My Current Job Is Being Partially Funded By A Grant From The National Endowment For The Arts. The Graphic

My current job is being partially funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The graphic novel I’m currently reading is funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts. Here’s what those budgets looks like in comparison to each other and to military spending.

US arts funding per person in 2014: 45¢ Canadian arts funding per person in 2014: $4.08

US military funding per person in 2014: $1,945 Canadian military funding per person in 2014: $455

The US government gave more money to the arts in 1979 when the population was 225 million than it does now when our population is 318 million. I wish things were different.

A Greek Record Store franchise bearing my Greek name, Ζαχαρίας (Zacharias). Athens. August, 2015.

Some stationary and an envelope I made when I was 23 that I took out to write my cousin a letter.

Last weekend my housemate and I drove an hour to West Michigan's Silver Lake Dunes. I'd never been to any of Michigan's sand dunes before and had no idea they would look so alien. Our journey to and from the lakefront was challenging. At times we had to climb over steep sand and ice on our hands and knees. Initially, the dunes themselves were tall and vast, like a snowy desert. Pressing on, we encountered barely rooted trees sticking out of the sand, then an intermediary landscape of frozen sand, and then slick, treacherous ridges made of large balls of ice fused together. I'd heard from someone that they were created by waves successively freezing on top of each other. Lake Michigan itself was just as bizarre as the other landscapes. The water had somehow frozen and broken into thousands of huge triangular shards. They looked like broken windows. If we listened quietly in the near silence we could hear the ice cracking.  My camera doesn't do well with low light, so the film didn't come out as clear as I'd hoped, but it's nice to have some kind of evidence of what it looked like before it begins to melt.

Zachary Trebellas. Sandwich/Sandoicchi. Mixed media scanogram. 2015.

This is the second piece of several I have planned focusing on the Japanese habits that have replaced my American ones. In this instance the custom of wrapping food or other objects in cloth has replaced wrapping lunch in plastic wrap.  —— This is part of the series I’m working on, Nippo Greco American, exploring my relationship with the three ethnic groups I in some way identify with.

Though I prefer the first photograph, I never felt quite right about the text placement, so I created a second version. This one reads stronger to me and is more similar visually to the version I made for Tokyo in the spring.

Zachary Trebellas. Ποιος θα μπορούσε να είμαι στη Θεσσαλονίκη; (Who could I be in Thessaloniki?). Text on 35mm photograph. 2015. In August I spent three weeks in Europe with my friend Shareen and my twin brother Miles. Ten of those days we spent traveling around Greece. As Greek-Americans, he and I were very curious to see the country we’d related to in various ways for our entire lives. As I expected, it was full of foreign and new experiences, but some familiar ones as well. I was happy to be able to see so much of the country and finally experience it first hand. At the same time, I knew ten days would be only a taste of Greek life. Like I did with Japan, I long to spend more time in Greece to get to know it as a place and culture, and to build my own Greek experiences and memories. I wonder when, down the road, I’ll be able to make that happen. Thessaloniki, Greece’s artistic capital and second city, is where I’d want to have that experience. I hope in the future I’m able to.

—— This piece is part of the series I’m working on, Nippo Greco American, exploring my relationship with the three ethnic groups I in some way identify with.