depiction of the actual monument. And we added this child figure which is painted in greyscale as you see. And that makes it a ghost actually.
Chris
So the two pieces are “Deliverance” and “Ghost of Terezin”. And this one is “Ghost of Terezin”.
Nikki
Yes.
Chris
Christos, it was your idea first, is that right?
Christos
Yes.
Chris
When did you decide to make it a collaboration?
Christos
Well, I have some skills in sculpting and building things, but my painting skills in figures are not so good. So when I decided that I would do such a thing, my first thought is that because I can’t paint really well, like in a figure contest or something, I would do that in black and white.
But since me and Nikki are very good friends, we are like brothers, and his skills are far better than mine, we decided to collaborate and give justice to that piece.
Chris
Even tonight, people obviously can’t see this, but rather than joining me from your separate homes, you join me from the same place. So it’s like, whenever I see you, the other one’s always there. How long have you known each other?
Nikki & Christos
hahahaha
Nikki
Yes. Many years. Many years, yes. It’s about… I was 15 or something and Chris was 18 or something.
Christos
20.
Nikki
Yeah, 20. So it’s about 30 years now.
Chris
Wow. And I take it, this is not the first collaboration.
Nikki
No, no. We have done some other works, but that was the first one that people saw in a show. We do make things for one another, know. Chris is building something for me or correcting something for me, a problem with a figure or something, and I do some minor painting for him. these two pieces were our first series of… equally shared, if you like, works.
Chris
Collaboration could be quite tricky. I’ve done it myself a bit in the past. I think unless you have a very good relationship and a very good understanding of what each is going to do, even on the small things where you just do a little bit for each other, then it can be problematic because particularly with competition, sometimes people can collaborate with someone, then when the piece is entered, it goes under one name and they feel like their work has been denied
But, it sounds like you have a very, sort of, easy relationship of how you manage that, that it’s just, you know what you can do each other and, you acknowledge each other’s contribution and everything else.
Nikki & Christos
Yeah. Yes.
Chris
It feels like painters usually take something that a sculptor has made and then make it their own by painting, or maybe some sort of modification, or something like that. With this one, was it planned from the beginning that you would both decide the form of it, before it was finished?
Nikki, did you have input to Christos about how you wanted it to look, or did you just kind of let him do it and then paint it?
Nikki
He had this solid idea about the figure and how it would stand on the bedside. It was more technical than I asked Chris to do for me. Because it is this rather hard to paint striped scheme on the figure.
You know, so there were some areas like the inner side of the trousers that it would be impossible for me to paint in a striped pattern if the legs were not separate. So Christos had to actually engineer his sculpting so that I can paint it and then, this comes together without a seam or something to amend.
Chris
You make that sound easy. It’s not right.
Nikki
Believe me, it wasn’t, but to us it was a very straight deal. “I need the legs to be like this. If you want me to paint them, I need them to be like this”. He said, “okay, I’ll do it”. And he made the legs separate. The fit was so accurate that we just put it together, painted and that was it. It didn’t need anything. It didn’t need anything. Yeah.
Chris
That’s very impressive. Did you, negotiate about the composition or Chris, was that pretty much your domain?
Nikki
We did some brainstorming and after watching our research pictures and stuff and reading the poem, we decided to do that particular scene because we had to show the yellow butterfly on the hand of the inmate, because the poem was all about a yellow bright butterfly. So the best way to do that was to make the inmate holding the butterfly on his hand. And we had to make the posture artistic so the viewer can understand what he sees and the whole thing is quite obvious, I think. The pose of the figure and the way it sits on the edge of the bed, was actually Chris’ solid idea right from the start. Where I came in was actually the angles, if you know what I mean, the angles that the viewer will be seeing the figure so that it helps the striped pattern because it can be dazzling from some angles. So I mostly came in as to how we do the whole scene, you know.
Chris
Yeah, I see what you mean. The lines would they tend to draw the eye in a certain direction. And if you don’t get it in exactly the right position, then it’s going to create a sort of subconscious visual confusion of the forms and what’s going on.
But also, something I really loved about it is the way that it’s very minimal that the two beds above the one he sat on are basically only supported by the ladder. So you’ve not got an excessive background in the piece. You know, the focus is very much on the inmate with his butterfly, but you still get the idea of this dormitory barracks, what have you. And, it’s really nicely done from that point of view as well, because it doesn’t distract at all from the main focus of the subject.
Nikki
And that was the idea about the jagged edge bass. If you notice, you will see that it is cut in a jagged pattern because we only wanted the eye to concentrate on the figure and the butterfly of course because it’s standing on his finger.
Chris
It’s quite a small figure, isn’t it, for a piece like this? Quite often people might go for 1/16th, 1/20th or a larger scale.
Nikki
It’s 54 mm. It’s a little bigger than 1/35 actually.
Personally, I don’t like bigger figures because they don’t give me the emotion or something. It’s very tricky to handle a big figure. You have to do many, many things to make it have life.
Because most figures are a little bit stiff, lifeless. It’s very difficult to animate it and get the result that you want. And it’s the same with painting, know, because as the scale gets bigger, you have to adjust your painting, especially the face. You have to adjust to the bigger scales. You know, some time back I went through the, actually, huge 1/6th scale and I was into it for about five years and I gained some experience painting big scale faces, and I found out that the traditional 1/35th or 54mm techniques, they actually didn’t fit the scale because as the scale grows bigger the light becomes more real, so you need to do less things. if we went for a bigger scale, let’s say 1/24th or even 1/16th, I would have to adjust my painting.
Chris
I actually kind of like smaller scales because I think and figure painters are going to write in, feel free to write in and tell me I’m terrible. But I kind of feel like at bigger scales, the paint, the piece and what people look for becomes about the painting and the technique and the skill and takes away from the story and the emotion and the character in a way. Because really, no matter how well painted a 54mm figure is, it’s still 54mm. There’s some things you’re not going to be able to see with the naked eye. So, what you’re focusing on is the overall impression of it and not so much look how good the iris is on that or, you know, the catch light here and stuff like that. So I think in a way for storytellers, smaller scales can be better.
Nikki
Yes.
Chris
What made you pick the Holocaust as a subject? You said it was the poem, but is this something that you wanted to look at before?
Christos
Mostly I get affected by several strange stories or sad events. And since I decided that I would not do any more tanks and all that stuff in dioramas and everything, I want to always to find the subject that has to say something to me. So, if this subject intrigues me I will give it a go. I like World War II stories, we read the personal diaries of people who fought in the war or were civilians in the war. We see every day many pictures and we chat, we send each other the pictures and we chat and we say, wouldn’t that be interesting to do in the future?
The theme that we will choose is the one that will give us the biggest impact in our emotional world. So in this time frame, it was that. So we decided that we will do that. You see, we… Lately, we are actually attracted and amazed byt he side story of the war because we are like we are military modelers we do we do we do move around conflict wars you know but we kind of like the side story of the war there you know the people side the human side of the war so this is where we
This is where we look for our inspiration. You know, the personal accounts, maybe the civilian side, the civilian side of the war. You know, you find so many strange and emotional stories if you look. The pictures, like a poem, in this instance. And this opened a new world of modelling for us.
Chris
I think modelers have a particularly narrow, strangely narrow view of war. Most modelers, military modelers, look at the technology. They rarely want to engage with the consequence of the technology. It’s just the technology looks cool.
And maybe there’s a few key battles everybody knows and you want to do a scene like Battle of the Bulge or Normandy or, know, something sort of the greatest hits of World War II. But there’s a huge amount of the war that modelers never touch on, including, unfortunately, the human dimension.
Nikki & Christos
Yeah
Nikki
But to be fair with people, these human stories of a war, whatever war, can sometimes get grim. And maybe this is quite a discomfort for some people, you know. You don’t easily depict a dead man on your diorama.
Chris
I think also there’s modelling is still largely based on kits and you know, there aren’t a lot of kits of civilians and things like that. MiniArt’s done a lot now, but you know, if you want someone selling cheese or rolling a barrel, they got you covered, but not so much, you know, some of the other things. I suppose for people that are used to building kits and choosing a project based on a kit they like, it’s just not ever going to come up because all the kits are tanks, planes, et cetera.
Why do you think World War II still is such a key conflict for modelers? mean, a lot’s happened since, since, you know, 80 years since, and yet still we return to the same war.
Christos
Yeah, it’s probably, from my point of view, it’s probably from the cool designs, from the colourful uniforms of soldiers on both sides. The technology, as you said, plays a big part in that. And also, I think those ferocious battles have many scenes to depict. It has been covered by lots of footage. So you have many things to intrigue you. You have books, have the propaganda reels, you have everything. The only thing is to find a small scene and just build it and put it on the base. So, it’s much easier, I think, for the modeler not exactly to imagine, but to get a snapshot of a documentary, for instance, and make it as a scene.
The problem for me is, and I think for quite a few modelers is that they don’t let their imagination to find something different, to make a scene with something else and not just copy a standard recipe and become something who can just pop up from the table. Because I think people that are copying recipes because major names in our hobby tend to do a scene, you can see that many people want to copy that in a percentage and do something similar to that. And they don’t let their imagination, their mind to go free and do the extra mile. And they are just, how to say, enclosed in a very small and narrow circle. They don’t expand their thoughts, their views.
Nikki
World War II is well supported by key companies. We all know that. So people do what they see, like Chris says. To me, there is another strong point for World War II, apart from the technology or the colourful patterns and all, there is this charm of the ultimate villain, know, something like Darth Vader. He’s the bad guy, but everybody loves Darth Vader. So, WWII… Now that the scars, the real scars are gone people rounded it in their minds and there is this big feeling that it’s attractive, you know. German tanks, German uniforms, all of these top sellers, always. Aren’t they?
Chris
It’s like in Star Wars, who looks the coolest? It’s the Imperials, right? But I think you’re on something there as well. I World War II culturally is kind of seen as the last war of good versus evil that was, you know, clean in that sense. There was a good guys and a bad guy. I think actually when you learn about it, I’m not going to say it wasn’t good versus evil because, you know, anyone that says, well, “the Nazis weren’t all bad”.
They really were! Definitely were very, very, very bad. But also there were motivations on the Western allies that weren’t always 100 % pure, like Britain largely fought it to preserve the empire and stuff as well as to defeat Nazism. So it was more complicated at the time, but over time, culturally, it’s become sort of rounded off so that it’s just good guys, bad guys, war against evil. We won, you know, a good war, basically.
Whereas war synths have all been a little bit more complicated. And I wonder whether it’s because we like a good story about good versus evil basically, and it’s a pretty good one.
Christos
Yeah, we don’t like to be in any political side or to glorify anyone because all we do is replicating history and
Nikki
that’s it.
Christos
That’s it .We want to make what makes us happy or what makes us express our emotions. So we don’t care about politics and stuff, it’s out of the question.
Nikki
Lately we have drifted around history and we have found some interesting stuff, the kind we were talking about before, the human side, I mean, both in World War I, of course, which is a little bit neglected. Even the Vietnam war which for most people is a brutal war with no feelings.
Chris
It’s a very complicated war, it? For people to, you know, for their people to individually kind of decide how they feel about it.
Nikki
Yeah. But we feel we do find some very interesting stuff and we will do some, we will have some works on other eras too. Personally, I have started looking at the mid-war period, and at both sides of the Atlantic and I actually dig up some very interesting stuff. Actually, I’m currently working on something from the mid-war period. But still, World War II remains our biggest pool of inspiration.
Chris
When I said World War II was good versus evil, I didn’t mean in a political sense. I mean, it’s a simple story for everyone to understand if you see what I mean. No one has any ambiguous feeling about it. It’s just good for modelling because there’s a lot of pre-knowledge people bring to looking at the models. So when you make a model, the model will be understood because everyone knows the subjects.
Nikki
It’s easier for people to understand.
Chris
To go back, I got off topic a little bit in asking you about that. Earlier I asked Chris what input Nikki had on the sculpting, but did you have input on the painting? How did that work?
Christos
No, I have a blind faith in Nikki’s talent, so I never interfere. haha
Nikki
Haha
Yeah, truth is I was given complete freedom to do as I like. Again, it’s a historical subject so some things are standard, like the striped pattern of the pyjamas of the uniform, let’s say, or even the bunks, were made out of a certain type of wood. So the wood had to be the right colour.
Christos
Yeah, and we found all the small details that every bunk had a number. The ladders were the way that we depicted them in the scene. We found what were the personal items that every man could carry with him. So no glasses, no jewellery, no watches, no paper, no pencils. It was only a spoon and a small pot for food and a blanket. And that was it for the labour guys.
Nikki
We were very careful with this because sometimes it is very easy and convenient to put a newspaper or a set of glasses just to fill a corner or an empty spot. But we were very careful. Someone might imagine that an inmate would have a book to read, but they were not allowed any books. Not even their glasses or a watch.
So this guy has just a spoon, a small cup for drinking and that was because this camp was again a special camp, in the original concentration and extermination camps, things were even worse.
Chris
that must present its own challenges in terms of competition and painting, this minimalism that there, you can’t use all the little tricks that modelers use to add interest or to draw the eye or this stuff. You know, it’s like there’s a set of rules and you have to stay within them because of the historical setting. What’s the trade off do you think between realism and… tweaking things for sort of more emotional visual impact. Do you always stay with realism, or do you sometimes just turn the things up a little bit?
Christos
Not 100%. I mean, we can tweak some things a little bit just in order to make a better reaction and stronger emotion. So we will stick to the historical period. Okay, but we can adjust the scene so it can bring out a stronger emotion.
Nikki
Actually, we are quite careful with historical detail, you know. We are very, very hesitant and very, very careful with deviations. But again, if we could say it with a percentage, let’s say 97%.
Chris
I was gonna say this one was pretty close, right?
Christos
Yes.
Chris
I mean, there’s the challenge of sculpting it. You can’t leave all these things out, but painting it also, there’s a lot of technically difficult things, potentially difficult things. Well, you’ve got to be good at painting wood for a start. White is not exactly an easy colour to handle, particularly next to black, which tends to suck any nuance out of it. So adding shade and folds and what have you in the uniform must’ve been very tricky on the white and on the black, but also that yellow as well.
You have to pitch that exactly right, that yellow to get the right level of kind of pop on it.
Nikki It is kind of tricky with all pattern schemes, know, even if you are trying to make a complicated camouflage scheme. But the striped pattern was challenging too because it tends to cover everything, you know, the folds of the trousers and the… It tends to cover everything.
Chris
patterns tend to flatten the form, don’t they? You lose all the sort of shape.
Nikki
Yeah, it flattens everything. If you see it painted with the basic colours, you wouldn’t be seeing a knee or an elbow. Just a long thing that goes down to the ground. So it has to be meticulously painted and shaded to show up. It was quite challenging. And I wasn’t very comfortable with it, even thinking of it. But when I started painting, it went fine.
Chris
That being said, the black and white on the child on the ghost of Terezin piece. That’s also not easy because everyone thinks, “yeah, it is. It’s just grays”. But it’s not just a black and white mixed and kind of varying the mix, is it? There’s a lot more in there. I mean, you can do that, but it doesn’t look it doesn’t feel right. So how difficult was that to do?
Nikki
It was quite difficult. And it was another thing that worried me a lot before we started the… before I started working on it. Actually, we even thought of painting the child as a living child, just to avoid the gray-scale painting. But again, I saw it as a challenge and it worked out.
It was difficult to do because as you said it’s not just mixing white with black. Greys have a widespread of warm and cold grey. So you have to stay true on one side. You either go with the warm greys or the cold greys. So it was tricky.
Again, for me it worked out finally and thankfully for the others too.
Chris
So how long did this project take you two to do?
Christos
Hmm It took me about two months to sculpt The figure and the bunk. About a week or so for the suitcases The child is a small miniature from Andrea Miniatures, which is the small child which was with Charlie Chaplin. (“the Kid and the Tramp” – SG-F79)
Chris
right. I thought it looked familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’m from. I mean, it’s a great tribute that I’ve seen that, and I didn’t place it because you’ve made it so much a part of this piece that I didn’t recall where it came from. If you see what I mean, you’ve made it into something completely different.
Christos
Yeah, it’s that little fellow. Yeah, that’s very nice of you to say. Because it was something that we really wanted to do. I mean, people not to recognize the figure, but to see the big picture.
Chris
Well, you certainly don’t want people thinking of Charlie Chaplin when they see that, if you see what I mean.
Christos
Yeah.
Chris
I think you did the right thing going for the black and white. If you painted it in sort of live natural colours, I’m not sure it would have communicated what you wanted it to communicate.
Nikki
Yeah, because actually it wouldn’t be realistic because this monument still exists today. And obviously it was made after the war, so a living child next to it would be kinda, you know, it wouldn’t be so time matching, period matching.
But a ghost tells the whole story.
Christos
Yeah, because the painting is also on the suitcase. So it doesn’t actually depict a butterfly, I mean, in real life. But it’s that small detail that connects the child with the suitcase monument.
Chris#
Well, it makes those two a pair, doesn’t it? Did you ever think about doing a third or was it always conceived as two?
Christos
No, think those two were from this theme were enough for me. I have a theme with butterflies because butterflies depict the transformation. Sometimes they are the harbinger of bad omens and death and stuff. And I like the whole game with…
with a butterfly as a meaning, not only as an insect. And that’s why I decided to make several scenes with butterflies, either in real life or allegorically. Because my first scene was from the war in Ukraine, and it was in the last year’s SMC.
It was a child’s toy. A duck with a coil under it. In a playground. Yeah, yeah, the one that you climb up as a child and shrink all over. And I read an article of a newspaper that said the Russians deployed butterfly mines in the Ukraine region among the civilians. So that was the first touch that I had and the first idea that I really wanted to do something with butterflies. So I did it.
For those who doesn’t know The butterfly mine is the PFM-1 mine, which was used mostly in Afghanistan and it had various colours just to attract mostly children, to pick them up and use them as a toy. And with all the consequences, as we can imagine. And then it was banned after Afghanistan.
by Christos Apostolopoulos
Chris
I think it’s canister deployed, isn’t it? And they scatter over a wide area. then, like you say, children pick them up or curious people pick them up wondering what it is and then they go off.
Christos
Yeah.
That was the first. It was “Butterflies in Winter”, and it was just a small piece of a playground with a duck toy and some butterfly mines on the band. That was the first piece that made me want to do the butterfly collection.
Chris
So what’s next? Are you two talking about next year’s project?
Christos
Yes. We have also individual but also common projects. We feel each other in things that one can do and the other can do easily. yeah, we think that probably we will have some impressive stuff.
Nikki
One is from late World War II and that’s all we can say for the time.
Chris
Don’t ruin it. As you I don’t know if you know, I do the “secret project” every year. I think it’s fun to bring something to the show that people didn’t know anything about.
I think something unfortunate about social media and the internet is, mean, kind of think of it as a Missing Lynx effect because of what used to happen at Missing Lynx and then Euromilitaire. In the months before, this is my Euromilitaire model, you get to the show and it’d like, I’ve seen it, it, seen it, seen it, it, on the internet. And it’s nice to go to a show and see things you’ve never seen before.
Christos
yes. It’s not only the surprise, it’s also, how to say, if people know it, they expect something from it. I don’t know. But if they don’t know it, it’s always, you know, who did this? it’s great. At least that works for us.
Chris
I like the idea of people not knowing who made it because usually you go, that’s so so did that so so did that. It’s nice to see something. And then you genuinely know whether you recognize that work, because if you see it, you’ve never seen it before. You think, that must be so and so is then they’ve got a style. But quite often, the styles aren’t as strong as people think. And it’s fun to match it up for fun to find out who made it.
Christos
Yes, yes, of course.
But style has a very big part in the… Even in the way the scene or the things are put on the bass, it can give you a hint about who is the maker of that.
Chris
Do find it hard to come up with an idea that you both like or is it generally pretty easy if you’ve got similar kind of interests?
Christos
We have our differences but..
Nikki
But it’s kind of easy.
Christos
Yeah, it’s kind of easy. It’s kind of easy.
Nikki
“I always say we will do this, and period”. Hahah
It’s that easy, yeah, you see? With democratic procedure.
Chris
Well that’s easier. The dictator system is a very effective system.
Christos
We always discuss things and we make a list and then we revisit it.
Nikki
Yes.
Christos
We try to find the most intriguing pieces to do. It’s not that we do it for gaining a prize or something in the contest.
To tell you the truth, at least for me, I have no vanity at all. mean, okay, if I get a prize, it’s fine. If I don’t get a prize, I don’t care. I go for the fun of it. I go to meet people like you and all the other guys that I can’t see up close during the whole year.
I don’t demote the competition.
Okay, it’s a competition and someone has to win or lose. And of course everybody wants to win. So we want to make, let’s say, our personal history that people can recognize us not from the prizes that we get from contests, but from the things that we bring every year.
Nikki
We try them to be special, you know. That’s it. That’s it.
Chris
don’t know about you, apart from a few Best of Shows, I don’t remember years later when I look at a model I loved, whether it won a medal or not. No one remembers what it won in a contest, but you remember those really special pieces that people made.
It’s the piece you remember, not the award it got.
Nikki
Not the award. Yes. That’s the idea.
Chris
Also, I think, can you be truly creative when you’re building to win awards? The motivation surely has to be the idea and the desire to make that story.
Nikki
Absolutely. That’s why all those things are above any better.
Chris
I mean the medals are great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not why you make it.
Nikki
And that’s why we attend the contest, actually. We could just put it on display if we just wanted to show it. it’s not made for this. It’s not made for the award. It’s made for the fun of it and for the statement of it. And the award comes if it comes.
Chris
And it’s fun if it does.
But the award isn’t gonna make you go to the bench and make something. #
Christos
No, no, no. We will do it anyway. We will do it anyway. yeah.
Nikki
We will do it anyway. We actually share the same aesthetic. So it’s not very hard for us to find something to negotiate, you know? And most of the times we end up with the idea we started, but we just change some bits of it, trying to make it more attractive to the viewer. And that’s it. Most of the times it works.
Chris
I find working on mine, there’s a couple of guys I show my work to and I might have to start bothering you and showing you as well to get your opinion. But you show it to people, you know, you’ve got a good solid idea, it’s going well, but you show it to someone and they’ll say, “yeah, but if you just turn it 10 degrees that way, it’s going to improve it”. And it’s that kind of how you talk when you’re working on the project together. You say, “look, it’s going great, but if we just tweak this, it will be even better.”
Nikki
Yeah, exactly. And that actually happened with the deliverance vignette, because as I told you, was all about the angles. We had a lot of discussion about it and the shape of the ground.
Chris
It’s a deceptively simple thing. People look at it think they get it immediately, but there’s a lot of small things you did to it to make it work as well as it does.
And that’s the tricky part, I guess, finding the angles, finding the right pose, maybe tweaking that slightly and that shape on the bottom and everything else. All those little things people don’t notice, but that’s what makes it work.
”
Christos
Yeah, we had to make some dummy bed and mock-up figure just to put in the angles and take pictures of it and see what we were mostly like. So in a way it worked.
Chris
All right, so it’s getting very late where you are. And I wanna thank you both for talking to me about this. It must be nearly 11 p.m., something like that, where you are.
I know as well you were work quite late, so you came home, ate something very quick and then got on the phone with me. So thank you both very much for joining me and I hope we can do this again soon.
Nikki & Christos
Anytime you like. Anytime you like. Thank you very much for the invitation. We thank you very much, Chris. It was a pleasure and an honor.
Chris
Now, it’s been a huge pleasure for me. And as I said, I’ll be bothering you a lot on Messenger and things asking you questions after this as well, I’m sure, getting your advice.
Nikki & Christos
Anytime. Anytime.
Chris
Now if people want to find your work, where can they find you?
Nikki
Our Facebook profiles are full of works, we both keep them on the modelling side. You won’t see too much of our weekend or our holidays with our families.
Christos
Only me, I’m a little bit, you know, with metal concerts and stuff.
Nikki
But again, it’s about modelling. So, the easiest thing is just to take a look at profiles.
Chris
All right, I’ll put links to both in the show notes on the podcast and also on the blog. Don’t forget there’s a blog version of this will be out as well with a transcript, including photos of both your work. I’ll put up the two pieces we talked about. And if you could send me some more photos of your other stuff as well, we’ll get those up for people to look at and and link to all your socials on that as well. So thank you both very much. And take care.
You can find Christos and his work on Facebook HERE
You can find Nikki and his work on Facebook HERE
I love talking to these guys and its always an absolute joy to meet them at shows. Their close relationship is something very apparent when you meet them and their smiles and enthusiasm are matched only by their great skills in model making, and deft abilities to evoke emotion and connect with the viewer.
This subject is one increasingly covered, it seems, in modelling, as modellers start to become more interested in confronting the darker side of war. It is a difficult subject to do well. Of course, modellers should see to avoid sensationalism, and pretty much everyone does so, but in order to hit right, a piece has to be very carefully made to say it well, and avoid the obvious and banal. At times like this, thought is more important to the project than the physical component of making and painting it, and deep research and planning can be vital to evolving a piece that hits the right notes in the right way.
A piece that recently caught my eye in another aspect of war, is “Der Krieg” by Jason Whitman.
Jason has taken inspiration from the triptych alterpeace of the same name by Otto Dix
Der Krieg, by Jason Whitman
Der Krieg, by Jason Whitman
Dix served in the german army in WWI for the entirety of the war, serving in Field Artillery, and machine gun units in the Battle of the Somme, Russia, and the spring offensive in Flanders of 1918. He saw a lot in his war, and it came out in his painting between the wars. Der Krieg is essentially an allegory of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ seen as the stations of the cross on the left, with a callow german soldier marching to the front, the crucifixion in the centre, with the mud and blood and carnage of the trenches, and the resurrection on the right, with a pale ghostly figure lifting a comrade out of the mud, death and corruption.
Although Jason’s piece compresses two of these scenes and dispenses with the religious imagery and allegory, it does not hold back from the horror and viscera of Dix’s painting. Jason has the callow soldier marching to the front, past the corpses and carnage of his predecessors. His clean uniform, erect correct march, and unmarked body contrast shockingly with the torn bullet ridden bodies and spilling organs of the comrades below him.
Jason has not copied the piece directly, arguably he has changed the meaning and focus of the images he has referenced, but he has borrowed art’s confrontation and emotional punch in a way modellers usually shy away from, and in doing so, has connected better with art than many modellers, and avoided the clichés and banality that can come from saying something well known in an overly familiar way.
In a different way, Christos and Nikki avoided the oft-repeated images of the wire and the railway car that modellers often use to evoke the holocaust and found smaller, intensely personal images to tell their stories. The butterfly on the inmates finger represents a freedom the prisoner can never have under the Nazi oppressors and murderers, and at the same time it represents the eternal soul, free of the bonds of earth and this life.
In Ghosts of Terezin we have the heartbreaking image of a child sat with the luggage, as if he is about to go on what will be the last journey of his short young life, which we know was cruelly cut so short by the inhuman crimes of his murderers.
Of course, it is not the purpose of modelling to take on these very heavy subjects, but if we choose to do so, we really need to find ways to avoid the obvious and often repeated, and to find new and emotionally engaging ways to connect the story to the viewer.
Before I finish this blog, I’d like to present the poem Christos and Nikki referenced in their piece
The Butterfly by Pavel Friedmann (1942)
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing
against a white stone…
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly ‘way up high.
It went away I’m sure because it wished
to kiss the world goodbye.
For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don’t live in here,
In the ghetto.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Model Philosopher. If you would like to support the show, you can do so at patreon.com/themodelphilosopher, and I would like to thank all those that support the show every month.
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Thank you for giving me and my guests your time, and take care
Thank you all three for sharing this very interesting and inspiring conversation!