Artists Can Project Peace Abroad and Into Future

On Sunday in Fullerton, 30 local children and adults will start work on a bridge that its architect hopes will stand for generations.

Steel beams and rivets won’t be a part of it, however. Instead, under the guidance of Los Angeles artist and project founder Gayle Gale, participants in the inaugural Kids for Peace workshop at the Fullerton Museum Center will wield brushes, paints and, Gale hopes, a sense of empowerment about their ability to build peace in a troubled world.

The Kids for Peace project is intended as a symbolic link between youths in the Los Angeles area and the young people of Israel, said Gale, but serves on a broader level as a forum for families to express their views and hopes for world peace in general.

The workshop is open to all ages and will include a short, youth-oriented film about Israel, Israeli and Jewish music by Bruce Burger and other artists and readings from Stephen Longfellow Fiske’s book of poetry, “The Art of Peace.” (Children under 13 are welcome but must be accompanied by an adult.)

Workshop participants will express their views on peace through images or words they’ll paint on 1-foot square tiles of luan (a wood similar to fine-finished plywood).

Finished tiles will be arranged in a patchwork quilt pattern on panels that will be displayed at the museum starting next month during the April 13-to-June 2 run of the touring exhibition “Anne Frank in the World: 1929-1945.”

After “Anne Frank” closes, the tiles created Sunday will travel to what Gale hopes will to be an international audience. They will be the first tiles created for her proposed Kids for Peace mural, a collection of 1,000 or more hand-painted tiles created by young people in the United States and Israel that Gale, speaking by phone from her West Hollywood studio, said will “celebrate peace [and] promote harmony within all cultures.”

The FMC workshop is the first of 20 that Gale plans to hold at venues across Southern California; the next is scheduled for May 19 at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in L.A.

Late this year, if her plans pan out, she will hold another 20 youth workshops in Israel, ultimately reaching her goal of 1,000 or more tiles that would be displayed at various venues there to mark the 3,000th year of the city of Jerusalem and the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel. She also plans smaller exhibits here of the California-made tiles as they are produced.

Gale’s recent projects include outreach art workshops in Los Angeles area housing developments and public venues for the Sunday Open Sunday program. This month, assisted by hundreds of local children and other artists, she completed work on a 500-foot community-themed mural for L.A.’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

She has coordinated art workshops for homeless youths and adults and has led programs at schools and museums around Southern California, including several for FMC.

A few years ago, when Gale was exploring her own interest in Judaism, she decided to broaden her work to include the youth of Israel.

She worked in 1994 and 1995 as a visiting artist with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, leading outreach programs in neighboring villages of southern Israel.

Gale said that during the weeks she spent there, she worked with Ethiopians youths, Russian city dwellers and Bedouins, helping them express their views on the themes of home and peace. Inspired by the work these children created, and at the urging of several Israeli officials, she decided to create Kids for Peace to “promote peace through the creative process.”

“I kept feeling this need to link the youth of L.A. and the youth of the Negev together [because] there are tremendous similarities between our young people,” Gale said.

“Here, we have the violence, the gang shootings and in Israel, especially now, you have the bombings, the terrorism. . . . The peace treaty is really in jeopardy.

“My goal is to celebrate unity and the yearning for peace, not just here and in Israel, but all over the world,” added Gale, who said she would someday like to establish a computer web site through which youths between the different countries can discuss and draw images of peace.

“The mural lets young people voice their feelings about it and come to terms with their own concept of peace,” she added. “Peace starts within one person, then goes to the home, then to the community, then to the world. It’s a logical progression.”

* What: Kids for Peace art workshop.

* When: Sunday, 1-4 p.m.

* Where: Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave.

* Whereabouts: From the Riverside (91) Freeway, exit at Harbor Boulevard and drive north. Turn right on Wilshire Avenue. The museum is on the corner of Wilshire and Pomona.

* Wherewithal: Workshop admission is free; reservations are required.

* Where to call: (714) 738-6545.