Ouzo Series

Columbus, Ohio

Tasked with representing a natural phenomenon in a series of two-dimensional drawings, I chose to study the effect of ouzo when water is introduced — a tribute to Greece, a country where I lived for years. The drawings use hundreds of thousands of tiny, uniformly sized circles, none overlapping, to trace the movement of microscopic anise oil droplets suspended in ouzo.

When water is added, the anise droplets scatter and the liquid turns cloudy. Each drawing maps a moment in that dispersion, with negative space representing the water. For Hellas, I arranged the circles in Rhino to form a map of Greece's modern borders, then rastered them onto butterboard with a laser cutter.

The piece was framed and gifted to my dissertation advisor. It now hangs in his office in the History Department at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

Pictured: Hellas, Ouzo Series, 2022, laser-cut butterboard, 32 × 40 in. Photo taken at the fabrication lab.