Audubon Arts | Creative Arts Workshop | Arts & Culture
David Judd Photos.
“Piece by piece, we’ll build peace,” reads an artwork by 11-year-old Weizhen Sheng, written in cursive above a drawing of the earth assembled with puzzle pieces. A butterfly flutters beside a youthful hand, which in turn puts the final missing piece of the planet into place.
Sheng’s piece is one of dozens in Pieces for Peace, running in the Susan B. Hilles Gallery at Creative Arts Workshop through July 14. In drawings portraying doves, peace signs, and personal and evocative messages, young artists from 113 different countries express their hopes and aspirations for a brighter future. It is a collaboration with CITYarts, a New York-based arts organization focused on youth, and has traveled all over the world.
“You can see that students have incredible diversity in how they think about what peace means to them, so they’ve created some pretty fascinating imagery,” said CAW Executive Director Trina Mace Learned. “The hope is that more and more young artists will see these works of art, and feel a little closer to people around the world. Closer to peace.”
Pieces for Peace arrived in the Elm City through what Learned describes as “A little bit of serendipity.” Recently, Learned’s daughter, Katharine Wright, met CITYarts founder Tsipi Ben-Haim at an arts event in New York. Having visited New Haven, Ben-Haim felt the city would be the perfect destination for the project in Connecticut.
The project is part of the organization’s “Young Minds Build Bridges” program, which CITYarts created in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Since then the project has grown into a worldwide movement, resulting in the creation of over 12,000 original pieces by children and teenagers in 117 countries.
Now as part of its newly launched 50 States for Peace movement, CITYarts seeks to unite youth in all 50 states. With the exhibition’s stop in New Haven, Connecticut becomes the 18th state to join the movement.
“Once I found out about it, I couldn't imagine it being anywhere but Creative Arts Workshop.” Learned said.
Each piece of art is made on a 6-inch by 6-inch square canvas. In a wide variety of styles and mediums, each young artist answers the question: “What does peace look like to you?”
In June, CAW hosted over 100 students from ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) for a workshop day. Working with New Haven-based mixed media artist Mitchell Rembert and Yale School of Art MFA candidate Lauren Flaaen, students created their own 6-by-6 works of art to show their interpretations of peace. Three days later, Rembert and Flaaen took students to the Broadway Island, where they led a public art workshop.
Together, these events produced over 100 works of art, all of which are hung across the window of the gallery in the display and will become part of CITYarts’ digital permanent collection and digital mosaic.
Pieces for Peace’s stop in New Haven will culminate with a Peace Wall mural in Fair Haven slated for later this summer. Since 2005, CITYarts has made Peace Walls in New York, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Israel. The New Haven Peace Wall will become the eighth in the world.
Taking inspiration from the art made for this exhibit by the New Haven community, this mural will be designed and painted by artists in the community. While a final location has yet to be determined, the mural is expected to grace New Haven streets by the end of the summer.
“I have seen that they have started to do maquettes of what they see the Peace Mural being and it's pretty, pretty terrific,” Learned said.
Until then, these local and international portrayals of peace will be on display at Creative Arts Workshop’s Audubon Street home until July 14, with a closing reception on the 14th from 2-4 pm.