Local women create teepee art to promote peace project

This week, people on all seven continents will exchange art in an effort to promote peace.

The nonprofit Global Art Project asked participants to create works that express their vision of world peace, and then matched participants with others around the world.

Kim Rayfield

Miriam Wilchanovsky and Dakota Walker paint a panel of the teepee their group, Powerful Women, created to represent peace as part of the Global Art Project. The teepee soon will be mailed to Healing Arts Group in England in exchange for its work of art.

Along with the paintings, poems and sculptures traversing oceans will be a teepee created by a group of Lowcountry women.

"We wanted to be out of the box," said Powerful Women founder Dakota Walker, adding that something from American Indians seemed appropriate.

The structure provides "a place for people to sit, pray, meditate, whatever they feel brings them closer to peace."

Sixteen members of Powerful Women, a philanthropic and social organization for women seeking meaningful connections, spent two days creating the teepee.

It uses an eclectic mix of materials — sticks, cloth, ribbon, paint, feathers, bells and shells — to appeal to a variety of people who may have different experi-ences, Walker said. Someone could think the teepee is ugly, but love the sound of the bells.

One panel is decorated with 24 translations of the word "peace." Another depicts dancing figures, alluding to the celebration of life. Doves made of various upholstery pieces fly across another panel.

The group also will mail a journal in which they recorded thoughts on peace while sitting individually in the teepee and will ask the recipients to record their thoughts in it as well.

"We are all one," wrote Rena Lasch. "May we expand our circle of compassion even wider. May we open our hearts even wider. Look for what we have in common. Peace starts in our own heart, in our own home, in our own neighborhood, in our own community, and continues to expand outward until we all connect embracing the world in peace."

"Peace, friendship, love, acceptance amongst the beauty of the Lowcountry in coastal S.C. This is where we built this teepee," wrote Michele Turner. "Let it be a quiet place, a refuge where you can always go to contemplate world peace, wherever you are. It all starts within. Let the peace inside you shine, and spread to others. Know that this art project was created not just as a piece of art, but also to shelter you, and provide a safe place to retreat when you need to find a sense of peace within yourself."

Powerful Women will mail the teepee and journal to the Healing Arts Group in West Yorkshire, England. After receiving the art, groups and individuals are asked to display it in their communities. Exchanging all of the art in the same week results "in thousands of messages of peace and goodwill simultaneously encircling the Earth," according to Global Art Project's Web site.

Initiated by a woman in Tucson, Ariz., in 1994, the project aims to connect people of diverse cultural backgrounds and create "a living network of cooperation that can help to make the vision of peace a reality."

Walker first participated when she lived in Arizona. Her media included bricks, she recalled with a laugh.

She introduced Global Art Project to her group this year and hopes to become a regional coordinator before the next Global Art Project event, scheduled for 2010. Charleston groups and individuals had participated twice before, 10 and 14 years ago, said Katherine Josten, founder of Global Art Project.

"I'm very excited that Dakota Walker and the Powerful Women are getting people there involved again," she said.

Reach Kristen Hankla at 937-5548 or khankla@postandcourier.com.