Art work around the world

The Davis Family YMCA is once again involved in the Global Art Project (GAP) for Peace biennial art exchange.

GAP is an UNESCO-nominated organization that fosters peace through the arts.

Every two years, tens of thousands of individuals and groups around the world engage in the art exchange.

Since Katherine Josten, of Tucson, Ariz., created the Global Art Project in 1994, over 80,000 participants have exchanged works of peace-related art.

This year’s artwork is titled “Peaceful Soleutions”, and features an array of painted soles expressing the same sentiment, “peace is rooted in the soles of all nations.”

YMCA art coordinator, Suzanne Bort Gray, is nationally recognized for her footprint art.

Last fall she began a campaign to collect decorated feet from YMCA members and staff.

The idea spread, with over 300 images coming in from six continents, 15 countries and 17 states.

Incorporating soles from babies to octogenarians, with markings from scribbles to masterpieces, the resultant montage reveals a vast longing for international peace.

During the last week of April, participants will send their art to the designated exchange partners, creating a virtual blanket of peace over the world.

“Peaceful Soleutions” will travel to Victoria, Australia.

In the past, the Davis YMCA exchanged art with Senegal, Germany, Massachusetts, and Washington.

The 2008 artwork, “One Piece, One Piece,” was featured in the 2010 Multicultural Calendar published in Canada, and will also be part of a 2011 international Peace Exhibition sponsored by the Dayton-based Missing Peace Gallery.

In addition to “Peaceful Soleutions”, Suzanne (in collaboration with her brother Richard Bort) also created a montage called Collective Complexion, which will be exchanged with a Quaker Meeting House in Vermont.

This montage is made up of over 1,000 faces, friends, relatives, and acquaintances of the Bort family.

Their 2008 Face of Peace was sent to Ramadi, Iraq, as the first-ever GAP exchange with that country.

The “Peaceful Soleutions” and Collective Complexion montages can be seen at the Davis Family YMCA, 45 McClurg Road, Boardman. For information, visit www.suzannegray.com and www.global-art.org.