100 Bottles of Peace:
Meditation on peace through ink-brush painting
Here is another way of saying “Peace be with you”: Draw a picture of a vase and gift it to someone. In the East Asian Cultural sphere where people traditionally read and wrote Chinese characters, artists often used homophones and puns to add another layer of meaning to a painting. A bottle and peace are pronounced in the same way, so it became a popular motif for the artists to paint. We are going to immerse ourselves in the meditative art of brush painting and calligraphy and draw a vase together while reflecting on the meaning of peace.
100 Bottles of Peace at Nassau Presbyterian Church, Princeton, 2024
How it began in Minneapolis, 2009
I started this project at my shared art studio at the Keg house during an Art-a-Whirl, a community organised studio event, in 2009. I drew 100 different bottles in ink and people were invited to put in the bottle in words and drawings, what peace means to them. It was to give a form to the abstract concept of peace, and by doing that I wanted to give presence to peace, as a shared, tangible object, in a form of bottles.
Exhibition, 2010
I took the drawings of the bottles to the libraries, my poetry meetings and people put their peace in these drawings. I also mailed them to friends in NY and DC and they took the empty bottles to their group of friends and collected peace in these bottles. I successfully collected over hundred messages of peace, each one unique. I projects these bottles as a slideshow during my exhibition, “Perpetual Tension,” at Fallout Urban Art Center in Minneapolis. The images of these drawings are posted in my blog: https://simmeringart.com/category/kimyibo-art/making-art-together/100-bottles-of-peace/
100 Bottles of Peace 2.0 in Princeton, 2024
When I was invited by Nassau Presbyterian Church to reactivate 100 Bottles of Peace Project, I had an opportunity to discuss the project with people in the organization who are experienced in collaborative work through the arts. “What if people were invited to participate in the process of drawing the bottles and through that process, have a chance to express themselves through the brush?” This resonated with me profoundly I wanted to share how I use East Asian brush painting in my own life and art as a grounding process. For me, to be grounded in my own body and here and now is how I experience peace. So I led 2.5 hours of workshop on Meditative ink-brush painting 🔗 Peace Bottle.