WHY MAKE MIRROR ART IN WAR-TORN TEHRAN?
Why does Aref Montazeri, an Iranian sculptor whose art sells for over a million dollars, continue to make his towering works from shards of mirror glass in his studio in Tehran, amid window-shattering bomb blasts? He gently wraps his creations in shock-absorbing material, but why continue with such a fragile medium? In a Wall Street Journal article by Kelly Crow (May 2-3, 2026), he says, “Nothing, not even war, should prevent us from pursuing what we aim for.”
Shortcut
I live in the city and often walk to my preferred destinations. Sometimes my walks include shortcuts when going to familiar places. One common shortcut was an alley which contained rats.
While the rats were disturbing and seemingly everywhere, I continued using my shortcut. At some point an intervention occurred – poison. I began to experience the mixed blessing of dying rats instead of living rats. While I hesitated to look at the dead and decaying rats, they were in my path and I couldn’t ignore them. In time, the living rats disappeared. But at the end of my alley shortcut, “my inner rats” remained alive in the office of my psychoanalyst.
Closings
At a funeral, I read Tennyson’s poem, “Crossing the Bar,” written when he was 80. He requested this poem be printed at the end of future publications of his work. He was closing his life’s work knowing he soon would be “crossing the bar.”