Turkish ceramic artist Mehmet Gursoy exhibits his work in Houston, Texas.
Date and Time: September 8 – 9.
Location: Turkic Cultures and Children's Festival , 900 Smith St. Houston, TX 77002.
"Mehmet Gürsoy, teacher and entrepreneur, paints with delicate finesse, accepting then breaking the rules and he has set the new standard, becoming the leader, most artists choose subtly to follow" "Prof. Henry Glassie (chairman of Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania)"
Originally a student of Prof. Muhsin Demironat, he has devoted 24 years of his life to art of Çini. While being based on 16th Century art, his work brings to the contemporary world a unique interpretation of Iznik, rather than being an exact replica of that period.

Houston Turkish Festival, Turkevi, Turkish Cultural Center

On a competition organised as a part of the 1986 '1st International Symposium of Çini' he was awarded first prize for vase, first place for plate and second place for panel decoration. His work is at constant display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations of Ankara Turkey, and Santa Fe Ethnographic Museum and Indiana University Museum of Art in the USA. The artist, who has also been lecturing at the Çini Department of Dumlupýnar University of Kütahya for the last three years, has exhibited his work in several countries. He actually carries on his work in the new capital of Çini, Kütahya.

You can see it in any major tourist area in Turkey, in small shops and large, in bazaars and neighborhood stores: row upon row of Turkish ceramics -- a dizzying array of plates, bowls, vases, pitchers, coffee cups, ashtrays, tiles -- in short, anything that can be fashioned from clay. And the name most frequently mentioned in connection with it is Kutahya, a pleasant city about an hour's drive from Eskisehir in Central Anatolia.

Armed with insufficient money and almost maxed-out credit cards, I decided to head for this mecca of pottery-lovers. My goal was to meet Mehmet Gursoy, an artist whose work I had become familiar with in Ankara, and whose pieces clearly stand far above the rest in terms of beauty and technical excellence. After perusing countless small shops crammed with a profusion of ceramics so garish that it left me wondering why I had come here, I fled to the peace and quiet of Gursoy's shop and relaxed in the cool elegance of his finely crafted work.