IFAH PROJECTS

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Transient Spaces: An Interactive Sand Painting/September 2008

As part of Weeks of Welcome (WOW!), a campus-wide series of events designed to welcome students, IFAH organized the event, "Transient Spaces: An Interactive Sand Painting." On Monday Sept.8th, both new and returning students joined one another in this community artwork using colored sand to bring a mandala to life. Mandalas are symmetrical geometric designs created as focal points for creative reflection. The event served as a creative, collective gathering where students could meet one another and work together, contributing to something larger than themselves.

With this project, we hoped to illustrate the peaceful process of art making and emphasize that the communal process of creating art is just as important as the final art piece. The event intended to introduce participants to the healing arts and broaden their cultural awareness on campus and on a larger global scale. At the end of the day, we swept the finished mandala into jars and gave them to new and old members at our first IFAH meeting.  Participants took the jars home as memory of their involvement and a symbol of the sense of community they helped generate.