An Interview with Maria Karametou

Maria Karametou, a first-generation immigrant to the US from Athens, Greece, is a visual artist, writer, curator, and professor whose mixed media works have been exhibited internationally in numerous museum and gallery shows that, aside from the US, include Germany, Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, China, and Korea, among other countries. They are also in various museum, private, and public collections, including at the Holter Museum, Helena, MT; The Vorres Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; the Freddie Mac Corporation; the Inova Hospital Group, the Contemporary Museum of Crete, and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities among several others. Her last solo exhibition, “Kallos,” was at the Katzen Arts Museum of the American University, Washington, D.C.

Karametou has organized and curated several international projects, such as EcoReflections (at the Resim ve Heykel Müzesi Galerisi, Ankara, Turkey) and participated in international collaborative projects, like Penelopeia, sponsored by the Presidency of the European Union. Her long career as an artist and university professor includes, among several others, a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar award.

As a writer, Karametou has published short stories and poems in literary magazines, including the Washington Writers Publishing House, The RavensPerch, A Bilingual Anthology of Greek American Poetry, and Bethesda Magazine, after receiving an award in the Washington Metropolitan Area Short Story Competition. Other publications involve numerous artist statements, artist books, and essays.

She is a Professor Emerita, having recently left her tenured position at the School of Art, George Mason University, Virginia, where she directed the Drawing Division to devote more time to her studio work and writing.

Inspired by her experiences and history of migration, mobility, and displacement, her work, both visual and literary, relates to identity and our personal journey of self-discovery. The Amalgam is her first novel. Website: https://www.mariakarametou.com.

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Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I’ve always written. As a child, I used to hide under our dining room table and draw or tell myself stories. But when I declared that I wanted to be both an artist and a writer when I grew up, someone said: “It’s hard to hold two watermelons under the same arm.” So, I set out to prove them wrong. Yet, eventually, I found out that this person was pretty much right, because time does have limitations.

Being an artist, working in the studio, teaching at the university, and, of course, having a family, prevented me from pursuing my writing. These things take a lot of time if you want to do them right. So, I became an artist and remained a frustrated writer. I even made a series of artist’s books entitled “The Books I Would Write” because I hadn’t written them and, because of that, they don’t open. These were exhibited in various places, including at the National Museum of Women here in DC.

I wrote all my life. Hundreds of pages. Short stories, a poetry collection, some written in English, some in Greek … Some of them were included in literary publications and journals; most recently, one of my poems was published by the Washington Writers Publishing House, one of my short stories by Ravens Perch, etc. But since I never had any formal training in writing, I lacked the confidence to write a book.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I am a visual artist, working in mixed media. Recently, I left a tenured position at the university where I taught to finalize the draft of The Amalgam and devote more time to the studio. My grandparents were indeed Greek refugees from Asia Minor (Turkey) with the events of WWI, the only survivors of their respective families.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

I am a first-generation immigrant to the US. I never had a second thought about the title because, as an immigrant, I am one—a mixture of two cultures … And, in a way, we are all amalgams …

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

This book weighed on me ever since I went on a Visual Arts Fulbright Award to Istanbul. I grabbed the opportunity to visit the village from which my grandmother was violently expelled and, with the help of an old map, find the location where her house once stood. That was a life-changing experience.

What creative projects are you currently working on?

I am working on a book of short stories and continuing to work in my art studio.

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