Patterned Nuances at Pars Place
Reflections on a current exhibit in Vienna, Virginia, where patterns from AI to paper invite us to see art as both ancestral and futuristic.
When I walked into Pars Place on Sunday afternoon, I could see the vision of Arts Director Roya Chadab everywhere. With clarity and care, she had brought three artists together for Patterned Nuances. Her vision created a dialogue where art and tradition mingled with pattern and technology in ways at once surprising and deeply familiar.
“Though different in style and medium, Davar Ardalan, Abol Bahadori, and Sookkyung Park are all connected by their fascination with pattern,” said Roya Chadab.
Roya described how my stenciled works echo the recursive logic of AI, reimagining Persian narratives through repetition; how Bahadori, a master of color, layers vivid hues and intricate designs, often blending digital and AI techniques; and how Park’s lotus-inspired paper sculptures highlight the meditative rhythm of folding and form.
“Together, their art shows how pattern, cultural, digital, or natural, can serve as a shared language between tradition and innovation,” Roya reflected.
Before I even began to take in the art, I felt the weight of where we were. Pars Place, home to the Iranian-American Community Center (IACC), carries profound significance for our community in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It is where many threads of our culture and heritage are gathered together in shared memory, much like an agora, a true marketplace of ideas, traditions, and dialogue.
Board Member Roshan Alavi sums it up best: “Pars Place is shaped by our amazing community. We all work so hard, and our strength comes from building together, celebrating heritage, bridging generations, and creating a space to connect with one another and keep our traditions alive.”
As a nonprofit, the IACC has built this space as a hub for education and cultural events. Pars Place is a home where history is honored, traditions are preserved, and new conversations are sparked for future generations.
Now, that spirit is evolving with the launch of the Mosaic Room, a new initiative designed as a living space for exchange. Here, artists, creatives, thinkers, and musicians will come together not only to share their work, but to invite dialogue, spark curiosity, and build meaning collectively. Participation is at its core: a place where voices overlap, ideas intermingle, and culture is both celebrated and reimagined.
I’m honored that the first convening of the Mosaic Room will be a salon I am leading next Sunday, focused on the future of AI and cultural preservation, a conversation that extends the dialogue I’ve been exploring through my art here at Pars Place and in my recently co-authored book AI for Community, just published by Taylor & Francis and launched at the London AI Summit.
And while the AI salon conversation looks ahead to the future, at the Pars Place gallery on Sunday, we were invited into a different kind of dialogue, one of color, form, and timeless imagination, through the luminous passageways of Artist Abol Bahadori’s paintings. To stand there was to be carried into a dream of light and geometry, where the edges of time blurred.
Sookkyung Park’s paper sculptures appeared throughout the gallery, their folded forms at once delicate and enduring. Placed in different rooms, they seemed to hold a quiet strength, embodying the hope she spoke of and releasing it gently into the air around them.
In the central hall, my works stretched across the walls, where circuitry intertwined with global shablons, the ancient art of stenciling, long used to pass down patterns and meaning, uniting the mechanical with the ancestral. She Codes, inspired by my daughter and newborn granddaughter, envisions women shaping the circuitry of tomorrow’s AI, weaving its future with their own hands.
Some of my works in Patterned Nuances are framed in rustic wood, custom crafted by Maryland artist and carpenter Stu Geisbert. Using aged poplar reclaimed from old barns, Stu created frames that bring warmth and grounding to my acrylic pieces.
Through stenciling and silkscreen, I reflect on how AI learns through repetition, layering, and symbolic association. His frames, carrying the weight and memory of weathered wood, anchor that exploration in the language of time.
I think of my art as a meditation on cultural memory and digital learning. You’ll see Persian motifs and floral patterns woven with circuit board lines, arches opening into gardens of birds and code, history meeting machine logic.
In works like BCE to Binary, traces of blossoms and cuneiform intermingle with digital motifs, as I channel ancient knowledge into contemporary patterns. Stu’s craftsmanship does more than enclose these canvases, it creates a dialogue between the organic and the technological, between hand-cut wood and algorithmic design.
I was deeply moved this past Sunday, to be surrounded by those who paved the way for me. My family was there in full force. My three aunts graced us with their presence, and as I walked with them through the gallery, I thanked them for the wisdom and resilience they continue to embody, their grace and stamina remain a constant inspiration to me.
My former colleagues from NPR, Iranian-American artists and technologists, family members, and friends from the world of AI joined in the gathering, making the exhibition feel like voices from across my life converging at Pars Place.
Among them was Mary Anne Schnider, Director of the Fred Schnider Gallery of Art, whose enthusiasm for the future Mosaic Room, as a launchpad for artists to connect and shine, was deeply affirming.
After the artist talks, Dr. Gil Alterovitz, President of the Presidential Innovation Fellowship (PIF) Foundation, reminded us that AI is already beginning to shape our daily lives, and reflected on how great it was to witness art resonating so profoundly in this present moment.
Join us in the Mosaic Room: September 14
Next Sunday, Pars Place opens a new chapter with the launch of the Mosaic Room AI Salon. If the exhibition was about seeing patterns in color, paper, and canvas, the salon will be about hearing patterns in dialogue.
I will be leading the conversation, asking a question that has shaped much of my work: What if the machines remembering the world could remember our cultures too? Together we will explore how open-source AI might help communities preserve poetry, oral traditions, and archives — how technology can become a vessel for cultural memory, not just data. This will not be a lecture but a gathering in the spirit of open dialogue, where ideas, stories, and questions are shared across generations.
The salon will take place in the newly opened Mosaic Room, where arts, books, music, and ideas are invited into dialogue. Light hors d’oeuvres and refreshments will be served, but the real sustenance will be in imagining a future where heritage informs innovation, and where human stories remain at the center of technological creation.
Just as collaboration shapes my work in AI, it has also shaped my art. I’m grateful to my close friend and artist, Parinaz Bahadori, whose vision, especially her collages, helped spark my own artistic path. Her inspiration is woven into my patterns, and I am grateful for it.
I invite you to walk through Pars Place, to see the art and to take part in the dialogue. When we show up, listen, create, and give, we not only help the community come alive, but we also grow as individuals: opening ourselves to new perspectives, deepening our capacity to understand and accept, and in turn allowing both ourselves and our community to flourish, evolve, and grow stronger together.
I left Sunday’s reception deeply moved by Roya’s vision, by the hope in Sookkyung’s sculptures, by the radiance of Abol’s paintings, by Parinaz’s inspiration, by the presence of my family, and by seeing my own work in dialogue with so many voices from my life.
Remember to get your tickets for the Mosaic room and AI Salon on Sunday September 14 here.
The Art Gallery is open for visitors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays through Saturdays.
Pars Place is located at 8150 Leesburg Pike, Suite 210 Vienna, VA 22182
Phone: (571) 405–6060 Email: info@parsplace.org
You can experience the Patterned Nuances virtual gallery here.
Editorial note: I used AI to help shape and refine this blog, collaborating with a language model to enhance flow, clarity, and tone.
