and it was here, in Dayton, where I live: The City of Peace. This reference may or may not be familiar to readers, but Dayton really is known as the City of Peace. This is due firstly, to the Dayton Peace Accords, the agreement hammered out here to end the war in Bosnia. Since that time Dayton has become home to the International Peace Museum, the Missing Peace Art Space, the Peace Bridge, and other endeavors to promote peace in our world. Much of our city’s efforts involves the artful pursuit of peace, as I call it. That’s because many of our efforts to promote peace are visual and literary.

I was thinking about this because yesterday in my church we dedicated a permanent Prayer Wall, a place for our notes to that higher power. This had meaning for me because I was asked to create the design for the Prayer Wall, which was then built in wood by a talented craftsman. My intent was to allude to the Western Wall in Jerusalem where people of all faiths come to tuck their written prayers into the cracks of the stone wall. Our wall is wood to match our sanctuary, but it evokes the Western Wall in its design. I designed it in three parts so it also alludes to medieval triptych altarpieces.

I would like to see our focus on peace spread throughout the world. Let’s work for that. And artfully speaking, designing the wooden Prayer Wall inspired me to create collage on canvas reflection walls, which I will be posting here!

We’ll start with one: 9″w by 12″h collage on canvas, made of handmade and machine papers, clear acrylic          finish, wired and ready to hang, $165.