Nāser Houshmand Vaziri (

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

: ناصر هوشمند وزیری; born 1946) is an Iranian

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

Biography

Naser Houshmand Vaziri was born in 1946 in

Hamedan Hamadan () or Hamedan ( fa, همدان, ''Hamedān'') (Old Persian: Haŋgmetana, Ecbatana) is the capital city of Hamadan Province of Iran. At the 2019 census, its population was 783,300 in 230,775 families. The majority of people living in Ham ...

Pahlavi Iran The Imperial State of Iran ( fa, کشور شاهنشاهی ایران, ), also known as the Imperial State of Persia, was the official name of the Iranian state under the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty. It was formed in 1925 and lasted until 197 ...

. At the age of five he moved with his parents to

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

. He considers his mother as the single most important influence on him as well as his artistic life. He is a graduate of the Fine Arts Faculty of

University of Tehran The University of Tehran (Tehran University or UT, fa, دانشگاه تهران) is the most prominent university located in Tehran, Iran. Based on its historical, socio-cultural, and political pedigree, as well as its research and teaching pro ...

. After graduating from university, Mr Vaziri began to work in his sculpting

studio A studio is an artist or worker's workroom. This can be for the purpose of acting, architecture, painting, pottery (ceramics), sculpture, origami, woodworking, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, industrial design ...

on ''Fātemi'' Street in Tehran. He continued to work in this location for over thirty years. Around 2005 he closed this studio and moved to Lavāsān, in the

Lavasanat District Lavasanat District ( fa, بخش لواسانات) is a district (bakhsh) in Shemiranat County, Tehran Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 22,289, in 6,615 families. The administrative center of the district is Lavasan. The Dist ...

, in the northeast of Tehran, where he works on his life-dream, turning his home and surroundings into a

workshop Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the only ...

and an in-and-outdoor art

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

. He is further digging a

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

into the

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited Summit (topography), summit area, and ...

, hoping to reach a natural tunnel in the process. In doing so, he is simultaneously turning the dug tunnel into a museum of arts. He intends also to create, amongst other things, the real-size sculptures of all the

mythical Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...

heroes of

Ferdowsi Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi ( fa, ; 940 – 1019/1025 CE), also Firdawsi or Ferdowsi (), was a Persians, Persian poet and the author of ''Shahnameh'' ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poetry, epic poems created by a sin ...

Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' or ''Shahnama'' ( fa, شاهنامه, Šāhnāme, lit=The Book of Kings, ) is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,00 ...

. Mr Vaziri is the creator of twenty-five of the real-size sculptures that have been installed in the ''Laundry Museum'' of Zanjān and of the thirty sculptures of the '' Bagh-e Ferdowsi'' (The Garden of

) in northern Tehran. Although

stone In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its Chemical compound, chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks ...

is his favorite material, he works with such other substances as

mud A MUD (; originally multi-user dungeon, with later variants multi-user dimension and multi-user domain) is a Multiplayer video game, multiplayer Time-keeping systems in games#Real-time, real-time virtual world, usually Text-based game, text-bas ...

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of s ...

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

fibreglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clo ...

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...

and

cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mix ...

. He works both in classical and modern styles of sculpting. He is further a

taxidermist Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body via mounting (over an armature) or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word ''taxidermy'' describes the proce ...

. The sculptor and

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

Roksānā Houshmand Vaziri and the

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and sculptor Rāmā Houshmand VaziriSe
Rāmā Houshmand Vaziri
. are daughters of Nāser Houshmand Vaziri.

Notes and references

External links

Official Website of Nāser Houshmand Vaziri
* Photographs of Nāser Houshmand Vaziri, by Masoud Soheili, 2004

* Some photographs of the ''Laundary Museum'' of Zanjān: Main entranc
(1)
interio
(2)
interio
(3)
* Javād Montazeri, ''The Sculptor of Lavāsān'', in Persian, Jadid Online, 8 May 2009

Audio slideshow

(5 min 15 sec). People from Hamadan University of Tehran alumni 1946 births Living people 20th-century Iranian sculptors 21st-century Iranian sculptors {{Iran-bio-stub