Many Eyes, One Place - China

Global Harmony through Art (GHtA) encourages and promotes artists from all countries and cultures to work, travel and create peace together.

Even though we have developed technologies that bring us more often close to cultures much different then our own, we witness deep conflict and tension between cultures. At the same time we are facing global issues that cannot be solved by any one nation or any one culture. The combined, diverse wisdom each culture holds may provide us with the needed resources to manage our current challenges. Our ability to work together and accept our diversity and to get along is becoming crucial to our survival. Each of us can play an important role in supporting our ability to live more peacefully and sustainably together.

GHTA provides ways for artists of all media and nationalities to connect and play a valuable peacemaking role through exchanges, cross-cultural programs, publications and global networking.

Imagine artists from around the world unifying to nurture the creative and peaceful potential in all of us.

Imagine art experiences providing us an opportunity to discuss many of our challenging differences.

Imagine friendships created through artistic experiences deepening our commitment to care for all of us.

After witnessing the shocking devastation of Tiananmen Square in 1989, artist Yi Kai moved from his native land in China to the United States. He was successfully involved in his art career, until the disaster of September 11, 2001 hit New York City. The administration of the United States launched the "war on terror," and got embroiled in extensive political and corporate fraud. Yi Kai became very troubled and began to loose faith in the goodness of the United States. When in 2004, Artists Betty Ritter and Yi Kai were discussing possible answers to current problems they decided to found Global Harmony through Art, as a natural vehicle to gather people of different cultures and religions striving for a common goal and foster peace and harmony.

During the first years GHtA developed its infrastructure and set out to explore different strategies to support their mission. Initially GHtA offered three educational tours for artists. The first two were to France and in 2006 Yi Kai led an educational tour to China. Based on these initial experiences, GHtA developed their primary focus.

• Develop and publish first “Many Eyes - One Place” publication and brand.
• Focus on educational and exchange programs as a means to educate and model the power of the arts to bridge cultures and create harmony
• Ensure the vitality of the organization by engaging volunteers, participants and donors

Project Information

Many Eyes, One Place -  China

Overview:

• To develop creative, visual experiences to support an opportunity to learn and explore together our understanding of ourselves, others and the world in which we live.
• To allow the artists to further reflect on their experiences of modern China and share their reflections with others to support broader communication
• To model the wisdom of a multi-perspective methodology
• To develop a framework for a series of “Many eyes, One Place” publications and products.

Currently there are no collaborative visual art books on China that are specifically exploring social and cultural themes.  The book is not advocating any particular perspective only modeling inquiry and reflection in context of cultural exploration.

Project Plan

Book Structure

• Artists and Cultural educators
• Organizations deepening relationships between China and the US and/or committed to further developing cultural awareness
• Cultural creatives and world travelers
• Students and academics in international studies

• Exhibit in Beijing with local discussions
• Complementary Exhibit in US to globalize discussion
• Many Eyes, One Place Website and invitation for webusers to contribute their images and reflections on modern day China.
  This is an opportunity to expand awareness.

Yi Kai got his BFA and MFA in Beijing, China, before moving to the United States. His art work has been added to the collections of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (one of the top ten Arts Museum in the U.S.A) and The Minnesota Museum of American Arts. Yi Kai’s work has been exhibited across the USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan. He has shown his art at museums in the US, Mexico, Taipei, and China. He is the recipient of many awards. Many companies, such as General Mills, Medtronic, and Piper Jaffray, have collected his art work. Yi Kai’s paintings show a remarkable achievement in resolving the issues of cultural heritage, American values and personal expression that face every immigrant artist.  In 2004 Yi Kai and Betty Ritter founded Global Harmony through Art.

Born in China May 1951. He was in the army during 1971. Zhao Ta started to train at the Art Institute of Xian, the oldest art college in China in 1980. In 1987 he received his MFA. Zhao Ta was the Dean of the School of Art from 1990-1995. He currently holds the post of Associate Professor in the Oil Painting Department teaching graduate students and supporting the teacher development at the Institute.
Zhao Ta directs a studio focused on oil painting and Chinese traditional painting and his work has been shown at national exhibitions and he received many awards.

Curator, artist and critic. Currently Beijing, China. Born 1969 in Xi´an, China. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1993 and his Master´s degree in 1996 from Xi´an Academy of Fine Arts. He taught fine art in the Architecture Department of Tianjin Institute of Urban Construction from 1996 to 1998. Shu Yang became an independent curator in Beijing in 1999. He founded the Open Art Festival in 2000. Since 2001 he worked as executive editor of the contemporary Chinese art magazine Next Wave. He participated as independent curator of the China-UK Arts Management Placement Program at Visiting Arts in London and Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff and founded and directed DaDao Live Art Festival in 2003. He has been visiting professor of Performance Art at the Central Academy of Fine Art in 2006. Since 2006 he holds the post of CEO of Inter Arts Center at 798 Art Zone, Beijing. Shu Yang has recently become the chief-editor of the magazine "art i"

Steve Ozone´s second-generation Chinese mother and American-born Japanese father raised Steve and his siblings in white suburbia where other Asians were a rare sight. Losing the ancestral languages and cultures was more intention than byproduct; for the elder generation, assimilation was a means to inoculate their children from discrimination. Steve´s father had spent a year imprisoned in a California internment camp during World War II. He had committed no crime. All Americans of Japanese descent were sent to such camps. Touting ones Asian heritage was not, to his generation, a familiar concept. His children, he decided, would blend quietly, completely into the mainstream. It almost worked. Decades later his son, the American artist Steve Ozone, found himself wandering his ancestral homelands speaking not so much as a sentence of his grandparents´ language and knowing almost nothing of their culture. Steve Ozone has exhibited in numerous cities including New York, Detroit, Bethesda, Washington D.C. and Minneapolis. He is a board member of the American Society of Media Photographers and a member of the Art Institute International Professional Advisory Committee. Since the mid 1980´s he has worked in advertising and is currently Macy´s Photo Studio Senior Photographer.

Over the past fifteen years Katia Miller has brought her experience in visual communications and learning to corporate, non-profit, public schools and university environments. She designs and facilitates learning engaging social and emotional learning, visual communication, creativity, and dialogue. Having grown up in Europe, North America and South America, Katia has a deep commitment to creating experiences for organizations and communities that support individual expression and action, community connections and global awareness. Her current work includes developing engaging learning and community experiences using modern and ancient arts from around the world to explore who we are, the world we live in and our ability to create powerful outcomes. Katia holds a degree in International Business and Marketing from Boston University and a degree in Visual Communications from the Colorado Institute of Art. Katia has also been trained in council, dialogue and social emotional learning, neuromuscular integrative action (Nia), personal mastery and communities of practice.