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UPCOMING EVENT ” AUB Alumni Art Expo” (February 15-16, 2013)
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The designer of the paper Xper!
Fedrigoni paper company took, what is probably an unprecedented initiative to put together a designers fantasy book, inviting 16 designers from around the world each to design16 pages each as he pleases, on one type of assigned paper of the company’s range. They decided to launch part one with the works of 8 designers in Frankfurt Book Fair last October 2012. I was assigner Xper paper. I attended the launch and was invited to say few words. Here they are:
I am kameel Hawa , of the Xper paper section!
Well, as a designer my work has been tied to the design house al Mohtaraf, I started in Jeddah, the second city in Saudi Arabia some three decades ago. And as the first spread of my section tells you, my life fluctuated between Makkah, which symbolically gives Jeddah- where I live-it’s stature, and Beirut my home town. Now when I was invited to design the 16 pages of my section, I realized that’s its nearly the first time I am required to think up what I am to layout, and then think of how to do it. Being a person with relative anxiety tensions, I started looking around for what to put into those pages and ended up putting a little of nearly everything I ever did: design, word art, drawing, painting, photography, and even some of my stories and anecdotes. It was even the first time I admit writing poetry in both Arabic and English. Well 16 free pages are a lot!
Here they are and here I am. Finally, i have to say how proud i am to have my name appear together with such worthy designers. I will add no more than to thank Fedrigoni for such a wonderful initiative, though my gratitude for the company goes to having my word art collection printed on the fine paper selection few years back. Thank you all, thank fedrigoni and may initiatives of creating beautiful books never end. Danke shun, Garcia, thank you, and shukran.
Alzheimer Society gets a new trophy
Another version of the trophy was designed in wood to be put at the entrance of the association on the day of celebrations.
Saudi Alzheimer’s Disease Association commissioned AlMohtaraf earlier last year design a trophy for a special occasion that was coming up this month of February 2012. The crisscross of hope and despair, is the dilemma of the Alzheimer patient’s anxiety, pursued by the will to resist it by not abandoning hope.
This is the thinking behind the trophy design.. and here are my sketches..
Wall clock figured out!
Like most of my oil paintings, this wall clock started also from what I saw on a square
wooden clock one afternoon, I had on my wall. Why I saw those two geometric forms, and is such hues, I cannot tell. But I stood, took the clock of the wall, and clumsily painted the two areas with poorly applied water color. My intension was not to lose the experience of the moment. For months on I watched the interesting configurations those two areas had with the arms of the clock. I decided to turn it into a design piece, and ended up an oil painting on canvas for now. I had not painted for years. When I finished the first one I had a compelling urge to sign it. Here it is. This will be a numbered limited edition.
Fikr trophy
Fikr’ is Arabic for ‘thought’. After the success of our displayed sculptures at the Menasart Art Fair in BIEL, Beirut, the Arab Thought Foundation asked us for a trophy to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the renowned Fikr conference series. The trophy, designed by Kameel Hawa, is an abstraction of the Arabic word fikr in a way resembling both a thinking person (à la Rodin) and the shape of a question mark. At the base of the sculpture, one can read the slogan ‘what is thought but a question?’.
The sculpture, produced in series of three different sizes from wood, brass, and steel, was presented as a gift to HH Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, at the 10th Annual Fikr Conference.
