peace beyond dates

As Mary Jane wrote in her latest entry, the project for Peace is 'never - ever - over'. The 21 of September is a symbol, not a limit or a compulsory formality. So I hope you won't mind my posting the flags for peace created by our Spanish group 'Roots' today, on the 23rd. They set them flying on Friday, 21 September in the morning and I only got the photographs yesterday.

This is the Medieval stone bridge leading to the Town Hall of Valderrobres, where our ten flags are flying now and till the end of October.

As you can see, hanging the flags required some climbing skills! The intrepid Lilianne Cantó went up the ladder to hang her installation, an Earth globe made from barbed wire with branches of olive tree inside and a foam pigeon holding an olive branch in its beak.

The rest of the flags awaited their turn on the stone floor of La Lonja.

And then everyone got busy...

And the flags came alive...

Birgit Ploessner is a German painter who recently moved to Spain. Her lively blue flag is her first collaboration with our Group.

There is a poem written in German on her flag. I am really sorry that I cannot translate it.

Jordi Ferrer's flag installation depicts the contrast between the opposing forces of Peace and Conflict, symbolized by the white/blue and dark red colours.

Jordi is a graffiti artist, a video artist and a photographer. He was also the one who took these shots and our thanks go out to him through this blog too.

Ángel Vilamajó painted his flag on canvas and he didn't go about it the easy way!

The difference in styles and media speaks of a cheerful, bright dedication to the idea of Peace.

Jordi's dog. Not an artist but sooo peaceful!

Esther Hofmann is a Swiss painter who chose to live in this part of Spain with her husband. Isn't this coexistence of people with different nationalities a sign of peace in itself?

My own flag among the others.

 Silvia Sanmiquel's letter installation. It says 'peace is freedom'.

Francesca Payera's flag with the word 'PAU' on the background. 'Pau' is Catalan for Peace.
Ángel Vilamajó and Francesa Payeras run the beautiful 'Mas Marianets', a country
house and art centre that I blogged about here.

Ana Carreras' deliberately naïve flag, a world of joy and colour.

And the completed installation.

The Medieval building of the Town Hall relates Peace to History, our cultural backgrounds, the passage of time and what we all learn from it.

a white flag for peace

This is my finished flag and I am now excited anew about being part of this project. Today is International Peace Day and I am able to add my tiny grain of sand. I have been going through the entries and I can see that the blog is virtually flying high with them all! Mary Jane, you gave us such a wonderful opportunity, thank you.

After considering a (too) wide range of ideas and possibilities, I decided that fabrics would be my medium and white my colour of choice. My flag is made up by three different fabrics. A hand-woven piece I made with an old toy-loom, a larger piece of white cotton cloth and a shorter backing of white sack cloth, that you can see through the cotton. I used macramé cord to weave the first fabric and a long piece of cord is hanging loosely below the flag itself.

A close-up view of the upper part of the flag. Here you can see the woven fabric better. The white fringe is made up by the loose ends of the warp-threads.

The lower part of the flag, where I added a white twig that is being held in place by a couple of white ribbons. I spent more than 4 hours hand-fraying the edges of the cotton cloth!

Everything was hand-stitched here, I never used a sewing machine. Stitching by hand means spending more time with your work, establishing a long, calm dialogue with it and getting to know its needs and requirements better.

Here you can see the three fabrics better. The sack-cloth can really be seen through the cotton when the flag is hanging in an open space.

Sewing, weaving and working with cloths and fabrics are activities carried out in peace. Traditionally, fabrics were used to dress people and their homes, to protect them from the elements and to keep them warm and wrap them up with love and care. White is a peaceful, serene colour and it is also the colour of truce flags.

I will soon be posting photographs of my flag flying along with other nine flags made by the Spanish group of artists called 'Roots'.

weaving my way to a flag

Hello again from Spain. I am delighted to announce that Autumn seems to be finally here. After four consecutive heat waves in a month and a half - and two previous ones starting in June - the temperatures have gone down, we had some delightful and much needed rain, and I was able to start working on my flag.

After hazily considering and discarding different projects and ideas - a rope ladder included - I decided to use fabrics for my flag. And I started out be weaving a small piece on a toy loom I've had since I was a child. This small piece of fabric only measures 18 x 22 cms (7.2 x 8.8 inches) and it was my first attempt at weaving in decades! I used a three-strand macramé cord, separating the strands and weaving them one by one. My toy loom can weave up to a length of 1,5 mts though (about 5 feet) and my next piece will be quite longer.

I will sew the woven pieces to cotton fabrics and work on the whole. The flag will reveal itself to me in the process, so I don't have the definitive idea in my head yet. That's my usual way of creating, I start a project and let it guide me along. I follow its wishes.

My flag must be finished by 10 September, along with the flags of the other ten participants from the Group 'Roots', so I will soon show you more work. My own and that of the other artists.

Have a lovely week and enjoy the change of season, whatever it may be!

inspiration

this tumblr account is dedicated to images of prayer flags,


there are so many breathtaking images - 


thank you so much to the moderator for all of their work... 


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did you know -

traditional prayer flags are flown in the order

blue - sky

white - cloud

red - fire

green - water

yellow - earth

relating to the five  elements and the five buddha families... 

if there are any links of inspiration or information that you know of and would like to share, please let us know... we will add them to the developing pages... 

thank you -