All posts filed under: Blog posts

June in Beijing – studying and waiting

Published by gertrud

It was pretty quiet in terms of mosaic moments in June. Still living in a serviced apartment I immersed into studying Chinese with my wonderful teacher Ling. This language is so illustrative and it brings me immense pleasure to discover the construction of some words – like woods is the characters of 2 trees and forest are the characters of 3 trees. Yesterday I could buy a pair of trainers all in Chinese, speaking about the size, stating which color I like and which not, asking for the price and understanding the numbers! Every small situation when I understand a person or manage to make myself understood lets me jubilate. Not that I am very advanced: the day before yesterday I took a DIDI which means younger brother in Chinese – the equivalent to Uber in China). The driver was very friendly and talkative. When I told him I am from Germany he started to give me a long talk about something with Germany and USA and food – Chi (in Chinese). My imagination run …

SAMA conference 2019

Published by gertrud

Since 3 years I am a member of the Society of American Mosaic Artists – SAMA. SAMA has around 900 members including mosaic artists at all levels, mosaic aficionados, collectors, materials suppliers, and art educators and is almost entirely run by volunteers . One of the activities SAMA is organizing is a yearly conference that brings members together, through exhibitions, workshops, auctions, tours and simple living together during an entire week. At the same time SAMA educates the public about mosaics through exhibiting mosaic art in the respective city where the conference takes place. This year the conference was held April 23-28 in Nashville/Tennessee. The mosaic exhibitions Mosaic art works were exhibited in three important public buildings of the city of Nashville during January – May 2019. Architectural&community mosaics at the Public Library, Fine art mosaics and “one hundred moments in mosaic’ at the Parthenon building – yes Nashville has a one to one replica of Athens Parthenon! – and an exhibition of 5 renowned mosaic artists at the Vanderbilt Universities Fine Art Gallery. I …

USA mosaic trip – part three – Detroit

Published by gertrud

In Detroit my dear friend Miriam Engstrom, psychologist, singer and actor, who I met at our posting in Ankara, showed me around this incredible interesting city. Miriam is from a three generation Detroit family – so she took me to the place her grandmother worked in. Inside the Guardian Building – colorful tiled comb structured vaults by Rookhook Ceramics (later restored by Pewabic Pottery) and cast iron gateEdit Later we visited the Pewabic Pottery established by Mary Chase Perry Stratton in the early 1900 in Detroit. The pottery workshop is one of the few renowned ceramic manufacturers in the US until today. The pottery developed in swing with the arts and crafts movement in America as in Europe at the beginning of the 20st century. As Mary C. Stratton Perry came from a fine art degree and a career in painting china, she started making vessels. Later she became more and more a ceramic artist and fabricant for ceramic tiles and mosaic style art for architectural surfaces. In Detroit there are eight public buildings that …