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.

Upcoming Elections

Every four years, elections are held for parliment seats.  Turkey has many, many political parties and all have decorated the town with flags.  Once again, business is booming for flag makers.  The election takes place this Sunday, June 12th.

Parties have been holding rallies for months - one took place in Taksim on April 19th and attracted a big crowd.

Police were on hand for crowd control, with protective shields and the added benefit of the Lipton fruit tea pyramid for cover.  The rally was peaceful, without incident.

The incumbent party is busy getting construction projects completed as well as a fair number of sprucing up projects.  Today a road divider gets a coat of alternating yellow and white paint.

On Istiklal, the old paint is scraped off of the barrier to keep cars off of the "walking" street.

And then all got a new coat of the yellow paint.

I wonder how the parents of the children who made a beeline to touch the wet yellow paint will vote in the upcoming elections...

Flags for Fenerbahce

Football (soccer) is the most popular sport in Turkey, by far.  The Turkish football league has teams from all over the country, and some from Istanbul. This year, Fenerbahce won the league championship and Istanbul is painted with blue and yellow flags.  Fenerbahce is a section of Istanbul on the Asian side, and I do think the density of flags on the Asian side is higher than the European side.

 There is a flag flying from the 2nd bridge, and from several of the beautiful homes on the Bosphorus, ...

as well as homes on the hillsides.

Business is booming for flag makers!

santralistanbul

Istanbul's first urban scale power plant of the Ottoman empire, was built in the early 1900's and supplied all of Istanbul's electricity between 1914 and 1952.  It continued providing electricity until 1983.  In 2004, the facilities of the dormant power plant were given to santralistanbul, which is a center for art education and exhibitions.  The location is at the inland tip of the Golden Horn, the largest inlet off the Bosphorus.  I took the Golden Horn ferry to the last stop and walked the rest of the way.  This 'short' walk, took over an hour and I was eager to cross the pretty blue bridge over a small river, only to find that the bridge carries pipes and no foot traffic.

I did find another bridge and entered through a gate to Bilge University, which has one of its campuses located in the same area.  After the long walk, I was so happy to see a Starbucks, to get rehydrated with an iced decaf coffee.

Some of the power plant buildings have been left in place and others removed and replaced with modern buildings.

The exhibit I went to see was the work of 20 modern Turkish artists from the 20th century.  As santralistanbul has a very large exhibit area, there were quite a few pieces from each artist - about 400 art pieces all together.  No pictures allowed inside, though...

The old power plant engine house has been left in tact and turned into the Museum of Energy.  The equipment is huge and around the equipment are lots of fun hands-on exhibits about electricity and energy.  I did try several of the exhibits.  No school groups today, so I was able to have the run of the place by myself.

Back in Business

It has been three months since my last posting.  Sorry about that...  For the first two months, there was a country wide ban on all blogspot blogs...  Not because of me, but some rather clever individuals who were re-broadcasting live football (soccer) matches.  And the last month, was just laziness on my part. 

Seeing the calla lilies at the Anadolu Hisari ferry landing reminds me that it has been one year since I moved to Istanbul.  How time flies!

Lions

My husband likes lions and here are some from around town...

Above and below from the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Emirgan,

Window at the Haydarpasa train station,

Downspout in Yenikoy,

Fountain outside of Ciragan Palace, Ortakoy,

In Gulhane Park,

And in Sultan Ahmet square.

For fans of The Chronicles of Narnia, you may remember that the lion in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", is named "Aslan", which is the Turkish word for lion.

Men at Work

The postman sorting the mail on the landing outside the first apartment building of our complex.

A simit seller.  Simit is a baked bread ring densely topped with sesame seeds.  In backed up car traffic,  simit sellers will be walking between the rows of cars selling this popular snack.

Shoeshine men with their brass shoe stands on the Uskudar pier.

This man will write and type your letters and petitions.  With systems using more forms, this may be an occupation that disappears in the future.

Carrying the large brief case pays off when it can also be used as a pillow.