By Heidi Trautmann

Love for experimenting is the motor of so many things in life and in the end it stands for quality of our everyday life, something we are all striving for but we cannot obtain with money. Artists know that, it is their daily food, so to speak.

Roya Alagheband & Mandana Mehrnia have created a workshop to share some experience with their friends, artists and art students at the ClayArt Cermaic Studio in Nicosia, to share a technique that would give their work with clay a new, exciting note, new possibilities.  A printing technique. A pattern cut into lino to serve as a template. This template is practically the negative form pressed onto a rolled out sheet of clay and the result is the positive image of it.

I found this idea very interesting and I announced my visit to my friends during the 2-days-workshop.  Roya Alagheband is an artist and art teacher at the International Cyprus University, and Mandana Mehrnia is a graphic designer and art teacher at the Kıbrıs Türk Çocuk Esirgeme Kurumu (KTÇEK), a Cyprus Turkish Children School. Roya, the spiritus rector of the idea, bespoke the project with the graphic designer Mandana Mehrnia and they developed the project. Fatma Ozok, the owner of the Clay Art Ceramic Studio, supported the idea and generously offered her studio for the realization of the project. It is planned to donate the incoming fees to the Golden Paws, a group taking care of street animals. I heard from Roya, that the money will be delivered to the Near East University Veterinary Clinic to pay for bills that have accumulated for the treatment of the Golden Paws animals. This was to explain the outer framework that initiated the workshop Lino-Ceramic.

The first steps are to develop a design or to simplify a drawing, photo or idea, to transfer it to the lino surface, and then to cut along the lines to create positive and negative spaces. Very finely grained clay is used for this purpose. The cut template is then pressed onto the sheet of clay. After a drying process the templates will be fired in the kiln of the studio and it may then be decided to glaze the object. Thus, jewelry can be made, tiles, 3-dimensional objects or as attachments to decorate other bigger objects or containers.

It is planned to continue with the workshops, also to sell the objects that are produced during the workshops in order to further support the Golden Paws Association, an initiative of responsible citizens. The organisers will have the details announced via the social media.

If you want to learn more, call 0548 835 7161.