I made some sculptures using fabric instead of glass as the mosaic surface. This was very labor intensive, as I hand-cut each small piece of fabric and glued them on, one at a time. The design itself was fairly arbitrary, as I wasn't looking at any specific motif. The idea of Aladdin's Dog came after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent pillage of cultural objects. I became interested in the idea that this invaluable cultural legacy could so easily become a sound-bite in American mainstream media. Mesopotamia now reduced to a place where the U.S. could justify "Shock and Awe" with such seeming disregard for it's history (not to mention terrorizing it's people). I think this piece would of been more successful if I'd used a more specific historical Islamic design.
