I’ve been talking about it for ages, and it’s finally happening. Please share this link far and wide, the exhibit is up for a month and a half in a really lovely venue (with a bar!) and that’s plenty of time to catch it. I’d also like to add that during the month of July, we’re coinciding with a spectacular exhibit by my calligraphy mentor Samir Sayegh, just next door in the Beiteddine palace. Arabic calligraphy is the theme for this summer, don’t miss it!
Yesterday my fellow calligraphy artists, Ziad Talhouk, Everitte Barbee, and myself drove up to Beiteddine to take a look at the venue where we are holding our exhibit this summer. The invitation and all details will be posted as soon as I have them, but I can already say the opening will be on the 14th of July, so book yourselves! The exhibit will go on till the end of August, plenty of time to enjoy it and this truly unique location: the Beiteddine branch of the Art Lounge is a late 19th-century silk plant.You can see it from a mile away while approaching form the other side of the valley, and recognize it at once from the chimney and tall windows that characterize structures dedicated to raising silkworms and harvesting the silk.
I could give you an entire course on silk production right here, given we made a book on the subject, but I won’t digress – let me just say that one floor would be filled with white mulberry branches being devoured by silkworms, the chimney is for the furnace used to boil the cocoons, and the other floor would be busy with women unraveling the silk threads.
The inside, cleaned and whitewashed afresh by the Art Lounge. A bit messy for the moment, but soon to be rearranged for a purely calligraphic exhibit.
A bar puts the “lounge” in Art Lounge, and makes exhibits an opportunity to hang around and chill, not just look and leave. Plus the inside is cool no matter the temperature outside!
We won’t be using the second floor, but I had to take photos – look at that roof!
Not only is the space gorgeous, we’re incredibly happy that this beautiful remnant of Lebanon’s once famous silk production has been saved and revived by art. Many like it still dot the landscape, but they weren’t so lucky, most are dilapidated or doomed to be demolished.
Oh look, a kitty!
