Peace Art Project Goes Global

Loads of cookies and sandwiches and juices and happy faces and smiles and colors and circles...and peace.
Special thanks to Hiep and everybody else who helped us out and those who joined us, and those who did both!

Peacycle, love and baking cookies until 2 AM...

Peace Art in the US

I know this is a little last minute... but I wanted to invite you all to be a part of our first Cambodian Kids Imagine Peace Art project, here in the U.S. of A.

Saturday, March 29th @ 3pm
Sound Trolley Records
440 E. 17th Street
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
(949)642-4846
located behind the cleaning place.... feel free to email or call with questions.
Pass this on to anyone who would be interested to join us for peace and art!!!
Peace, love and reunion...

Shipping Peace Around the World

So by articles like this, more people get to know about our project. We are trying to ship the show to the US by the end of this month so more people will probably get a chance to experience peace through art with children.
We'll let you know about the details...

P.S. It's lovely to ship the Peace around the world... I guess it just costs so much huh?!

Peace Train

Yay! We are back on track!

We had asked our friends to save their empty milk and juice cartons for us. Today we took them to the kids from all the organizations and each group of children made a few train wagons. They decorated it and wrote their names on them. Our plan is to give each group their wagon back at the day of our exhibition at Meta House so that they will all attach their wagons and the long train would probably makes them feel more connected with each other in this peace journey that we have started .

And well, we got our fliers printed. We wanted to print t-shirts based on the logo for the kids and those who wish to get one… but at loy e … (no money!)

Peace, love and new friends...

Peace Day #11 --- Souls- "photograph peace!"

We are at the end of our Eleven Day Peace Art Journey. We purposely chose this particular group to write about for the last email. These are our photography students who inspired us so much that we started this peace art project.
We had a non-violence workshop with these kids about a month ago. The photographs that they took and the things that they said in our group discussion about the violence they face everyday in their community, moved us so deeply.
We took the students to Java Art Gallery where there was a painting exhibition titled, “Things”. We wanted the students to see the paintings and pay attention to the objects that they see everyday. Then we asked them to think about the things that are peaceful or safe to them. Some of these students have been participating in photography classes for the past two years, so they are familiar with composition and lighting. We asked them to take pictures of their safe and peaceful objects, keeping in mind different aspects of photography. As part of their group project, they also had to take pictures of different parts of their body, creating their own personal peace signs so that we can put them all together as one big poster.

Here are some quotes of what kids said about their own pictures and also their classmates’ pictures…

“The picture is like the world… and the candle is the equator. One side of the world is dark and the other is light.”

“I chose the glass because glasses are shared by all of the people around the world. It brings everyone together, like when people get together to drink tea or when someone comes to our house and we give them water. I took the picture at this angle outside because the wires confirm how we are all connected. The glass is like the globe and the sky and clouds represent the world.”

Peace, love and speechless from our side…

- Don't forget...we will have all of the children’s artwork from this project exhibited at Meta House in Phnom Penh, August 23rd @ 6 pm.
---- You can see more of these kids' pictures at: www.cambodian-kids.blogspot.com

Peace Day #10--- Little Folks - "Fishing Dreams"

Imagine if catching dreams were as easy as catching fish…
After watching a documentary at Meta House about children affected by Aids, Amanda kept thinking about the organization that she used to work with. These children are care takers for their parents who are infected by this disease. As she was talking to me about this organization, we saw one of the staff members. We took this as a sign and thought of getting them involved in our peace project. Remembering their traditional dance performances that she’s seen, we thought of using the hand woven fish trap that they use in one of Amanda’s favorite dances. Each traditional dance tells a story, and we thought that the kids would be able to tell a story about their dreams of peace. After the kids painted their stories of peace on narrow strips of canvas, we then wove them through several fish traps. Then we asked the kids to write their hopes and dreams for a peaceful future on small pieces of paper. One small boy, that wasn’t even originally part of the workshop, grabbed a marker and paper and in a few seconds drew a picture of a gun circled with a line through it. After seeing this, the other kids got motivated and came up with thousands of ideas and powerful words. After a few hours when they finished, we placed all of their writings inside of the fish traps. After that we reached into the trap and fished for dreams that are shared by all of us.

Peace, love and seeing the city through the stripes of the fish trap on the back of Amanda’s motorbike (visualize this… Setareh wearing it on her head, oh the looks we got...)

Peace Day #9 --- Sovann Komar - "Dream Jar"

Hopes and dreams should be kept safe and easily accessible, to remind us of a meaningful life. If you could imagine your dreams as objects, what would they be? And where would you store them?
Once as we were driving on our limousine motorbike, we were trying to come up with ideas of how we could store our dreams in a way that we could save them and see them at the same time. On the streets of Phnom Penh there are many mobile vendors selling different types of fruits; some are kept in large plastic jars marinating in a sour sauce. Automatically we thought that our ideas would look perfect in those same jars with the bright red lids, just without the sour flavor. What better group of kids to do this project with, than the kids at Sovann Komar. This group of children speak fluent Khmer and English and it is easier for us to speak to them. We love to fanaticize with them and talk about our dreams, and they sure do have a lot to say. They are also very young, so their imagination is so pure and amazing! After being lost in the overly packed, dark, maze through small walkways of bad smells and hanging animals of the Phsar Thmey (Central Market), we finally found a vendor with those beautiful jars and brought them to Sovann Komar. We asked the kids to draw their idea of the objects that they would like to fill their dream jars with, so that they could fill them later. “Marshmallows, buses, flowers, my friend, play doh, water from the sea, watches, marbles, leaves, stones…”

Peace, love and drinking coffee out of plastic bags in the middle of the night...