Author: gertrud

THE AYVALIK MOSAIC – finally in Ayvalik – second week

Published by gertrud

My dearest readers, I have to disappoint you: there is nothing spectacular to show about the Ayvalik Mosaic yet. This week I tried installation techniques. Its all very technical in the following post. But first the achievements: All background stones are cut and tumbled. The two areas that still had to be filled with background  and all the conture lines around the figures were completed. The kurna is made and ready to be tiled with mosaic. The last 3 days past with measuring the wall parts.  From the part with the dolphins head and the long fish I had to cut off 1cm in order to have the tesserae not go over the top edge of the wall. Unfortunately the parts of the other bench are still to short and I have to add another 10 cm background left and right. Grrr! The tesserae are glued in reverse onto craft paper and the craft paper is glued to 3mm Mdf board all with water soluble glue. This made the transport and now the handling in …

Refugee Community Mosaic

Published by gertrud

Today is international women’s day. I want to remember an amazing project for international women’s day 2015 that I consider myself lucky to have been part off. The women4women production inspired and directed by Miriam Engstrom is a project that gives women a chance to express themselves in an event through visual and performing art. The project is set up in a way to encourage women that have never done such thing before to participate in theatre and music performance and an exhibition . By coincidence Miriam and I lived for some time together in the same neighborhood in Ankara. We had a kind of regular morning walk habit in our local park together and during this  I was expressing my dream of creating a community mosaic to Miriam.  We were speaking about the fact that mosaic making requires a lot of time and that refugees have a lot of time as they are often waiting for years for their applications to be administered and during that time are often not allowed to work officially. So we came …

THE AYVALIK MOSAIC – finally in Ayvalik – first week

Published by gertrud

We made it! The mosaic parts and me have arrived safe in Ayvalik. All went well. The only tricky situation during the trip was when I arrived in Istanbul and the costums officer asked me to open my suitcases. Oh I was sweating! They brought an extra art specialist to look at the mosaic but he immediately recognized it as new. I was sweating not only because I feared they would confiscate it but also because I had to open the elaborate packaging – it took me over half an hour to close it again.  Which was  then lovingly handled by our friend Ümit who picked me up  in his red car at Istanbul airport and together with his wife hosted me for one beautiful day in the city by the Bosphorus. On Monday night I arrived in Ayvalik. Tulya my dear friend fetched me at the bus stop in the middle of the night with my super heavy suitcases. It is so nice to be back and feel soo at home at her house. …