A Hidden Order

Today, I finally had the pleasure to visit the hidden order exhibit at Kashya Hildebrand Gallery. It is until the 11th of October, so if you haven't been, you better hurry!

This exhibitions combines geometry and music. The artist, Sama Mara -a graduate from PSTA- and the composer, Lee Westwood created a visual manifestation of music coming to life through complex, colourful, interact geometric shapes. 

The art is very unique and lively. Each piece of art was accompanied with a piece of music. 

Here are some snaps to take you through it!

Downstairs: 

Leighton House Museum

Yesterday the weather was very typical London. The first half of it was CRAZY rain, but the second half was full of sunshine! Thankfully, I was out for the second half. I met up with a friend and started the afternoon with a visit to the Leighton House Museum. When I first walked in, I was a little confused on the coloration between the Victorian paintings, greek looking sculpture, the Persian figurines and God's word in Arabic. But it made sense because the museum is basically the house of the victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton. The house was built in the 19th century and he turned it into an art palace with the arabic hall with its golden geometric dome.  

From their website

My favourite part  

Upstairs is the studio, where Lord Leighton did his art. When he died, most of the contents of the house were sold. The National Trust tried to fill the house with artists work instead of going after the previous collections. They also had a temporary exhibit for Rudi Patterson, a Jamaican painter. His work was vibrant and whimsical. 

Overall, I thought the museum was really nice. The Arabic hall was spectacular and so cozy. I just wanted to stay there. They just need to add more LIGHTS. It was really dark to even see some of the pieces. The information folders also need some improvement. It was a quick inspiring visit.  

Geometry of Architecture and the Buildings Art

Happy Saturday everyone! 

As some of you know I am working on my masters in Interior Architecture in Middlesex University *mashallah* and my dissertation topic is Geometry and Islamic patterns in interior design. It was really hard to decide and I am still in the research phase. As part of my research I attended a short course about Geometry of Architecture and the Buildings Art in the Princess School of Traditional Arts. The class was taught by Jon Allen and Jonathan Horning. 

Jonathan telling us about shapes. 

Before the course, I expected it to be a general course with some information and mostly drawings, but I was blown away by the amount of information I received. It surly exceeded my expectations. 

Jon kicked things off with a very insightful lecture

The course started with a lecture defining geometry, space and numbers. The lecture focused on the circle and the sphere. Philosophically, the sphere has special importance not only to geometry, but it is the point that starts life. The human creation starts as a sphere. The human existence is located in a sphere known as Earth, which is part of a collection of spheres known as the solar system. The sphere is the symbol of heavens. The wonders of a sphere are endless. It is the purest archetype forms because it does not acquire more space when it turns around itself that is why “The power of life moves in a circle” (Allen, 2014). 

Earth on the left and YOU -how humans look like before they become anything else-
interesting right?

The course moved to a practical element and the results were very surprising. I was taught to make three-dimensional shapes from sticks to recreate the five platonic solids. Doing that exercise helped me really see geometry because the geometric solids are still not the exact accuracy as they appear on pictures. 

Five platonic solids

All we used was sticks and glue!

Class effort

class effort

The dome was really impressive! That was so much fun

Moving forward in the course, there was drawing that made sense of the mathematics and the most common geometry rules I studied in secondary school such as the Pythagoras rule: a^2 + b^2 = c^2. We drew the triangles that translate to square root 2, square root 3 and square root 5. It was good to see the actual meaning of those math rules in real life.  

From just math to beautiful patterns

I really enjoyed the course and I would surly recommend it. It was a really good starting point for me. Now, I have to continue researching and writing. Wish me luck! :)

Art of Islamic patterns

Happy Weekend everyone!

Hope your week went well. Mine was spent learning and drawing Islamic patterns at the Art of Islamic Patterns intensive course. Since I am an Arab interior designer, people make the assumption that I am an expert in Islamic patterns and calligraphy even though I don't even mention them or add them to my designs. I decided to embrace the stereotype and go for it because I noticed that the number of Arab interior designers who know the real art of Islamic patterns is very limited.

The course was taught by Richard Henry and Adam Williamson who were extremely skilled. It is wonderful that they share their skills and techniques with the world. There are different course options from intensive to weekly on their websites. The intensive course was so much fun, but not as easy as I thought it would be.

Welcome to the studio!

The studio is located in Hackney Wick. The space is very inspiring and artistic. It is decorated with pieces from pervious projects. We all worked around one big table that was surrounded by backless high chairs.

The studio 

The week started with geometric patterns, where we were taught how to use the compass correctly. It was really amazing to see the results after we connected the right lines together.

Richard has some mad skills!

We learnt to do these amazing patterns! 

Here are some of the patterns we learnt in the course. We followed the steps and got results. Not as easy as it sounds. 

Can you see the mini star in the middle in yellow? 

These were cut out pieces and we put them into patterns.
Playing with patterns like that is really fun and you get surprising results.  

Collection of inspiring images taken by Richard and shown to the class

After learning some pattern basics and looking at the history of some patterns -and where they originated-, we moved to making ceramic tiles. The hands on part was GREAT! Adam was a real expert. He was super patient with all of us. He also taught us few free hand patterns.

Adam demonstrating how to make a clay tile and how to add an Islamic pattern design to it 

Class was buzzing with energy to make lots of tiles

We each got a ready plastered triangles. We had to copy our pattern on top. We used tools to shape it. Then we made clay models. After they were dried and baked, we sanded them and painted them. Below you can see the colour palette I was going for.

From Plaster to painted tiles

Overall, the week was full of creativity and I really enjoyed all the new skills I learnt. The other students were amazing and they all come from different backgrounds. It was really interesting meeting all of them. I highly recommend it.