Peace and The Art of Love and Forgiveness

I came across this project the other day, and I felt like it had a connection to the Flags for Peace Project. The Art of Love and Forgiveness is the title of a 10-day art exhibition that's part of International Forgiveness Week and The Weekend Of Perfect Peace in Wisconsin.

I liked how they connected the concept of peace with a direct action such as forgiveness. This has given me something to ponder as I'm still coming up with my design and message for my prayer flags. Forgiveness of others and forgiveness of oneself has a profound impact on the people who surround us. What other actions or non-actions create peace in our lives?

do flags have roots?

Hello everyone! This is Ersi, from Spain. I haven't posted anything in this blog for quite some time but now I have news about the 'flags for peace' project here.

I am part of a group of artists called 'Roots' and we all live in the Matarranya, a beautiful small county in Northeastern Spain. Please bear with me those of you who already knew that, I thought I'd go briefly through the details again for the artists that are newer to this blog.

We are a group of 26 and there are painters, sculptors, photographers, textil artists and mixted-media artists among us. We met last Wednesday in one of our (almost) monthly gatherings and the 'flags for peace' project was one of the issues on our agenda.

We met in a lovely place called 'Mas Marianets', a country house that also has space for exhibitions, workshops, etc. I felt like sharing some photos of our meeting with you, so you can be part of our gathering.

It's not always easy for 26 artists to commit themselves to one project, there are so many things that can get in the way: jobs, family, summer holidays, previous engagements... So, for the time being, only 10 of us have confirmed that we will fly our peace flags in September. We will hold a special meeting on the subject on 27 July and then I'll be back with more news and specific details.

Some of us will work with fabrics, others with paper and one sculptor is bent on creating an  iron flag! Mary Jane, I hope we won't put your patience to the test!

The main thing that still has to be decided is whether we will fly our flags individually (I am really looking forward to watching an iron flag fly ;) or as a group. The idea would be to join all our individual creations in a larger compound and set it out in a public space, where it would remain till the weather - and some art-loving by-passers - takes its toll on it.

I like the idea of a very large 'flag' that would be the sum of ten different parts. Peace will bring them together and their togetherness will strengthen the idea of peace.

The other important thing still to be determined is where the flag/flags will go. There were many lovely suggestions on this: 1. On a by-road skirting a forest. 2. On the shore of a nearby lake. 3. On a famous local mountaintop! (I think this one won't do at all. Not if people have to walk up steep mountain trails to find out what the heck that distant huge banner of sorts is.) 4. In the main squares of the villages in the county. This one is my favourite. It would be like an itinerant exhibition of our flags and it would also be a great way for the Town Halls to get involved in the project.

I am sorry I cannot show you any actual flags yet but we'll get there. We intend to have them ready by the first week of September. And we're sure to get the local media's attention too, on the project and on this blog.

I hope you have enjoyed the tour around Mas Marianets. I wish we could all meet in a workshop there sometime!

keeping the momentum going and a supply link

one of the things i look forward to seeing is where people will diverge from and where they will stick with tradition... 

each one of us defining how we make the flags our own... 


depending upon what you plan, i found a link to blank flags made in nepal that i wanted to share:

you can find these here at the dharma shop... and they also come in a larger size as a set of 10...

have a peace-filled weekend -

supplies in, making a start

for my flags, i knew i wanted to be able to create rubber stamps with symbols of my choosing... it's something i had never done before - so with the arrival of the supplies this morning, i decided to give it a try... 


i wanted my first one to be of a lotus - i found this image in robert beer's book 'the encyclopedia of tibetan symbols and motifs' - and used an eraser (instead of the good carving sheets i had ordered)... 

while i was carving, my daughter came home from a photography workshop she had been working 


and handed me this -

a lotus petal!


she had no idea that i was working on this today (then again, neither did i until an hour earlier)

this stamp is under an 1" square... my stamps for the flags will be at least 3" x 4", maybe 4" x 6" ... i like its rough woodcut effect... 

it was a nice affirmation of what i was doing and the start that had been made... 

Sketching Prayer Flags

I've just started pondering and gathering ideas for my prayer flags. I'm never someone who just dives in head first and makes something. Usually, I like to daydream on it for awhile and infuse my projects with symbols that have the most meaning to me at this point in my life. So here are some tidbits taken from my sketchbook.

One thing I like to do is clip out magazine photos that inspire me, and you can see pictures of tubs of ice cream that I thought created a neat color palette that I might use.

I'm also feeling drawn the symbol of a butterfly, so I was playing around with the idea that in Tibet a prayer flag is called a "wind horse" and started imagining butterflies as pulling the sun across the sky.

Other things that I write in my journal are musings on what medium to use. Do I want to do photos, paintings, drawings, prints, or digital textile design?

A nifty idea I came up with was using my Lemonade Mantras positive affirmations and creating some quotable teabags to hang on a string. I'm tickled by the concept of some kind of herbal offering in a pouch with a mantra hanging on a line like little prayer flags.

When I started conceptualizing the project, I tried to look for other similar symbols inhabiting my life that I could draw from. The first memory I came upon was a line of laundry blowing in the breeze. How many of us grew up with family that hung our laundry out on sunny days and watched it dry and flap in the breeze? There was something comforting about that domestic process of hanging laundry out to dry. Can I cross this traditionally female domestic chore with prayer flags?

Another memory that makes me think of prayer flags is seeing a string of colorful papel picado banners during Day of the Dead celebrations in San Diego. Can I use paper cut to create my prayer flags?


I have a lot of choices to make, but just putting them all down in my sketchbook helps me begin to narrow my focus. For the time being I'm going to let them marinate and see which one keeps calling me to back.

What memories and symbols from your life do you connect with the concept of prayer flags!
Beth Hemmila

simply perfect

A temporary home

My flags are finished

and some have found a temporary home

on our front porch.