The Glass Zoo

A lovely zoo full of animals, fish, birds, butterflies and bugs is located in the metro station in Taksim.  Many children participated with glass artists at The Glass Furnace, to make this mural.

 The mural is composed of smaller panels of fused glass.  My guess is that each child participant worked on one panel, which measures about 8 inches by 12 inches.

 There are quite a few colorful birds in this zoo, ...

 just one penguin, ...

 a child enjoying the zoo, ...

 a ferocious lion, ...

 a beautiful butterfly, ...

 ostrich and duck friends, ...

 a giraffe, ...

 and a non-talking parrot.

The children made such a striking zoo and it is quite an attention getter for the many metro travelers passing by.

Ebru at 1200 degrees

Ebru is an old Turkish art form of painting with water on paper and creating a marbling effect.  Glass artist Gulin Algul has used the ebru as inspiration for her work in blown glass.  Her work is on exhibit at the Naval Museum in Besiktas and the title of the exhibit is Ebru at 1200 Degrees.

Many stunning pieces are on display, with the marbling effect.  The following are each about a foot in diameter.

This piece was my favorite.

In addition to the glass art pieces on display, pictures on the walls show the processes used in making the pieces.  Gulin does her work in the studios at the Glass Furnace in Istanbul.  Can you feel the 1200 degree temperature just looking at this glass going into the furnace?

More of Gulin's work can be seen on her website www.asanni.org  The exhibit at the Naval Museum is on until December 15, 2011.  It is worth a visit to see this glass art exhibit and also the Naval Museum.

Enameling at the Glass Furnace

The Glass Furnace is a glass art teaching facility located in the Beykoz district of Istanbul.  It is located in a rural setting on the outskirts of the city.  You can take classes in glass blowing, glass fusing, lampworking and my choice for a weekend - enameling.

The property is decorated with glass projects of students, resident and visiting instructors.

Parking lots are edged with large chunks of a beautiful blue transparent glass.

This cast glass piece was my favorite...

with charming birds.

Umut Demirguc works in metals and enamels and teaches the enameling class.  She has some nice strong jewelry pieces, which can be found on her website  www.umutdemirguc.com  Umut is fluent in English and taught the class in both Turkish and English, for my benefit.  At the end of day 1, I have my samples of the various techniques we learned.

The Glass Furnace also has two week classes in the summer time with lots of visiting glass artists.  The full schedule can be found on their website www.glassfurnace.org

After day 1, Umut drove a few of us from the countryside to spots closer to our homes.  Sheeps and goats needed to move out of the way for our car to pass.  Yes, we were certainly outside of the hussle bustle of the city.

Fused Glass

Train and metro stations often have some beautiful murals on their walls. Most often, they are of ceramic tiles. But, in the Taxim station, where the funicular from Kabatas arrives, there is a great mural in fused glass. The scene is of the Bosphorus. A closeup of some houses, a ferry boat and a mosque...

The fused glass artist is Ebru Susamcioglu and she did the work at The Glass Furnace in Istanbul. "Cam" is the Turkish word for glass. The red motif for CAM is very clever.

The Glass Furnace has a website located at http://glassfurnace.org They have classes in various glass working methods on their campus, out from the city in the district of Beykoz.