The Lila Totem Project

The team that helped bring The Lila Totem to life.

About

The Lila Totem Project is the outcome of the 2017 Artist in Residence program with Greg and Jude Beylerian and the Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grades.

This project was created from inception to completion from one fundamental principle that was practiced with all 180 young collaborators: To trust and follow your heart (intuition).

To begin, we walked the campus to feel for a location. Then we listened as to what would be there. Next we took the kids on a journey to our collective ancient past to see the art Mankind has been creating from Cave drawings to Petroglyphs and then evolving with tools to construct stone and wood structures such as Ancient Egyptian Obelisks, The Easter Island Heads and Native American Totems poles, etc.

We learned that our ancestors believed that there was a profound meaning and value to their constructions and that the center of their community was empowered by such creations. Therefore we recognized that we were also being called forth by the same archetypal energy, to construct a symbol of our community that would stand at the center point to resonate our collective identity and dreams.

It was now apparent that this years project was going to be a sculptural one that would integrate the dynamics of primordial two dimensional Petroglyphic art with three dimensional sculptural constructs and environmental awareness as we were assuming responsibility for a 30’x30/x30’ triangular space in need of love at the center of school.

It was important to us that all 180 kids would be exposed to every step of the process to bring the dream to reality with a hands on exposure to every material and process needed to implement the multi medium painted sculpture garden.

We practiced listening to and trusting our intuitive feelings and kept a view point that in fact we were all the servants of “The Lila Totem”, which was guiding us to fulfill its desire to exist!

Every child went thru a process to be clear about the kind of community they wanted to be a part of and what beautiful dreams could they imagine for themselves and their community. These visions would be inscribed by each and every child on the surface of the totem. As well all nine classes went thru a ritual process of writing down in word form their visions and wrapped them into nine beautiful multi layered Treasure Balls that were buried in a circular clockwise fashion around the totem.

We believe that this visualization exercise was timely to the worlds current needs, therefore bringing to the project the final component of value, that which is the communal practice of awareness for a better tomorrow.

Greg and Jude Beylerian

Transformation of The Space

 Before

After

The Making of The Lila Totem

Photos of The Lila Totem Sculpture Garden