Sonia King, Marvelous Mosaic Artist

As a part of my Fund For Teachers Fellow Project, I will be attending a mosaic workshop conducted by Sonia King in Istanbul, Turkey.  It's actually very interesting how I came across Sonia's work.  My own students were doing a mosaic project for the Worldwide Color Wheel Project and I was doing some online research related to the project.  This is a global art project I have created to partner art and technology.  The project is about one year old and has been piloted three times and is now literally going global.  The research I was doing was for one of the pilots. Some of my 3rd grade classes were going to make a collaborative table with a mosaic top.  When the project was completed we would be Skyping with a school in Mexico and sharing our projects with each other. Anyway, I am an avid Pinterest pinner for my art program. I was searching . . .
 Pinterest for mosaic ideas when I came across a video where a mosaic artist was showing you her studio. It caught my interest and so I watched it. First of all, I fell in love with her studio and how organized it was.  But, I also could immediately tell I had stumbled upon one of the world's best mosaic artists.  So, I went to her website and looked at her work.  It is unbelievable.  I have never seen such beautiful mosaics and I've seen plenty.  I fell in love with her work immediately and recognized her giftedness in mosaic making. While on her website I noticed that she leads mosaic workshops in Turkey and Greece each summer. Well, bingo! I was already working on a proposal for the 2014 Fund For Teachers grant program and I was struggling a bit with the artist I was hoping to work with from Italy because of a bit of a language barrier.  She didn't speak English and I didn't speak Italian. Translators would always be needed. So, at that moment when I read about Sonia's workshop in Istanbul this summer I knew I had found the perfect adventure for summer professional development.  I contacted Sonia and the rest is history. The really odd thing is Sonia is from Dallas, Texas, which is just about where I live. We, of course, didn't know each other, but I think that after the trip there is a real possibility that we will stay in touch. I'd love to see some of her installations sometime. She does them all over the world. I'll be writing curriculum inspired by the Istanbul workshop and sharing it with elementary and middle school art educators, even high school art educators.  So far, we have just emailed and I can already tell we are kindred spirits. I'm looking forward to meeting her in Istanbul where people are coming from several countries to take her workshop. And, we'll be in the beautiful Roman and Byzantine city of Istanbul filled with mosaics.  What a great place to study this ancient craft.

You can read more about Sonia at:
http://www.mosaicworks.com

This is link to the video of her studio I saw on Pinterest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-dvd14AiEE

This is a video about her Istanbul workshop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ6hxHClHkM

These are other You Tube videos about Sonia and her work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYAhdIQkJYo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ZsiSdC1P0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG4PXtjPiCI&list=FLX1XorTjTLzF5dZsrKqPOpw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqnd0MCcW0

Sonia's You Tube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/whateverwerks1