Hailing from Dallas, Texas, Jason Jones started taking photos in 1980 when his mother gave him a 35mm camera for his birthday. His first step into the profession was as a photographer’s assistant at age 18. However, Jones put aside his own photography for several years after taking a job as a TV photojournalist and later working as a TV producer in America. Now living in Ulus with his Turkish wife and new baby, he picked up still photography again two years ago because, he explains, “there is obviously so much to photograph here.” He occasionally freelances for SPIN magazine (a US music publication), writes articles and publishes his photos on his own website. Jones points out that his photos are not limited to images of İstanbul but are also of people and places from his travels around Turkey.Glassworker Agnes Busnel, now living in Kurtuluş, grew up in Nancy, France, the birthplace of Art Nouveau and Art Deco glassmaking, a movement in which her ancestors took part. Having lived abroad in Hanoi and Beirut since the early 1990s, she found herself with some free time after moving to İstanbul. Busnel decided to follow a childhood dream, making childhood memories of watching the glass blowers for hours into a present adult reality by practicing the family art herself. In 2008 she studied glass fusing techniques at Camhane in Balat, then went on to learn other techniques taught by well-known artists visiting from all over the world through workshops at the Cam Ocağı Foundation, located near Beykoz. Busnel explains her present work: “I did some glass blowing, kiln casting, fusing and now focus on lampworking and bead making. While my first fused pieces were mostly inspired by Vietnamese art, my beads now tend to have more of a vegetal, organic and sometimes cosmic sort of inspiration.” On display will be her dishes, mural lamps and sculptures. Continuing her family’s tradition, she plans to open her own glass studio at a renovated home in a little French village between Toulouse and Bordeaux, country of D’Artagnan, Foie Gras and Armagnac.
While this small event is Jones and Busnel’s initiation into the world of art shows, Dawn Hannaham is an old hand. This American has been designing and making jewelry in various forms since high school, not thinking of it as a marketable skill until she graduated in the middle of a recession when her handcrafted jewelry was the only thing that was bringing in any income. About her very wearable art, Hannaham comments: “I draw my inspiration from hardware stores, lighting shops, archaeological museums, photographs in magazines and of course sometimes from thin air. I like to use good quality materials -- not necessarily expensive, but always substantial -- to make something unique. This criteria can be quite a challenge at times. I had wanted to visit Turkey for decades before the move actually happened. My awareness of the country came from people I went to school with, not so much from movies or TV. A Turkish man I knew in Washington, D.C., once told me that there was a huge district full of beads and jewelry supplies in his home town of İstanbul. ‘You should not have told me that,’ I said, ‘because now I have to go and see it.’ When I finally did, it was one of the things that made me decide to live here -- I knew that I would always be able to find supplies and equipment for one of my favorite activities. There is a similar district in New York City, and I grew up in that area, so it felt familiar.” Hannaham plans to have an online Etsy shop called “The Open Studio” and has been donating a percentage of the proceeds from her sales to assist refugees in Turkey.
Block-print work and paintings by sisters Rene and Melanie Merher, once living in Sultanahmet and now living in their native Canada, are an added bonus to the show. Their work reflects their experiences while living in İstanbul.
Come meet the artists, enjoy their creations and give them your support for a few short hours. All exhibited work is for sale.
Java Studio Café is located at Su Terazisi Sok, #9A, across the street from the Blue Hills Hotel and only two blocks west of the bottom of the Hippodrome. Please call 0535 740 18 16 for more details about the artists or the show.
