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“Embroidery pattern mosaic” unveiled

Published by gertrud

A beautiful collaborative work now hangs in the offices of the World Bank Family Network in Washington DC. “Embroidery” WBFN Community Mosaic Inauguration, Sept 12 2024, Photo: Nico Chong & Carla Goncalves Produced from photos of textile patterns from 16 countries, sent in by members from all over the world. The grandmother’s tablecloth from Belarus, the embroidery on the collar of a coat designed by a Polish fashion designer in the 80s, mother of a participant from Poland, a darting bird printed on a fabric from Kenya, and many sari patterns from India made the range of designs colorful and vibrant. The participants’ ability to abstract was astonishing as they transferred a wide variety of motifs onto grids in a pixel pattern. The setting of the glass mosaic tiles was in turn a pleasant, meditative activity for around 20 participants in the network’s office rooms in Washington, which ended in a frenzy of happiness at what had been achieved.

Collaboratively setting mosaic tiles onto a design
Photo Credit: Gertrud Müller

Some were able to participate in the completion of the mosaic in the MosaicMoments workshop: gluing and grouting. Another nice time spent together.

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On September 12th, the community artwork was unveiled by the Chief Curator of the World Bank Art Collection. In this project I had the privilege of working with the communications department and a volunteer coordinator on this project. Normally these are tasks that I also take on in addition to the acquisition, design and technical execution of my community projects. It was a great collaboration with Ewelina Mstowska (WBFN Communications Officer) and Carla Goncalves (WBFN Volunteer Coordinator). Signs of this are this great article by Kim Ward and a database with the different patterns, their origin and meaning and the resulting mosaic design. https://www.wbfn.org/article/one-square-time%E2%80%94-community-mosaic-mural

Detail from Mosaic Pattern Database, Credit: Ewelina Mstowska, WBFN Communications Officer

Mosaic workshop in V Street, DC

Published by gertrud

Last week Andrea, Kathy, Smruti and Mark gathered for 3 nights at MosaicMoments Studio in V Street to make their first mosaics.

For them it was an endeavor: practicing breaking glass tiles, setting mosaic pieces in a very particular order and using line and color to create a simple geometric mosaic design.

It was fun, it was hard, it was meditative, it made time fly …

In the end happiness prevailed over achiement of self created mosaics and time well spent with like minded people.

Mosaic works of first workshop in DC using

Mosaics around me

Published by gertrud

Beautiful mosaic murals have crossed my way in the past months.

On my recent trip to New York I went on a quest to find the newest editions of mosaic murals. Friends told me “under central station” and “you go down down down and then you see the mosaics”.

So I went to central station and we first asked some friendly man in yellow vests where to find the mosaics and they took great interest but couldn’t really point in any direction …

Then we went down, down, down and ended on a very narrow and old platform with no mosaics.

Almost giving up, when we tried to find the way back out of this dark labyrinth full of people and hot air, we saw some stairs leading into a white clean brand new hall and I was sure we could find the mosaics here. So we followed signs to LIRR station and found them:

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But also old friends greeted me this time in the metro stations making me feel familiar with the place …

Detail of “Happy City”, Peter Sis, Mosaic @ 86 Street East Metro Station NYC

Brooklyn Bridge Metro Station NYC, Original mosaic decor

And last week I was stunned to see this monumental mosaic by famous us American artist Sam Gilliam opposite the entrance to the metro in Takoma Park in Washington DC.

FROM A MODEL TO A RAINBOWMosaic by Sam Gilliam, 2011 Commissioned by DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities DC Creates! Public Art Program In cooperation with Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Art in Transit Program

FROM A MODEL TO A RAINBOW
Mosaic by Sam Gilliam, 2011
Commissioned by
DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities
DC Creates! Public Art Program
In cooperation with
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Art in Transit Program