The musical insiration for my mobile sculptures created in the via fiesolana Atelier

A song by van Morrison

Foreign Window

I saw you from a foreign window

Bearing down the sufferin' road

You were carryin' your burden

To the palace of the Lord

To the palace of the Lord

I spied you from a foreign window

When the lilacs were in bloom

And the sun shone through your window pane

To the place you kept your books

You were reading on your sofa

You were singin' every prayer

That the masters had instilled in you

Since Lord Byron loved despair

In the palace of the Lord

In the palace of the Lord

And if you get it right this time

You don't have to come back again

And if you get it right this time

There's no need to explain

I saw you from a foreign

Bearing down the sufferin' road

You were carryin' your burden

You were singing about Rimbaud

I was going down to Geneva

When the Kingdom had been found

Listening to music while you work is probably normal but some of the music you listen to is 

for life .... it is expressing something and and talking to you at the same time  .....

Ponte alle Grazie on top of via Maggio 

My story in Florence began in 1982 ....  i had just arrived in Florence from Perugia where i had had a great time getting to know new people and living in the countryside.( Here i had lived with an american student who was studying to be vet) I loved the feeling of this medieval city, Living on Beverly's farm i had the wonderful experience of living in the huge fire place like they used to do on farm houses.  I was eating lots of Bruschetta which is toasted bread with garlic rubbed on it and olive oil on top of the garlic .... it was incredibly healthy for a cold winter ,  I was also getting to know the animals on the farm , i loved the animals all except  the rooster because it was not at all friendly . He  used to sing a lot and then there were two dogs which Bev called Cipolla e Carota (onion and carrot) and i could have stayed there for the rest of my days. 

 However i was thinking of going to an art school or perhaps to study at university, and when some friends decided to go to Florence to look at the works of art in the Uffizi i went along with them .... i had been living in London were i had studied for three years  and then in Karachi were i had gone to visit my relatives .  When i turned 22,  i had  some ideas about Art  and creativity and wanted to take that direction.  I knew Florence because of  the sculptures of Michelangelo and the paintings of Boticelli because an art historian called Agdashloo had programes on TV about western art.  

Me working in my studio in 1998 …..

it was full time Art until 2005

 I had arrived in Florence before xmas and was saving money by sleeping in a camping place and a hostel in viale Africo and i was there for a month. I was going  to Art school and learning about engravings. The school  was in Via San Gallo. I met some people who were art students ....  i was very surprised to hear that young people there only knew about western art  and thought that Greece was the cradle of "world" (Western civilization perhaps would be right)  civilization.  They didnt consider Egyption or Chinese or even South American history.

Some students had no idea about art from other countries and only for this reason would think Greece was superior to the rest , and i was glad that i had some notion that Art and creativity had happened all over the world. Infact one of the positive things one learns in school in Italy is that many civilizations have existed side by side.  Rome itself  had infact been built on a multitude of cultures.

my studio atelier in 1998

I guess i got lucky because one of the students from an American University studying there, hearing that i was sleeping in a tent, was very kind and told me that a friend of hers was leaving and would i like to share the apartment with another student.  That is how i met Emily Miller who was part of an American university program in Florence.  The apartment on via Maggio was gorgeous and very sophisticated . I was simply overjoyed to be in a warm place that winter and  Emily told me about her friend  working  as a shop assistant in a shop selling leather goods.... She said that i could work there as well  that way i could pay the rent and when Emily left for New York i was in the apartment  by myself.

   I enrolled in the University of Florence ( 1984 )  for a degree in English and German literature .  Even though  i had done a foundation course in Saint Martin's art school , i wasn't sure if following up on that path was the best idea because  by the time i reached Italy i knew that i couldnt get my parents to pay for my education . The revolution and the war between Iran and Iraq had changed my situation. 
I thought it was safer to follow in my mother's foot steps and study literature and languages.  I was painting all through university years and only after finishing university  in 1992  i made up my mind; i could only try being a creative and had to work towards that as a profession.  Some people have it so easy, because they already know that creativity is a profession  (in later years when i met the Artist Mario Mariotti who was teaching at the accademia ...  I was told  that Art was "Work" (and there was no romantic "Art for Arts sake" attached to it) .  I had to learn a lot before being convinced that i had any talent, and that i could make money through creativity.  A lot of people dont know that every individual is endowed (as a child) with some talent and the seed of ideas and "Genius" is some times allowed to grow in some shape or form,  but that it has to be trained.  It is a seed that  will grow but has to be watered, live in good soil and conditions….

Decorated door to the Studio Atelier in via Fiesolana

Now it is a private place and totally redone

 I think of Bob Dylan 's Genius and i love this songwriter  mainly for this one rebellious song.   I wonder how he found  the words, and even tho i like all of his music, this one song resonates in a special way.  Why do i feel it so close to my heart ?  As a Muslim born in the Middle East and with an Asian heart ,  these words are unbelievably  expressive.  Perhaps even in the US , a first world country  with the strongest economy in the sixties , admired for and  professing  Democracy, there was some thing similar to what we had.  The song is about repression of creativity , and of playing the game by the rules. Also about people not being encouraged in this direction (of creativity) even now ….   it is  talking about a political agenda.  Just recently a friend told me that only people from military backgrounds could be successful in the Arts ! which was an unexpected thing to hear  …. but i consider the fact that she is a communist.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Bob Dylan

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Johnny's in the basement

Mixing up the medicine

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government

The man in the trench coat

Badge out, laid off

Says he's got a bad cough

Wants to get it paid off

Look out kid

It's somethin' you did

God knows when

But you're doing it again

You better duck down the alley way

Lookin' for a new friend

A man in the coonskin cap, in the pig pen

Wants eleven dollar bills, you only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot

Face full of black soot

Talkin' that the heat put

Plants in the bed but

The phone's tapped anyway

Maggie says that many say

They must bust in early May

Orders from the D.A. Look out kid

Don't matter what you did

Walk on your tip toes

Don't tie no bows

Better stay away from those

That carry around a fire hose

Keep a clean nose

Watch the plain clothes

You don't need a weather man

To know which way the wind blows

Oh, get sick, get well

Hang around a ink well

Hang bail, hard to tell

If anything is goin' to sell

Try hard, get barred

Get back, write braille

Get jailed, jump bail

Join the army, if you fail

Look out kid

You're gonna get hit

But losers, cheaters

Six-time users

Hang around the theaters

Girl by the whirlpool

Lookin' for a new fool

Don't follow leaders, watch the parkin' meters

Oh, get born, keep warm

Short pants, romance

Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed

Try to be a success

Please her, please him, buy gifts

Don't steal, don't lift

Twenty years of schoolin'

And they put you on the day shift

Look out kid

They keep it all hid

Better jump down a manhole

Light yourself a candle

Don't wear sandals

Try to avoid the scandals

Don't want to be a bum

You better chew gum

The pump don't work

'Cause the vandals took the handles

1998

"living by  my production of art" 

"A Dream Come True"

I had been living comfortably in Via Delle Cinque Giornate ( The street was called after the five days of revolt in Milan 1848. this  was the first struggle towards independance in Italy to break away  from the Austrian empire).  The apartment  was in the Fortezza area in Florence . I lived here for many years, but all through the fifteen years i had stayed there,  i had never been able to travel to other countries in europe as i wanted to.   I had met Guido while i was living in via Maggio and he had written a formal letter of proposal to my parents and seemed to be serious about getting married.  I had made a big move from via Maggio where i lived during 1983 and 1984 while i worked as a shop assistant in the center of Florence . We had met when i was sharing the flat with Emily Miller the 23 year old photographer from New York  .  Emily told me that  her previous flatmate who was from the US had left her position as a shop assistant.  She  told me that i could try  working for the family in their shop in Borgo ss Apostoli. Thanks to Emily who introduced me to Anna Maria and Renzo  i took the job.

Later on i was working on the Ponte Vecchio for Mr Ricci.  He was a pianist but had inherited the buisness and his son was running it when i went to work there.  There were some English and Scottish girls who were working as sales people in this Jewellry store. Kathy , who was English was a striking twenty year old with a friendly attitude and piles of glorious thick blond hair .   Lina who was from Glasgow was very down to earth and had a heavy accent   kate who was Scottish as well ,  had a boyfriend from a noble florentine family.  Later on she married an Persian Russian from Baku ....
( this was an intriguing story for me )
 There were  other women  i met through work whose names i dont remember but whose life stories were interesting, we some times talked about episodes of our life while waiting for clients to walk in and buy gold jewels .  I loved these shiny objects and ornaments but once i started to study i lost an interest in adorning myself with the gold and wanted to make beautiful things myself.
Mr Ricci  came to visit some times and  talked about when the river Arno (which runs through the center of town) , flooded everything in the old shops on the Bridge.
 For him  the "alluvione"was a recent experience even if it had happened two decades ago on the 4rth of nov 1966.  An international effort was made to restore the city center.

This was the time when i finally left via Maggio and moved to via Bolognese , to live in a students appartment with Jurgen who had a very friendly girlfriend from Naples, Andrew (his friend who was a PHD student, he was leaving his room to me ) ,  A woman of my age  Sonia (who was from Ohio) with her beloved  cat Arthurro.  She was soon to be married to Franco in the town hall and every one was looking forward to being invited because the ceremony was  in the Palazzo Vecchio.

She was marrying a respected accountant  and last but not least, Silvia who was from Sardinia a hard working waitress who had a room but didn't live there  .  Sonia was working  as a  sales person just like myself and we became friends, right until she moved away and went to live far from the center  in a modern district called Scandicci.

I could confirm what my brother (who lived in LA in the 90's ) would say later on .... "when you live abroad .... People you meet become your family ...."

Part of the door sculpture i made in 1998

In 1984 jurgen and Silvana moved to an appartment in Via deele Cinque Giornate but since he had found a job in the United Nations he soon went to live in the Congo.  Since  i had started to study at university i stayed in the new apartment, which had a huge terrace and a fig tree leaning in from the neighbor's garden.

There was a organized trip to Paris while i was in the Art History class , but i only saw the city of lights in the ninties after having finished writing my Thesis.

 I had been to a foundation course at Saint Martin's in 1980. The revolution had broken out and i didnt know if my family  could  support me in the UK.  I had gone to Karachi to meet them  that year and i had stayed in my aunts house for a year ....   Why was i having to pay for a revolution i didnt even agree with ?  It was as if all of a sudden i had to be part of a people who were doing all sorts of things which involved me .  That is the sad thing about being born on this planet ....  i didnt even like the Iranian traditions and was glad to be away from them but every one else saw me as being part of that picture.  It was a joy for me to see how my brother had taken "the female role" of serving tea to visiters when he was back from living in the US , i had always disliked to have to perform the tea ceremony.  He had finally learnt to do things on his own and he would say ... "dont worry i know how to do this"!

It was partly because of my mother's  attitude towards me that i left home.  A lot of girls dont know how lucky they are when they have a mother who is on their side ....  i thought i would be less trouble for my parents if i created what seemed to be a new chapter in my life .

That is why  i decided to continue my studies in Italy.  My mother had taken me with her to London as a seven year old and during this trip we had stopped over in Rome and stayed there for a week, i had always remembered this experience in  Rome.  Even though i had had a good experience there, i liked the smaller cities and wanted to  find a place to study in Florence seemed a good choice at the time.
Sonia had found a cat and i adopted it even though the creature was already pregnant, I called her  Mooshie and she was to be my companion for the next fifteen years in this appartment.  I wrote a book about my artistic path which had started in London in 1979, It became a real life mission .  I published "A Time For dreamers" in London in 2013 (Arthur Macauley Publishers)  and it has some pictures of my paintings in it …

Life before the internet and PCs.the 80s meant a lovely Olivetti  typewriter ...The  PC came to the university in 1990.  Only the wealthy had PCs in their homes .  I had been introduced to Patrizia who kindly allowed me to use her machine and invited me to go to her home when i needed to write . She had studied with an Australian Prof called Mrs Hubert and we had both an interest in Feminist themes (she had followed the Australian literature seminars)

 One of the things i remember from these is the story of one of the first Australian woman writers  who wrote her books and diaries after a hard days work and in secret, under bed covers  ..... which proves that  Genius does not need computers ....  other examples  of this;  i can think of a lot of  songs and  inspirational  music i have loved and listened to ....  produced in the sixties … seventies and eighties and right upto now.
 After The Beatles there had been a lot of great song writers who had poetry which spoke to everyone who knew British culture. I had discovered David Bowie and his Space Oddity;  it was amazingly expressing a feeling that the future of the planet belonged to all of us (People living on the planet)  and not only to the countries which had achieved the moon walk.

Space Oddity

David Bowie

Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God's love be with you

Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Lift off

This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare

This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today

For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows

Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you...

Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do

 Many years later in 2019 i was talking to a very well read and well travelled  girl friend in Italy .....  about how i'd been told by a Russian Mormon minister i had met in Paris, that the Mormons were involved in a project concerning the construction of  Space stations which were for the future homes for the human race.

 These were perhaps "science fiction" dreams of creating cities in  space,  Something reminded me of the film Avatar ......  i imagined  people would be actually living their life  in Outer space and  sadly the planet earth and its resources would be consumed by this effort. and i didnt want that to happen.

 In the crazy enthusiasm to go and live in outer space they would destroy the planet and all the creatures on it ....  that didn't sound good to me .  Space travel   had always been a positive idea and this was romanticized in Bowie's "Space Oddity" ,  but here we are , even in this minute .... loosing the birds and the bees which are determining factors in agriculture and the bigger mammals  and some people , who are  (higly educated but insensitive to the planets well being) , couldn't and wouldn't do anything  about what the industries  were doing to the environment.  For some people,  the issue  was   about who got to live in space stations and who didn't ....


    I was very surprised  by my friends attitude especially when she turned round and said  that "they" ie the ones who had the power ie the movers and the shakers of the world  were only constructing these Space Stations  for "their own people" ie "the privileged few"  !  On the contrary to what she said about it being exclusive , i had heard from the priest that  all of the religious world (ie the ones who didn't believe in birth control) would be  encouraged to create more babies because everyone could have a home in space !

.  The idea was  that there was always going to be the possibility of creating "cities in space" and China,  and Africa and India and all those people  who don't  like birth control , can eventually send their people "out there" to populate space !  ....

Could there be people who really had this attitude ?

I didnt tell her my opinion about the subject .... but i am sure that i am not the only one to want to solve earthly issues first and keep the world population contained so as to save the animals and plants and the equilibrium in the natural world we live in ...
  .   
 The song "Space Oddity" meant a lot to us  "star gazing people" , but in a naiive way  ....  we were the innocent ones ,   thinking that "Profit" would not  be   entering  the picture sooner or later and munching up all the resources the earth has in order to make a sad unnatural  world  without trees and animals. 



 The music which influenced my days and the mood was different when i started to make the hanging sculptures.
,Much later on my friend  Steven  introduced me to the music of Aphex Twins and this contributed to my making the wire sculptures in the 90's.I was very pleasantly surprised when a galerist in Florence was so enthused about one of them that he got up the ladder to hang them up,   ....  it was a lot of effort for him and Piero's attitude made me feel that i was communicating something important, he believed in them just as much as i did ....

.

The Via Fiesolana Studio was a small space but i had the wire sculptures hanging in the studio.   It was September 1998 after i had achieved my  degree and had had an exhibition in the DEA Gallery .  Finding this studio  was partly due to my prayers and partly because of  Sarina 's boyfriend  Eric who was from Arizona and a Mormon. We ie Sarina and Eric and myself were in our early 30's  and he was one of the rare people who talked about space projects and he claimed to be  a sculptor.  A lot of the young people i had met were pressured by their history .... Italy being a museum and the creations of the artists there, were certainly humbling and one  was even  careful about introducing youself as an  artist.

 Eric had had a studio in the Santo Spirito area and would talk about his experience as an artist in Pietra Santa which is the town were all self respecting sculptors visit.  Eric inspired me ... i had made a series of hanging objects with metal wire, i had some big ones hanging in the via Fiesolana studio and i wished i could sell them  as chandeliers.   I had started to make them in Via Delle Cinque Giornate.  Later on when i went to Paris for a short visit i saw a Gallery in saint Germain full of objects made from twisted metal wires … it was amazing ! Some one was doing the same thing and even tho theirs was much more polished and professional , I thought mine where much better and pretty cool as well.   In such cases you have a critic who writes about your work and does publicity for the art work and i never had a chance to get next to an Art critic !

 Eventually i found my idea in a up market trendy restraunt near the camp site where i stayed for a month. It was next to the Bagatelle park in Paris. I was not the one to make the dream come true.  Mainly because when my brother came to visit in the year 2000.... even tho he worked on this piece s, but we  couldnot be inspired to put bulbs in it like i imagined .... basically he couldnt believe that we would be successful .  Such is the irony of life .... in later years , when i was wondering around in Paris , i found just such a chandelier hanging in a restraunt entrance , it was very similar to what i had made but i thought my object was even more fascinating and beautiful ....!   There was a big gallery space in San Germain which was selling a lot of objects in the same style using wires ..... i had had the intuition and i had to  be happy with seeing others working on this  idea.

(these sculptures disappeared as always"mysteriously!.... one was in my garden in Spain .... in a house i had bought in 2010 on the Costa Blanca)  .

(A lot of my art would disappear.) even in  later years in a Dubai gallery called  Mondo Arte  situated in the prestigious  fabulous Kempinskij Mall  a painting i loved very much  was stolen, Later on the man who was managing the gallery told me ; "there is a war going on (probably meaning that because i was Iranian i was having to pay a price for actions for which i wasn't responsible) and this painting disappearing  is the result of it"  ..... i still dont know who's done it or is doing it)

cosmopolitan time

The Higgeldy Piggeldy Bag 2016 Paris

(The Higgeldy piggeldy bag disappeared in Paris where i had made it in my apartment in the 18th district and had had it on view at the ADZAK Museum for some months)

Two hand written books were taken from a deposit in Paris where i paid monthly for the Box. Yet another  example of important (for me) but worthless things which was taken from me recently in Dic 2018 from a "friends"  home was a short story called " Hamdan Street"  this story was about a dream i had had about Abu Dhabi where i was going to frequently in order to get a visa for travelling to Europe. Even tho i dont understand what is going on i guess i have to be expressing my humility because i have grown to be sixty and i havent achieved what i saw other people produce and place in galleries as Objects of Design.  I still dont feel like an adult and i tried hard to be devoted to creativity in a good sense.  Celebrating what was important to me, and i still havent understood how to live in the world.

The Studio Atelier was a full time job and a risk i was taking since i tried to make money without asking anything from my parents.

The Girls Who Lived Upstairs

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There were these pretty girls living upstairs ,  The studio space looked onto the court yard .  The whole building was  full of appartments but it looked as if there was no one living in it .

Muriel and her boyfiend used to have shouting sessions often .She lived upstairs with the other girls as they were architecture students sharing a flat .  Once one of the girls invited me upstairs and i really liked the view from the window . Downstairs i only saw the   garage and the men working in it.

I knew one of them who was called Antonio  ....  he had come to a party once with his scandinavian girlfriend .  The party was at a young man's country house;  He had become very successful  recently because an Irish actor had decided to go to his workshop to learn how to make hand made shoes.  Daniel Day Lewis had just won some prize for his film "My Left Foot" and  had for some reason adopted this shop and had made him a very sought after shoe maker.  He looked at the foreign people at his party with a sort of superior expression, and i thought it was as if we weren't really stable and respectable people like he was perhaps because his young wife was expecting.  His traditional life style was certainly different to that of a lot of artists.  Perhaps i would say today "That connection with the famous actor made his carreer and if i had had some one like Mr D.D. Lewis among my friends my artistic carrer too would have taken off .   The nice thing about the party was that people like Antonio who were from the outbacks of some southern Italian village  could come to this party full of northern artists and intellectuals. This was only possible because of his good looks.  This factor was of the utmost importance here .  "Poveri Ma Belli"  era un film di Dino Risi del 56 whi,ch translates  literally as "poor and yet beautiful", but i think this expression is so "alive" in Italy, since personal beauty can  mean a lot.  Some one said this about me when i was 25  meaning that i was a young pretty thing who didnt have money .....

 That party in the farm house on the hills somewhere outside of  the city of Florence  was full of art students from a private art school run by Charles Cecil and Daniel Graves.  I had known about the party  through Verena who was a model and a student there.  Verena had rented a room in the apartment where i lived.  She was 23 when i first met her and had come down from Dusseldorf .....  after some weeks she started to work at the art school.

Even tho she was a very pretty young woman she had a deep side to her and in our first conversation she had told me about a friend of hers at high school who had a small coloured spot on his skin which became bigger every day and they discovered that it was  malignant  .  He had died within a month or so  .... this story came out of the blue and it made an impression on me as if it meant to say that even if you are young and everything is going Ok in your life ....  things happen which change everthing.  I dont know if she had come away from her home town because of this, but it was not a revolution in the country or a war that she was running from.

In  her case  she had certainly started a new chapter in her life.  I had found out later that she had gone back to Germany and was now teaching art in  Leipzig. 

Even if the students and girls living  upstairs in via Fiesolana were more grounded and were working and studying  they were all single except for Muriel who was from Puglia and since i already had a good friend from that region , i had found out that we shared  the same wavelenth .  The  people from that region are special and  it was probably an emotional thing.  Muriel would sometimes complain that her boyfriend was too "middle class" in his attitude. They couldnt get it together because he had those "being proper"  ideas !  

They were living in their own movie and the battle was going on .... and it was a real one because everyone could hear them shouting at each other in the neighborhood.  Finally they split and she went on to open a sandwich place next to an open air cinema and got together with a working man who delivered drinks , and peaceful  cooperation reigned in the new relationship.   But Muriel now started wearing very short skirts and perhaps that was a new version of her .....  One  hopefully learns through experience!

  Another very pretty girl found an African boyfriend and that was exceptionally daring of her because even if women were looking for partners , they had to be really open minded to get together with some one from that continent.  Even if the French were used to mixed marriages and couples , here it was a new thing.    I knew of women who had decided

to get out there and go against the social rules.  One of these women had married a Cuban Musician  who wasn't white  and her child who was very charming and loved to sing and dance was also 2not white".  This was a conversation piece for the older ladies some of  which couldnt understand  the choice of marrying a "coloured" man who wasnt rich! 

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My beloved Pets