Love and Art on a Bike, In Amman
November 30th, 2009
Rima Malallah, a young woman living and creating in Amman, Jordan, is bringing her colorful handmade art to the Ammanian masses. Different from other galleries in Amman, Malallah offers a wide variety of products (including original paintings, prints, postcards, journals, cards, jewelry, handpainted ties, hand-knit scarves, bottle vases, key chains and coasters) and encourages interaction with her clients. Customers can walk in and commission a piece from her directly.
What this means, in “green” terminology, is that Jordanians have a colorful, fun place to buy local, handmade products instead of imported, machine-made products that take their toll on the environment.
Malallah’s store is called Love on a Bike and opened in July 2007. It is located in the Jabal Amman neighborhood and, appropriately, right off of Rainbow Street. The bright colors and reasonable prices make it a luring attraction.
Encouraging people to develop a love for making handcrafted arts themselves, Malallah hosts a knitting circle at her shop every Saturday.
Malallah states her attitude about the handmade quality and public accessibility of her work, saying that “I make everything you see in the store. Every little thing… I really encourage people to visit, see the work, have a feel for it.”
She also brings her work to the Ammanian public in another way, through various murals that decorate the landscape of the city. The most public of these murals is the thoroughfare of the Radisson SAS Hotel, a quarter of a kilometer long stretch that Malallah spent 3 months painting. The colorful mural depicts the dreamlike journey of a boy and a girl through stars, clouds, and trees (check out a detail of the mural above).
Have you ever been to Love on a Bike? Please share your experiences below!
Read more about the handmade revolution::
Etsy: The Ebay for Handmade Goods
Savta Connection Takes Urban Knitting to Tel Aviv’s Streets
Guy Lougashi Weaves Together Baskets and People with Recycled Paper
(This post was written by Karen Chernick, for Green Prophet)
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Naseem Tarawnah, MEY Aggregator. MEY Aggregator said: Mideast Youth: Love and Art on a Bike, In Amman http://bit.ly/53fw0y [...]
First I would like you to enjoy the bedouin embroidery which some of my relative women do and I try to promote. Please have a look. It is a matter of living for some of us here specially under the har occupation of blocked road and hope around us here.
However,
It would be funny to tell a story of a “green” and “feminist” lady who came once in her BMW Cobra to teach our bedouin women how to protect the nature and to use recycled material. For her surprise she found that we are so friend to the environment and 100% of our poor things are recycled 100 times.
Another “post-modern” sheikh came to our tiny gathering to teach us the true way of Islam and was surprised that we live exactly like the early Islam ages of Muhammad and Sahabah, before his “post-modern” preaches spoiled the core of Islam !!!
Sami, the bedouin.
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