Muslim Culture Mural
“PORTALS TO PEACE"
by Local Artist Lachlan Chambliss
a collaboration of Al-Huda Islamic Center, Greater Ithaca Activities Center, and Ithaca Murals

Ithaca's First Mural Honoring Muslim​ ​Culture​

Location:  Walk/bike/drive past Cinemapolis (120 E Green St) and take your first left into the Green Street Garage

“Portals to Peace" was designed by local artist Lachlan Chambliss and painted in 2016-2017.  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 picnic scene represents sharing and the body as a vessel of peace.

Lead Artist: ​Lachlan Chambliss - [email protected] ​
Project Coordinator: Nagiane L. Arriaza - [email protected]
Ithaca Murals Facilitator: Caleb R Thomas - [email protected] 607-273-5242

Goals and logistical Overview 2016

The hope for this mural is to promote inclusion and serve as a means for welcoming people to Ithaca. Al-Huda Islamic Center and Ithaca Murals announced a search for an artist to paint this wall with a theme of honoring any aspect of Muslim Culture on February 10, 2016. Lachlan created colored pencil images of two of the doorways below and the project then moved to the Public Art Commission and City Hall for approval. Approval at City Hall took twice the usual permission time, but was finally approved August 3, 2016.  Lachlan Chambliss and volunteers started cleaning and painting the wall August 28, 2016.

A preliminary digital design for Portals to Peace

Numerous organizations and community members gave donations of money and supplies including brushes, rollers, and four gallons of primer that could work with oil paints. We washed the wall thoroughly on August 28 and then let the wall dry for about a week. This is the only mural on a wall painted with oil paint and it took some research to find out what kind of primer we could use. We finally primed the wall September 3, 2016.

Painting 2016

Once the primer had dried it was possible to start sketching reference lines with pencil and blue tape on the 50 foot wall. Because the wall is on a parking ramp means that we needed to establish a level line across the entire work. The Public Art Commission requested detail added between the doors so that people would not graffiti the walls there. Lachlan chose a Moroccan tile pattern for these areas. Stencils were made with a laser cutter at the Ithaca Generator. Lachlan carefully designed these at home as scalable vector graphics 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 1 foot by 2 feet pieces of printing paper, 14 stencils had to be created for a single image.

Painting 2017

Stencils made it possible to involve many more people with painting. Many people helped paint in the stencils by very lightly dabbing oil paint over each stencil. Having small amounts of paint on the brush was key to ensuring paint left clean crisp images on the wall. 

Stenciling patterns on the wall carried on through the Summer and Fall of 2017. While volunteers, painted stencils, Lachlan painted doorways with the help of more experienced painters. Detailing for the doors was inspired by Islamic architectural designs worldwide. Triangular designs at the corners of each doorway is inspired by Alhambra in Spain. Detailing around the edge of the 1st and 5th doorway is also a Moorish design. The second doorway with the orange border is from a Moroccan building and the inside of it shows a desert area from the Middle East. This doorway contains the vanishing point for the whole mural. A long string was used to align other parts of the mural, including the edges of each doorway, with the vanishing point. The fourth door 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 fading to a blue center to create a 3D effect. The white overlay on this doorway is inspired by an entrance ceiling to a large Iranian building. The geometrical shape of the ceiling was mirrored in order to create the overlay. 

Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
November 18, 2017

Walk/bike/drive past Cinemapolis and take your first left into the Green Street Garage.

Made possible with the collaborative work and funding support from individuals and local organizations!

Photo from 2017 “Taste of Muslim Culture" event at BJM elementary school

Check out www.alhudaislamiccenter.org for information about the Al-Huda Islamic Center of the Finger Lakes!