Sandra Wasko-Flood - Labyrinth Path to Light and Peace

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www.livinglabyrinthsforpeace.org The spirit behind Living Labyrinths for Peace, Inc., a 501c(3) a non profit organization, is artist, poet and teacher, Sandra Wasko-Flood. She gives great thanks for the gifts she received from her space scientist father, whose parents came from Russia; and her elementary school teacher and socialite mother, whose parents emigrated from Prague, Czechoslovakia. Born in Flushing Long Island, NYC, her dad was weather forecasting for Pan Am and got a job in Lisbon, Portugal, where she attended first grade. Returning to the U.S. after three years, they moved from coast to coast, he always getting a better job. When her dad was weather forecasting for Douglas Aircraft in Los Angeles, she got her BA in English from UCLA and a Secondary teaching credential from the California State College in Los Angeles. Her first job was teaching English at Nobel Jr. High School. After three years, she quit teaching after being encouraged to become a full time artist by Gordon Nunes at UCLA. Rather than getting an art degree, she chose the right teachers with which to study wherever she lived. In 1969, she married Michael T. Flood, PhD, inorganic chemist, whose first job was with the National Academy of Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She so loved the Brazilian culture, especially the Carnival. She did portraits of the Brazilian people. Taking private lessons from Marie Augusta Kaufman, she discovered she liked print making the best. Wherever she lived she found the best print making teachers with which to study and was introduced to the new Safe Etching methods by Keith Howard. She gave lessons in safe etching and monotype printmaking in her Alexandria, VA studio. Her art portrayed major archetypes: owl and snake, masks, totems, cycles, spirals labyrinths, and the peacock through whose eyes we see the creation of the universe. Her recent book: “The Labyrinth Path to Light and Peace” includes lots of poems and art having to do with Peace among People, Animals, Nature and the Universe. Having written poetry since a child, she is now working on an anthology of her poetry.In 1981, she became a founding member of the Washington Women’s Arts Center, and in 1985, she founded the Art Spirit Group in Washington DC, which still meets until this day to discuss the relationship between art and spirituality. In 1991, she sat in the center of the Great Kiva at Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. Sitting in the Great Kiva, she envisioned ceremonial dancers from all races, cultures and beliefs, peacefully ascending an underground spiral to do a labyrinth dance in the kiva, and ascending a spiral under a space dome to the sky. This visionary experience led her to a book by Sig Lonegren: Labyrinths: Ancient Myths and Modern Uses.In 1998, she become a founding member of the International Labyrinth Society. She went on to create an interactive labrinth art/technology installation, “Dance of the Labyrinth,” symbolizing a peaceful dance of opposites for our times. Here visitors experience computer programmed light sequences: walk on light box images, see rotating wheels and pillars, and phosphorescent mulch glowing like moonlight. When she asked this labyrinth where it wanted to be, it told her four times in the U.S. Capitol. This led her to talk with Barbara Wolanin, the Curator of the Capitol Collection and to put a Labyrinths Demonstration for Inner Peace, the first project of the International Labyrinth Society on Capitol Hill in the year 2000. For two weeks, people from all over the world walked labyrinths for peace. In the year 2005, she formed the non-profit Living Labyrinths for Peace.