ECU’s “Countdown to Peace” exhibit seeks artists
GREENVILLE, NC — It has been more than 1,600 days since March 19, 2003, the day the war in Iraq began, and two East Carolina University art faculty members have launched an exhibit that will mark each of those days with an artist’s message and vision of peace.
The sturdy wooden calendars in the gallery at Mendenhall Student Center that hold the “Countdown to Peace” exhibit are filled through May 28, 2003 – 71 days – and Catherine Billingsley and Jodi Hollnagel-Jubran are looking for more than 1600 more pieces of art to complete the exhibit. As the war continues, the number of blank days continues to grow.
“We wanted to measure something, to give people a scope of the whole war, and how long it’s been going on,” said Billingsley, an adjunct professor of textiles at ECU. “But we also wanted it to be positive in nature and also focus more on the idea of peace, than of war.”
The exhibit is on display at ECU through Nov. 30, featuring artists’ vision of peace. The project will end, said Billingsley and Hollnagel-Jubran, when the war does. Until then, they continue to search for artists willing to submit their artwork – and find a permanent home for the exhibit.
“Right now we need about 1,600 entries,” Hollnagel-Jubran said. “But we need one more every day.”
The entry fee is $10 per four-inch by four-inch work, and so far they have received sculpture, paintings, written words and prose. A web site developed by Laurie Godwin enables people from all over the world to view the artwork for each day.
In conjunction with the exhibit, Peter Mugan Schellin, an ordained Buddhist monk and professor emeritus of art education and theory at the University of California at Los Angeles, will speak about peace from the Buddhist perspective at 7 p.m., Nov. 29, in Speight Auditorium in the Jenkins Fine Arts Center. Schellin is also Billingsley’s brother.
While Billingsley and Hollnagel-Jubran were inspired for this project by a visiting artist’s presentation about a collaborative art project, the war in Iraq has also touched them on a personal level. Billingsley’s son-in-law, Steve Bixby, a staff sergeant in the Marines, had just completed his fourth tour of duty in the Marines this September.
This past spring, Billingsley organized two book drives with Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh and Barnes & Noble in Greenville for the United Through Reading book project.
“Steve would be videotaped reading aloud stories for Walker (his son). Then the video or DVD is sent home, along with the book,” Billingsley said. “The third time he went there, I wanted to do something to help, because those books go to the families.”
This summer, Quail Ridge collected in a week’s time more than 500 children’s books and $1,500 to be put toward books, all of which were shipped to the Al Asad Airbase in Iraq.
“People picked books off the shelves that they remembered reading from their own childhood,” Billingsley said. “It was a very personal experience for people who were at a loss what they could do to help. It was our job to ship them to Iraq.”
Later in the summer, Barnes & Noble in Greenville also collected more than 1,000 books, which Billingsley shipped to the air base.
“There are ten sites on the base,” she said. “Steve became the ‘book man.’” The chaplains on the base help to facilitate the reading program.
“It’s a positive activity and it is a way for the public to show their support of the troops. And thank God they do. You could see how much it meant to my grandson, to watch him read along, to give his father on the television screen a kiss.”