Peace Sculpture Dedication on the Peninsula

Photos by Bruce Lescher, Probonophoto.org
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Artist Lisa Solomon draws inspiration from the Japanese Shinto tradition, a religion that includes ancestor reverence and a belief in sacred power in both animate and inanimate things. Her sculpture "The Peace Gate" combines a redwood Shinto torii gate, constructed for her by artisan Jim Gilardi, with an arrangement of strands of origami peace cranes.

The cranes suspended from the Peace Gate are some of over 2000 origami pieces made by local residents from a 2020 art installation organized by the Peninsula/Palo Alto Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Last year was the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cranes, a Buddhist symbol of rebirth, are symbolically reborn in this sculpture.

Members of WILPF and friends held a ceremony on September 24 as "The Peace Gate" was raised and dedicated on the campus of Menlo College. Local activist Sharat G. Lin performed a "dance of peace" to begin and conclude the ceremony, wearing the wings of a monarch butterfly to represent the transformation of a world of war to a world of peace.