Art comes in many forms, mediums, and colors—and each artist draws inspiration in a different way. But not all art hangs on a wall or stands on a pedestal.
For instance, hand-woven rugs aren’t just floor coverings, they’re intricate textiles crafted by skilled artisans knot by knot. Reza Nejad Sattari may not be your typical artist, but he had a vision—to merge traditional rug weaving with the expressive beauty of fine art. In 2016, he set out to bring his vision to life by collaborating with artists whose work he admired, transforming their original pieces into hand-woven rugs made by skilled weavers in Nepal.
Sattari, the owner of Oriental Rug Mart and Art Interpreted in Eastview Mall in Victor with his wife Jila Kalantari, says, “The idea of Art Interpreted is to explore the connection between an artist and the craftsperson. It’s like translating poetry to a different language. Where are the lines of art and function and how do we bring it to a practical daily life?”
According to Hadi Sattari, Sattari and Kalantari’s son, many people don’t realize that their family store isn’t just about rugs—it’s an art gallery in its own right, featuring art from a variety of artists, including four whose works have been translated into rugs. These four artists work in distinct mediums: paint, metal, glass, and digital media. One, the late French painter Paul Reynard, was an early inspiration for Sattari, who also contacted Rochester-based artist Albert Paley around the same time.
During the early stages of the project, the team chose to source their rugs from Nepal, home to highly skilled weavers and high-quality wool that's good for making durable items like rugs. To bring the artists’ visions to life, Sattari developed a system for translating digital images into patterns for the weavers. Each design was mapped onto a 12-by-12 knot-per-inch grid, communicating color, detail, and placement. The result is a collaboration across oceans and mediums, transforming original artworks into carefully crafted decor that’s functional and truly unique.
Albert Paley
The value of an artwork lies in what the viewer brings to it, Paley notes. So when asked whether he has a favorite piece that’s been translated into a rug, he’s quick to deflect. “My thoughts have nothing to do with it,” he explains. “If you listen to a piece of music and you don’t like it, it doesn’t matter what the musician was thinking about.”
For the uninitiated, Paley is a metalsmith with global influence known for his metal sculptures. Among his array of awards and recognitions, he was the first metal sculptor to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects.
From the beginning, Paley was highly involved in the process of translating his works of art into rugs, from the quality of the wool and dyes, to the specific colors and final approvals. “He’s a real student of process and doing things the right way,” Hadi says.
Of course, taking a sculpture and rendering it into a rug is easier said than done, with the design process taking years before the rugs came to fruition.
“I’ve been involved in metal and three-dimensional forms for many decades. Drawing was always fundamental to that whole process,” says Paley, noting that before he begins doing the large physical work of creating a sculpture, he typically explores the idea through drawing. Then, he takes his drawings and creates a model from cardboard, and from there, to metal. “For me, it was an exciting possibility taking what I normally do with design sense, changing from a three-dimensional vocabulary to two-dimensional.”
Aside from the large sculptures Paley creates, he also designs decorative tables, lamps, and furniture. “If anything has an intimacy in the house, it’s a rug,” he says. “It’s tactile, it's soft, it changes as you walk on it. It has all of that fidelity,” he says. “If you have a painting or a sculpture, you look at it. When it comes to a rug or furniture you actually live with it, you sit on it, you walk on it. It’s almost like clothes and fashion, you have certain sensibilities and certain character, and you create an environment that expresses your individuality.”
Joshua Simpson
To go from an image of glass to a hand-woven rug is complicated, explains Joshua Simpson, a Massachusetts resident and a fellow at Corning Museum of Glass. At Art Interpreted, it’s easy to spot his glass globes, swirling with colors and shapes that look like worlds within worlds. In fact, astronomy and cosmology are his inspiration, and each globe is indeed a world from a different galaxy, he explains.
To hone in on translating his glass sculptures into rugs, Simpson started by taking hundreds of photographs of different sections of the glass, with a small section being blown up and enlarged to become a rug. In return, Sattari’s team sent Simpson color samples of yarns. One of the challenges was pixelation, with the glass sculptures having thousands, possibly billions of pixels, while yarn is limited within the number of knots per square inch. But Simpson was impressed with the care and detail that went into the preparation before each design was sent off to be made into a rug. “It creates a whole new different way of looking at my art in a way that I love and appreciate,” he says.
With his work displayed across the world in museums and galleries, Simpson says, “It’s amazing to think you can have some representation of my work on your wall and in your home, thanks to Reza and Hadi.”
Charles Brian Orner
Local digital artist and photographer Charles Brian Orner quickly discovered that translating his work into rugs posed unexpected color challenges.
Unlike the digital standard of color that allows you to define color from one system to another, wool is dyed using a standard called ARS. Much like Pantone colors are delivered on a card sample, a tuft of wool is dyed and treated as the standard.
Even after translation, colors might not look right—so weavers gave input on what would or wouldn’t work. “The purpose is not and never has been to perfectly reproduce the original artwork, because that’s not possible. There are too many things that are different. The purpose was to retain the impression of the original artwork and render it in wool,” he says.
The Final Thread
According to Hadi, the weaving takes about eight to 10 months, but the initial planning and color selections took years. When the rug is complete, it needs to be cleaned, torched to singe off loose fibers, and sheared flat.
Since these rugs are unique to each artist and take a long time to make, they’re all limited editions, with each artist setting the number of rugs that can be made from their works of art.
“They’re original artwork, instead of mass produced, so they're all hand-tied and hand-knotted. It’s really quite an amazing process. It takes you away from the commercialization of the environment we create ourselves,” Paley says. “It’s not something you can get from Ikea. That kind of uniqueness and that kind of personalization is very, very rare.”
People don’t realize that the family store isn’t just about rugs—it’s an art gallery in its own right. The art is currently on display at the Oriental Rug Mart and Art Interpreted in Eastview Mall. View each artist's work on the Art Interpreted website, at: https://artinterpreted.com.
“The idea of Art Interpreted is to explore the connection between an artist and the craftsperson."