Persian inspiration
As a child in a tiny Iranian village, Farrin Abbas Zadeh crafted her own lightbox from glass and a lamp. With it, she traced the intricate designs of Persian rugs and began gradually improvising on the designs. Pretty soon, she was designing her own rugs. “My parents weren’t very educated, so they didn’t encourage me when they saw I had this talent,” said Abbas Zadeh. The modest money she made from selling her designs went toward her education. Many years later, now an architect and urban planner, Abbas Zadeh is not only a visiting fellow in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, she is partway through her first Harvard art show, “A Window to Heaven: Motifs of Nature in Life and Dream.” An adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, Abbas Zadeh credits nature as her primary artistic inspiration. “I grew up on a farm, so nature is in...