After being indoors for 2 months in self quarantine since the beginning of February the neighbors of Julong Hua Yuan in Beijing Dongcheng district are coming together again to work on the dragon mosaic for their Dragon Garden – that’s what Julong Hua Yuan means.
Working outside near the air vent structure that should hold the mosaic proofed to be very successful in terms of visualization of the project. It also sparked the interest of passing people.
Today I am one year in Beijing. Look how my studio has developed!
I have found an apartment with a studio space on the 5th floor (no lift – keeps me fit)
Education at 3 conferences : the yearly conference of SAMA – Society of American Mosaic artists in Nashville – where my community project in Brasilia was exhibited
Annual conference of BAMM (British Association of Mosaic Masters &DOMO (Deutsche Organisation für Mosaic, where I attended a workshop with Thomas Denker a German mosaic artist who created a computer program to make sophisticated pixel mosaics.
I reconnected with my friend Sani Wroblewski who supported me in my first attempts to make mosaic in Ankara. Together we created the community mosaic “Dragon” for the Dragons Garden where mosaic moments studio has its home in Beijing.
Discovering public mosaic projects in New York, Washington DC, Detroit, Istanbul and Hongkong. See also my blogs in April, October 2019 and January 2020.
Testing new materials on new backgrounds – a lot of glass mosaic stones found its way to my studio here in Beijing – an inheritant of another mosaic artist who transited through Beijing and left some mosaic enthusiasts and a lot of material behind that I can now benefit from. Sorting the many colors and shapes took these diligent helpers several days.
I am planning to start mosaic classes as soon as the Beijing administration will open schools and allows the Beijingers to gather physically again.
Since we were living in Uzbekistan from 2004-2006 I am fascinated by the lines that create the geometric patterns in the tiles of ancient islamic art on the mosques and schools.
In January this year I visited Samarqand and Buchara again. The trip started with some snow flakes, but then the weather evolved into a beautiful blue spring sky.
About Islamic Patterns: “Islamic decoration makes great use of geometric shapes, which have developed over centuries. These patterns of Islamic art are often said to arise from the Islamic view of the world, which is the central concept of Tawhid, or Divine Unity. To Muslims these forms, taken together, constitute an infinite pattern that extends beyond the visible material world. They concretely symbolize uncentralized nature of the creation of Allah and therefore in their use of patterns, Islamic artists are in part expressing the fathomless of Got – not just that God is everywhere, but that God is unknowable. In this sense, pattern can be used as a meditative tool.” source: Backhouse, Tim”Only God is Perfect”. Islamic and Geometric Art, http://www.geometricdesign.co.uk/
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In Turkey I found these patterns again and used some of them for my mosaic designs.
Coming back to Beijing from Uzbekistan in early February, I was devastated, that I could not open my studio, due to the coronary virus outbreak in China. We had to be under home quarantine and congregating in larger groups was and still is not allowed.
So I took a ruler and compass and with the help of only these instruments and the instructions of the book “Islamic Geometric Design” I immersed into the world of lines – forming patterns, making peace with the chaos around me …
