Muslim Culture Mural
"PORTALS TO PEACE"
by Local Artist Lachlan Chambliss

Ithaca's First Mural Honoring Muslim​ ​Culture​

The Muslim Culture Mural, by local artist Lachlan Chambliss, is a recent edition to the Ithaca Murals family.  Each doorway in the mural is a glimpse into scenes meaningful to Muslims in our community.  A market scene celebrates West African culture and giving charity. Mountains and valleys fill another window, showing the beauty of the middle east and a journey of faith.  The center window is the base of the faith in a higher power.  The fourth doorway is a scenes of Asia with a reflection of the effort to disconnect from our daily routines into meditation and prayer.  Last but not least, a late night African picnic scene, representing sharing and the body as a vessel of peace.
Location:  Walk/bike/drive past Cinemapolis and take your first left into the Green Street Garage.

Lead Artist: Lachlan Chambliss - lmc325@cornell.edu ​
Project Coordinator: Nagiane L. Arriaza - nLacka@cityofithaca.org;  607-272-3622
Volunteer Coordinator: Caleb R Thomas - ithacamurals@gmail.com; 607-273-5242

About the making of this mural

The aim of this mural was to promote inclusion in the community and to serve as a means of welcoming people to Ithaca. The original design was submitted at the very beginning of February 2016 as a very rough digital image that was composed two or three days before the deadline. This sketch was then selected by the project's judges on the 10th of February with the stipulation that more detailed sketches be provided. The additional sketches were produced in colored pencil and the project then moved to the Public Art Commission for approval with the hope of some funding.
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A preliminary digital design for Portals to Peace
After eight months of paperwork approvals at City Hall, a number of organizations made material donations to the project including brushes, rollers, and four gallons of primer that could work with oil paints. It took some time to track down people who knew what type of existing paint had been used on the wall where the mural would go, and to then see which primer would actually work on top of the existing paint. We took a weekend to wash the wall thoroughly and then let the wall dry for about a week. We were finally able to prime the wall around the last week of August 2016.

​Once the primer had dried it was possible to start sketching reference lines on the 50 foot wall. The fact that the wall was also on a parking ramp also meant that it was necessary to establish a level line across the entire work. During the second PAC meeting some members had expressed a desire to have detail added between the doors so that people would not tag the walls there. This aspect of the mural had not been included in the original design. Space had to be designated for these panels in the reference lines without really knowing what would fill that space. Eventually a Moroccan tiling pattern was chosen to fill the lower panels. To create the detailed pattern a laser cutter was used. This approach allowed for the tiling pattern to be carefully laid out at home as scalable vector graphics file using the open-source software  Inkscape. The images in the files could then be scaled up to the necessary size to fit a section of wall about 4 feet by 4 feet. Because the laser cutter could only fit 12 by 24 inch pieces of printing paper 14 stencils had to be created from the single image in order to fill the lower panels.
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Basic outlines for each doorway defined with tape and paint
With the cut stencils it became possible to involve many more people in the actual painting. Before using the stencil colored pencils were used to designate which colors should be applied where. Many people helped to paint in the stencils by lightly dabbing oil paints over each stencil. Once a stencil was complete it could be moved to another panel where the process was repeated. Lightly loaded paint brushes were key to ensuring that the applied paint left clean crisp images on the wall. 
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The stenciling carried on through the summer and into the fall of 2017. During this time the main doorways were also painted in with the help of experienced volunteers. The detailing for the doors was drawn from source material based on architectural designs from all over the Islamic world. The triangular designs around the corners of each of the doorways were adapted from the Alhambra in Spain. The detailing around the edge of the first and fifth doorways was also derived from a Moorish design. The second doorway with the orange border is from a Moroccan building and the inside of it shows a dessert area from the Middle East. This doorway also contains the vanishing point for the whole mural. A long string was used in order to align other parts of the mural, including the edges of each doorway, with the vanishing point. The fourth door with the blue outside was created from a combination of Mughal designs in India and Pakistan. The outside of the middle door was formed by altering an Egyptian carved stone design around a square doorway to fit a curved entrance. The interior of this door is filled with a yellow light that merges into a blue center in order to create some 3d effect. The white overlay on this doorway was inspired by the design on the ceiling of an entrance to a large Iranian building. The geometrical shape of the ceiling was mirrored in order to create the overlay. 
The final ribbon cutting for the mural happened in late November.
Picture
Walk/bike/drive past Cinemapolis and take your first left into the Green Street Garage.
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Photo from "Taste of Muslim Culture" a fundraising event for the Mosque that happened at BJM elementary school.
MADE POSSIBLE THANKS TO 

​The Al-Huda Islamic Center of the Finger Lakes http://www.alhudaislamiccenter.org/

as well as the Greater Ithaca Activities Center and Multicultural Resource Center.
Funding was provided by Sustainable Tompkins (Neighborhood Mini-Grant), Rotary of Ithaca, and individual donations from many many caring community members.