"Illuminating Peace"

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Amy Loewan "Lantern" 2009

Amy Loewan "Lantern" 2009 Rice paper, silk, metal, wood, ink, charcoal and wheat 2.4 m x 2.7 m (diameter)

Illuminating Peace: Amy Loewan’s exhibition and artist practices center on “creating work as a vehicle for personal transformation and promoting human understanding. I am dedicated to peace building and my career as a visual artist provides me with the avenue to carry out this task.”

Loewan was born at the end of Second World War. During a time when peace was finally declared in Hong Kong, she was named Wai-Ping – Wai, in Chinese, meaning gift, and Ping, meaning peace.

While growing up her memories “include my parents caring for orphan cousins and relatives fleeing from war-torn China to British Hong Kong. After living in Hong King, the U.S. and Australia she immigrated to Canada.

In the last decade Loewan has been focused on integrating her multicultural learnings and reaching into the roots of her Chinese heritage by studying ancient symbols and eastern philosophies. By experimenting with the Chinese traditional art materials such and rice paper and ink, the large scale rice paper weaving installation of Illuminating Peace was created.

She states “When viewers are close enough to read this work, they are presented with eight values vital in human relationships: compassion, kindness, respect, understanding, patience, tolerance, gentleness and forgiveness. More than 35 world languages are interwoven into this work.”

Loewan encourages the public’s participation as viewers are invited to write/draw their visions of peace onto strips of rice papers and then weave them onto a separate panel. Loewan states “In our contemporary society when we are constantly tempted to fear and to despair because of terrorism, global warming, nuclear weapons, depletion of natural resources, rending of social fabric and so on, I strongly believe a message of hope is crucial for our well being.”

Free docent led tours of this exhibition will take place on Saturday, March 24, & April 14th from 2:00-3:00pm.