The First World Wheel
WORLD WHEEL, GLOBAL PEACE THROUGH THE ARTS is an artistic forum for global understanding consisting of environmental stone sculptures, performance events, nature reserves, and wisdom centers circling the globe.
“Specific ideas for the World Wheel came to me in a dream. I saw myself carving sculptures out of the living rock and involving people from many cultures in a process of ritual in a giant circle around the world.”
The circle closed.
The wheel still turns.
The Second World Wheel continues — Georgia, Australia, Senegal, the Andes, the Amazon…
- I
What is our essence?
- II
What is our sickness, our imbalance… personally, communally and globally?
- III
What can heal this sickness, what can bring us into balance?
The answers of each community formed the ritual performance. Each earth sculpture served as the performance space — and was left as a gift and permanent installation to the community.
The twelve stations of the First World Wheel
“I came down every day to gather red, black, white, and gold stones on the beach.”
“It was a great honor when my dear friend, Grandmother Twylah Nitsch, an elder of the Seneca Nation, invited me to bring the World Wheel to the Seneca Reservation.”
“I sold my car, gave away most of my possessions, abandoned any kind of home base for myself, and leapt into an unknown future.”
“Word spread of the World Wheel and on the day of the ceremony many people came.”
“I carved and painted inside a cave that I called Gaia's laboratory, in honor of the Earth.”
“Traveling alone in Egypt was quite difficult for me.”
“Amidst ongoing terror and bloodshed, I lived with both Palestinians and Israelis.”
“They were as generous as they were poor.”
“The sound of chanting nuns ushered in each morning.”
“I arrived in Kunming, in southwestern China, by train with one telephone number to contact.”
“I chose an area for the World Wheel site where the dark forest grows right next to the luminous banks of Lake Baikal.”
“As I traveled in Japan, I carried a book in which I asked people to write their answers to my three questions.”
The Second World Wheel
The first circle closed in Japan in 1993. The second began almost at once and has never stopped — journeys and sites made with communities in the Amazon, the Andes of Ecuador, Senegal, with homeless youth in Los Angeles, in Australia, and in the Republic of Georgia.
- Republic of GeorgiaCaucasus · 2013
- Australia2010
- Los AngelesHomeless youth · 2008
- SenegalWest Africa
- Andes of EcuadorPeguche
- AmazonJourneys 2004–2007
World Wheel — the film.
The story of the wheel, told in her own footage and voice — the strongest single record of the whole journey.
“The circle itself represents Unity in the sense that each spoke of the wheel has a quality that is unique and distinct from every other spoke of the wheel. And yet it is from these differences that harmony arises, from these differences that the whole is created.”