marientina

So, every couple of years I try to update all my personal data (don't worry Scott - not leaving quite yet) because it helps me make my 5-year plan. As of today, my EVL site is ancient and Google doesn't always do justice to who I am.

With a new class coming in the Fall and my one-year anniversary approaching, I feel that maybe it is time to try to feel like home here. I used to always make a 5-year plan and it gets harder rather than easier as one gets older.

So first I have to look at what I have done and I have been a very busy girl as it turns out. Tom DeFanti once told me beware of 'breadth and go for depth' but 'depth' comes with age and 'breadth' is who I am by nature.

So here is Episode I:
(in Honor of George Lucas, I will do a trilogy installment of this)

Many years ago when I was in high-school and had to decide quickly what I wanted to do in life (this was Greece and if you don't know what you will be doing by 15 you're screwed) I knew two things: I loved art and I loved tech. Now back then, the marriage of the two disciplines in a traditional country like Greece was deemed 'just too darn weird' and I was advised to go to the US for studies. I went to the (late) Dean of Athens School of Fine Arts, Nikos Kessanlis and he looked at my portfolio and told me "if you have the means to study abroad my dear, you should go".

"Go and do what?", I wondered. My answer came while reading an issue of Time Magazine that featured the CAVE(tm), Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin. I was a teenager and I was mesmerized (busted!) but the real answer came much later.

At this time, I was taking art classes and french after school and my mother wanted me to be a classics teacher. I did great in all BUT my science classes and gym class (yes I was sickly and nerdy). And then, my 10th grade classics teacher hung himself and suddenly, being a classics teacher didn't seem like a great idea to me. You can say that he somehow did me a favor.

Thankfully, my high-school was one of those prestigious snob schools with an actual US college placement counselor who helped me figure out how to do what I wanted under my parents' nose. That counselor (whom I will not name) alone was worth the thousands of bucks my parents spent for tuition. My after-school art teacher (Liz Tenny) also helped by convincing my mother I had a future in art school. Liz's class was my safe haven and Liz was my personal savior.

I wanted to study painting first (somewhere cool!), then go do a graduate degree at the home of the CAVE at UIC. However, since my father lived in Chicago, I decided I would do a double major in two schools: A BFA at UIC in Electronic Media and a BFA at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in Studio Arts and then stay at UIC for the MFA. I applied and I was accepted and I packed and I left and I kissed my boyfriend goodbye. I was 17 years old and 4 months. And after I confused my advisors at both schools art offices, I managed to make a 5-year plan for graduation with two degrees. Lesson learned: be persistent and don't take no for an answer.

Enter dot.com era, my father and I started a business of computer services: custom pc's (pre-dell, back when a dell was from 'hell' and so was packard-bell), design services and soon, internet service and websites. Ahh...those were the days (sigh). I stuffed all my courses to 2.5 days of the week and worked with my father 24x7 the rest of the time and I am not exaggerating. It helped that my snobby school made me breeze through pre-reqs so I can focus on art classes coursework only.

Dad and I were busy and ambitious and a great team since I was a little kid. In Greece, child labor is the horrible act of contributing to the family business any which way you can. Picture me as a 12-year old translating for my father in his board of directors meeting or on trips with vendors in Europe. Or working at the gift shop at 15, decked out like I was 20 so that I can run the business without anyone noticing I was a teenager...I met lots of celebs at that post, including Jeff Koons and his ex-wife paging through his special Playboy issue, and James Hetfield of Metallica who asked me "where can one have some fun in this town [Athens]?" while holding a giant can of Sapporo in his hand.

On a side note, my family was living in comfortable middle-middle class until George Bush senior decided to go to war in Iraq and cause 30% of all tourism-related businesses in Greece to go bust. We had a good ten or so years before that in business, even through the Reagan/Thatcher recessed Europe of double digit unemployment and inflation. In those ten years I learned the basics of business: sales, customer service, marketing, packaging, merchandising, schmoozing, accounting, data entry and 'tough-love' economics.

The business dad and I opened in Chicago did great except for the fact that we ran out of money after 2 years because my father for the first time took a risk on business rule #1: always save for 2-3 years of rain when opening a new business. When we closed the doors of our operation, we had 3000 customers and were doing great. Except for being broke. I cried and cried and so did my father but we pulled through and it was easier for me because I was not a 55-year old white man with a thick greek accent and no college degree.

So how did we do it?

Wait for Episode II on my next cough-syrup induced insomniac night. And no, I won't do it backwards like George. Since I already posted the Official Bio first, it is more like 'in media res', as in the Iliad and the Odyssey. (Damn my classics background.)