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The “Frankfurter Treppe”

Today I visited my mosaic colleague Thomas Denker. I met Thomas at the joint meeting of the German and British Association of mosaic artists in York last October. Thomas is famous for his mosaics designs in which he uses the construction of pixels known in the photographic world. We are currently working together on a project where he uses his self written software to produce a mosaicified version of a design of me. Speaking over these and that in the world of mosaics Thomas mentioned the mosaic mural “ Frankfurter Treppe” inspired by Stephan Huber at the Foyer of the Maintower, at the Neue Mainzer Straße in the middle of the City of Frankfurt. This afternoon I took the tram no 5 to go and visit this mosaic. Walking along Neue Mainzer Straße connects Opernplatz with Willi – Brandt – Platz. It’s a typical city street which is darkend from the high rises. Already through the glass front the intense blue of the sides of the mural is visible. Going inside the visitor stands immediately …

A great neihbor!

  The dragon sculpture for the Dragons Garden/ Julong Garden is ready!   I would like to take this sentence as the motto for this project: ‘ a bit complicated but it worked” . I am very happy we managed to finish this community mosaic project within the Julong Garden Neighborhood despite a very complicated structure, within the complicated situation of the COVID 19 outbreak and in a rather challenging setting of cultural differences(eg not everyone spoke the same language) of the participants.     We started in Oktober 2019 (click on the underlined link to open up the previous blog on the dragon) with the design which I then presented to the compound management. After getting their green light we set off to produce the larger parts of the mosaic in November in the mosaic moments studio in Julong Garden.     During the holiday period in December and January the dragon slept. Then came the COVID 19 outbreak in China and we were bound to our houses. The work on the dragon gave …

Installing the Dragon Mosaic

23 of May was the big day for Julong Garden community. The dragon mosaic installation began. The two local masons and their skills where impressive – they never installed a mosaic before and did this one with great diligence and calm despite the many spectators. I need to rely on the knowledge of these local craftsmen for the choice of cements as I have no experience with building material here in the tricky climate of Beijing with super hot and humid summers and frosty and dry winters. As I can only talk to them via a translation app trust was needed the more. Before installing they spend a weekend mending the rather depilated air vent structure so the mosaic could be installed.