Open Hand Project

Florida Okinawa Kenjin-Kai cultural group announces a call to participate in an international art project called “Hand-in-Hand.” President Akiko (Susie) Daniels endorsed open participation to encourage thoughts of peace, value of life and spiritual uplifting.

After the recent Japanese New Year’s celebration, secretary, Asako Morton brought attention to the club membership the “Hand-in-Hand” art project and the artist’s open invitation internationally to contribute to her project. Artist, Yuko Kinoshita, has written an ideal visualizing people of the world, “hand in hand,” supporting one another in peace rather than war. Her inspiration came as a counter to the number of lives lost in the Battle of Okinawa. The people of Okinawa lost over a third of its population caught in the crossfire between the Japanese and the Americans during the Second World War. For her visual art representation, Kinoshita-san has requested contributions of handprints with words of peace, celebration of life and/or spiritual uplifting in addition to name, age (optional) and nationality or country of submission of the person contributing the handprint.

To participate, you simply make an outline of your open hand (fingers stretched apart) on durable paper like Japanese washi paper, calligraphy or brush writing paper, shoji-screen paper, tempura sheets, or even Reynolds Parchment Paper used in baking, cut out the hand imprint, decorate the cutouts as you desire, write your name, country and personal message relating to peace, life or spiritual uplifting and give it to our club leaders for singular group mailing to the Artist for inclusion into her creative art display. You can get as creative as you want with paints, colored markers, inks, etc. The artist will make her creation after she receives 250,000 handprints with no definite deadline in mind. After her creation is finished and ready for display, she will announce when, where, and how it will be shown. Life is precious, so let’s make our thoughts known by sharing in this project.

For convenience and encouragement for the public to participate, Florida Kenjin-Kai has made arrangements with two galleries as collection points for the handprints: Gallery Zarragossa in Pensacola on 215 East Zarragossa Street (850-469-8060) and the Dragonfly Gallery in Milton on 5188 Escambia Street (850-981-1100). Create your handprints and either drop them off at either of the two galleries or mail them in to the above addresses. A member of the Okinawa Kenjin-Kai club will visit both galleries periodically and pick up the handprints for a collected delivery to the artist in Okinawa at the end of April.

The members of the Florida Okinawa Kenjin-Kai group wish to thank contributors to this project in advance. The club encourages the perpetuation of the heritage and culture of Okinawa and its people. Thus far the club website has been in Japanese. However, an English version is under construction for the benefit of all interested parties and future generations of Okinawans. The club would like to extend its appreciation to the Santa Rosa Arts and Culture Foundation for sponsoring the website and Hideko (Margie) Baldwin for initiating the English version of the website. Website addresses are http://www.sracf.org/OkinawaKenjin_Kai.html (in English) and http://www.florida-okinawa.com/ (in Japanese). Email can be sent to FloridaOkinawaKenJinKai@yahoo.com.