CITIES OF PEACE ILLUMINATED^®

The layers of Baghdad: City of Peace, Truly chase more than 5,000 years of splendid, then destroyed grandeur. From the cuneiform creation myth found in Iraq on a clay tablet dating to 3000 B.C. to the aerial photograph of Baghdad (1925), the painting honors Baghdad as emerging from the Cradle of Civilization, Baghdad the Round City (762 AD), and Baghdad the site of Islamic architectural achievement.

In Hiroshima: Winter Bloom, the symbolic winter-blooming plum blossom cascades across the once secret “Pre-Attack Mosaic” photograph of Hiroshima taken by U.S. military aerial reconnaissance in April 1945. Grace and hope ride the wind as it sweeps the plum blossom across our memories.

Peopled with hundreds of tiny figures aspiring to joyous, free lives, a view of Jerusalem−its Golden Gate, synagogues, mosques, churches and minarets−shimmers across the vista. The painting’s gold-leaf border celebrates peace: between flowers from historic Islam appears the traditional six-sided star common to Islamic art, a symbol that from the Middle Ages is known as The Star of David.

Framed by two gold-leaf pillars inspired by columns at the Jokhang monastery, the painting uses mudras (sacred hand positions thought to be more powerful than the spoken word) as border patterns. The words of a sixth-century poet cascade to the Lhasa skyline, just as the Bon myth describes the first Tibetans climbing down rainbow stairs from the sky to mountaintops.

We honor the inspiring resilience of the Liberian people, hoping that Monrovia: In Constellation will herald a renewed harmony within the Liberian capital. A map (circa 1849) grounds the night’s stars, exactly as they shone on Liberian Independence Day, July 26, 1847 at 10:00 P.M.

Sarajevo: Here celebrates the great cultural heritage of Sarajevo as pages of imagined illuminated manuscripts: within the painting’s gold-illuminated borders is tucked the red-tile-roofed city itself, with its mosques and minarets, its spires, symbols, and languages. In the wake of the largest intentional book burning and the longest military siege in modern history,Sarajevo: Here cherishes the people of Sarajevo, their spirit convivencia!, and their art, in its own small act of benefaction.

Yerevan: To Know Wisdom celebrates Armenian ancient history, its multilayered culture, unique symbolism and, most of all, the Armenian alphabet with the first sentence ever written in it: To know wisdom and guidance; to perceive the words of insight (Solomon, Book of Proverbs 1:2). Yerevan: To Know Wisdom repeats the alphabet 42 times, one line for each letter. The audience joins the Armenians in viewing language as puzzle, as meditation, as sacred, blinking

Beijing: Heavenly Peace, on Earth! celebrates Beijing as a sacred city, marking the sacred proportions of its city plan, its star pattern, and geographic site. The painting honors Beijing in dance, in costume, and in cityscape. With a north-south axis, setting the Forbidden City in the painting’s center, the work proclaims that this complex and magnificent ancient and modern city is the place where the heavens touch the earth, conferring majesty and light.

In this work, gold-leaf micrography (text shaped into images) from a seventeenth-century poem illuminates the city, inspired by a panoramic photograph taken between 1870 and 1882. Celebrating Kabul, the verses walk a main city road—not as an invading army but as a march of words of love. Symbols of what was cherished by Afghans, then banned—dance, music, books, kites—are woven into the painting as if a pattern from a tribal carpet, an art form that helped to make Afghanistan renowned worldwide.

Bridges! to the island city of New York! carry dreams and dreamers. With bottoms of buildings bordering the painting’s top, tops bordering the bottom, the skyline of New York turns us around and around. Celebrating the city as a beacon of liberty, the painting honors its residents in concept and content. In how many languages can we say “New York is my city”?

Pristina: The Flowering celebrates 8,000 years of vivid cultural history. Created with participation by students, artists, and scholars from all ethnicities and 38 municipalities, Pristina: The Flowering interweaves with the finest golden lines of filigree the past, present and future of this young and flowering city.

Turnings: Sparking Light - In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.