I am preparing for 100 Bottles of Peace at Nassau Presbyterian Church. I met a videographer who will be filming the workshop for the first time. I was talking to him about the places I have lived before and find out the he too lived in Minneapolis while he was studying at the same university my husband studied at. The years when we were in the same city didn’t match. He was there a few years after we left. Then he asked where did you live? And he told me his old address. Somehow the numbers sounded awfully familiar. So I searcher in my email for my old address which I never had to recall for the past ten plus years. And the same street number came up as my address in Minneapolis. So it turns out that we lived in the apartments across from each other in the same hall way. Actually I think a neighbor turned friend with whom I now lost contact was living in that unit. Her low and strong voice calling her two children is still fresh in my ears.

100 Bottles of Peace was a project that was conceived in Minneapolis in my first art studio. The studio was in an building with a couple of other artsits’ studios and we participated in a community open studio. For this event, I had a strong urge to do a participatory art project. So I decided to collect people’s reflections on peace in my drawings of a bottle.

After the event, I went to different groups and collected more peace. Some people mailed in their peace. What I have gathered, I showed as a slideshow during my first solo exhibition in Minneapolis in 2010.

Time has passed. When I look at my pictures from that time, I look so young. My face features changed. After saying bye to the videographer, I came back to my studio in Princeton. In the lobby there were some free pastries. With a hungry stomach I was picking up a cinnamon twirly danish. Then someone calls my name so loudly, “Bo!”

I said to myself, who would know me here? And I turned and I couldn’t believe whom I was looking at. He was a dear friend from Minneapolis. I have not seen him since we left the city and I rarely communicated with him through emails or social media. Wow… How he grew up. He was in high school when we were in Minneapolis.

He showed me a picture of his seven year old daughter. She is so lively. He said I remember you were always cooking and painting. And here you are, still making art! He looked at my drawings on the wall, and pointed at one. We talked about what art is. How art makes you feel something. How artist can make someone feel what she is feeling…

Isn’t life good? Doesn’t life sometimes give you such a nice surprise?

And how are we supposed to respond to that?