Three create peace of art

Elia Powers

Tim Leedom had the concept for a three-pronged art project. Desiree

Guerrero had the urge to flex her political muscle. Lennart Martinson

had been waiting for a chance to take on a socially relevant topic.

The trio met late last year and planned a

painting-mural-documentary joint venture that highlights some of the

world’s most recognizable pacifists.

Martin Luther King Jr. stands near Robert Kennedy and John Lennon

in a watercolor painting recently completed by Guerrero, a student at

Laguna College of Art & Design. Seventeen other slain figures, most

of whom were assassinated or murdered, will be depicted in an oil

painting and mural and featured in a documentary film.

“We want to bring peace into the mainstream,” said Leedom, a

Balboa Island resident and vice president of Intellevision Inc. in

Laguna Beach. “We wanted to show the casualties of violence and show

you can have nonviolent change.

“It’s an image of what could have been.”

Leedom said he has long held nonviolent and antiwar beliefs. He

spent many years in politics, as an aide to a former Hawaii governor

and a co-chairman of the Hawaii Robert Kennedy 1968 presidential

campaign.

On the 37th anniversary of King’s death, Leedom announced the

commission of the project, which he said is a way to illustrate

prominent pacifists.

He searched for suitable artists last fall and found Guerrero.

“It’s inspiring to read about visionaries,” Guerrero said. “It’s

relevant for future generations to see their faces and hear their

stories.”

Guerrero will use the watercolor painting as a prototype for a

36-by-48 inch oil painting to be called “SATYAGRABA,” a term coined

by Mahatma Gandhi that means “firm resistance in nonviolence.” The

piece, unofficially referred to by Leedom as “The Mount Rushmore of

Peace,” will be unveiled at Soka University in Aliso Viejo during the

first week of May.

“There has never been a peace monument to my knowledge,” Leedom

said. “Instead of carving out faces in a mountain and spending

millions of dollars, I decided it would be best to portray the

subjects on a canvas.”

Leedom said he is planning to send copies of the painting to the

John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, the Jimmy Carter

Library and Museum in Atlanta, the Clinton Presidential Center in

Little Rock, Ark., and the United States Institute of Peace in

Washington, D.C.

The University of Hawaii’s Kennedy Theatre is the intended first

stop for the mural, which has yet to be painted.

Leedom and Guerrero agreed on a natural setting for the painting,

with political figures on one side and notable pacifists on the

other.

Most of the subjects are public figures, but Guerrero said she was

most struck by the story of Rachel Corrie, a college student who was

crushed to death in 2003 by a bulldozer near the Gaza-Egypt border.

While a student at Orange Coast College, Guerrero organized an

antiwar protest in the days before U.S. troops invaded Iraq.

“I’ve tried to be more politically active recently,” Guerrero

said. “During my youth, I was under the false impression that we were

in a time of peace.”

The third component of the project is a 90-minute documentary that

will include a range of still photos of pacifists. Martinson, a

documentary director and head of Intellevision, said it’s a chance to

add another element to the project.

“The film will show how our lives were changed by the victims’

death and how the concept of peace still persists,” Martinson said.

* ELIA POWERS is the enterprise and general assignment reporter.

He may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or by e-mail at

[email protected].