ARISE:
A Community Peace Project
About the Project
This interactive public art project invites members of the community to participate in creating a shared symbol of hope and peace.
Participants are given a waterproof paper feather and invited to write or draw a message that reflects their wish for the world, their community, or for one another. Each feather is then gathered to be placed onto one of two large canvas panels.
Over time, this collection of messages, wisdom, and imagery created by many individual feathers begins to form something larger: two wings made entirely from the voices of the community.
The two canvas panels the wings are mounted to will be installed on a wall a foot apart so people can stand between them to have their photograph taken as a messenger of hope, which repeats each time the photo is shared.
How It Works
Each feather represents a single voice, story, or intention.
1. Take a feather.
2. Write or draw a message that represents hope or peace.
3. Return your feather to be placed on the canvas.
The Meaning
A single feather is light and fragile, but when feathers gather together, wings emerge.
In the same way, peace is not created by one person alone. It grows through the collective voices, kindness, and intentions of many. And we are reminded of something simple but powerful: We cannot fly with a single feather, but only by joining with others.
Please join us in creating an artwork that becomes a living record of hope carried by our community — with this gathering of small messages, we rise together.
Get Started
ARISE in an invitation to help peace take flight. For help with what to write on your feather think about what activities inspire you, the name of a loved one, what you love about the Earth/ universe, or a favorite word. Or, doodle a message and draw a favorite design – or both!
About hope
Something inside of me broke (free?) last night after watching footage of the Marine being broken as he was forcibly removed for protesting the US-Israeli War against Iran during a Capitol Hill hearing .
Hope, that infamous “thing with feathers’, as Emily Dickinson wrote, feels less like a bird sheltering in my chest and more like a smoldering bonfire.
Hope is crying in the dark until snot bubbles out of your nose, it’s kneeling in the shit, it’s being kicked when you’re already down, and still getting up.
Hope is brutally hard. It’s against all odds, its standing on the side of the little guy against the bully, it’s the dark horse no one bet on, it’s the courage to stand when you know that means you’ll probably take more hits. It’s lighting a candle with your last match, when you know it could extinguish any moment.
That’s hope. Brutal, and brave and full of fight, but even more than that, at its foundation, hope is love - for a thing, an idea, a person, yourself.
Hope is a guide and protector, a guardian against the darkness that threatens to swallow us whole. It’s standing for something when you know the odds and that the “good guys” were never good, and the zealots never transcended.
Hope is the bridge you build by opening your arms in the chaos, bending in the hurricane, sheltering in the storm. It’s a ‘thing’ that can never be completely extinguished.
And when this most resilient and fierce light flickers, we must stir the embers in ourselves and others, ignite the bonfire on the cliff once again for others caught in rough, black waters.
Because this mighty and magnificent light reaches far and touches all who witness it.
