So – I arrived in Ayvalik on Saturday Aug, 22 and settled for the weekend with my friend Tulya Madra. THE HOUSE that is supposed to host the Ayvalik Mosaic is further under renovation. As it happened – Mustafa Salih – my first mosaic teacher (who already played a part in this story in lending me the hydraulic stone cutting machine), happen to have a holiday apartment in Sarimsakli. Sarimsakli is the longest sandy beach on the aegean coast and is 3km  south from the centre of Ayvalik. Mustafa offered to help with the mosaic. So all the stones and ready fish figures were shipped to his house and when I arrived on Sunday, Aug 23 the Kargo already had been delivered and the workshop set up on his roof top overlooking a tiny bit of the sea. One has to consider that there were about 80kg of goods that came from Gaziantep and that were damped on the street and 60 year old Mustafa carried it all up a tiny flight of stairs to …

This week is my final week in Gaziantep. From Aug 24 onwards I have an internship at the archeological site of Pergamon. The modern city of Bergama with its archeological site of Pergamon is 50 km away from Ayvalik. In order to get there, set the mosaic studio up in Ayvalik and be ready for work on Monday early morning, I have to leave Gaziantep on Thursday Aug 20. It is so absolutely crazy to try and do everything at the same time.  But I really want to work in Pergamon and  so I will try to do the crazy thing to work there and on the mosaic in Ayvalik. Not sure how this will work out. Here in Nusret’s atelier we have finished almost all figures for the floor. It took 4 weeks of two full time workers and one part timer to set up the workshop, build the frames, collect some of the stone material and produce 5 mosaic designs. Only one big fish is not finished yet. He seems to be sad …

A special post needs to be written about the collection of lime stones at the banks of the Euphrates. During all the days in Gaziantep and in Nusret’s atelier we were discussing the material for the background of the mosaic. It should be of a beige or cream color. I wanted to use the marble that we are also using for our kitchen floor in the  Ayvalik house in order to have continuity in color and material. But Nusret really dislikes the structure of the marble and keeps telling me that there is a beautiful lime stone at the bank of the Euphrates river that would be excellent material for the background. I can not decide for a long time. Partly I feel Nusret is right, the marble crumbles quite a lot. But I have it in the Atelier, waiting to be cut – so easy. On the other hand it is also very attractive to go out and find stone – and even more to find it at the place where maybe the stone …