Better World Art
Arts East got to travel by fibre
optic and wire, south of the border to the other side of the continent. There,
in southern California, was and is Gerald Zwers, a prolific artist who is probably
the most therapeutic individual a person can ever hope to chat with. Zwers told
us about his latest project—Better World Art. He is striving to create a global
forum of artists, of every media/style imaginable, that share a common goal—to
create with the purpose of benefitting others and the Earth as a whole.
Gerald Zwers can’t even remember the
first time he started creating art. He does, however, remember an Easter
morning when he was just four years old. He couldn’t find his Easter basket, so
his mother told him drawing a picture might help. Zwers raced over to a
cupboard that held his very own stash of regularly-used art supplies, where of
course the basket was hiding.
Decades later, Zwers is still an
inexhaustible artist, often working all through the night in his Ventura,
California studio. But in 2008 his reason for creating paintings, sculptures,
mixed media projects and lighted works drastically changed.
“Early on I would do all kinds of stuff. I did things
that definitely ran to the dark side—just pretty much any weird thing that
crossed my mind,” Zwers explains. “But something major happened—two events
within the same month. It was a turning point in my life.”
During that poignant month,
a loved one of Zwers had fallen victim to an extreme trauma. A couple weeks
later, a stranger had approached Zwers and told him that something she had read
in an interview of his profoundly changed her life.
“The trauma only took a few
minutes and the interview only took a few minutes,” says Zwers. “These are
relatively short events, but you could see from the smallest seed that the
ripple effects expanded. You’ve got this moment of life and you can do
something horrible with it, something great with it or nothing at all. I just
thought I’m going to do my best to try and do good things with it. If I’m going
to be planting seeds, I’d like them to grow into good things.”
From that moment on, Zwers was
inspired to create works that would “grow into good things”. One such example
is his Accomplishing Impossible Things series that he created for a
local cancer centre. It depicts 10-foot tall silhouettes of individuals
performing seemingly unattainable tasks, such as soaring through the sky or
performing a yoga pose on top of a sliver of cliff. Zwers wanted these inspiring pieces showcased in the
medical center to provide hope to those told their prognoses were dire.
Zwers also initiated the free art project
after noticing that many people exiting the County of Ventura’s Superior Court
Building looked miserable. He started painting gorgeous landscapes on small
blocks of wood and leaving them outside the court building. This progressed to
placing hundreds of miniature paintings in various public places and attaching
a note stating, “this is meant for you to brighten your day”.
The largest of Zwers undertakings
since his artistic epiphany came about in 2009 when he began reading about the
Terracotta Army in China. Thousands of soldiers were constructed to be buried
with Emperor Qin so that they would accompany him into the afterlife. Zwers was
struck by the fact that the emperor chose to take mostly warriors with him into
the next world. He thought about who he would want to have in a new world of
his creation. Then it hit him—he would create the Golden
Paladins.
Zwers has created over 1,000 clay sculptures
finished with golden leaf. The paladins are organized into over 100 families
each representing a noble cause. For example, one family is called The
Protectors of the Small. “I read about
this terrible thing happening to children in Brazil, and I thought in my
perfect world there would be somebody that would step up and say, ‘You can’t do
that!’” expresses Zwers. The Carriers of Burdens, The Lifters of
Spirits, The Caretakers of Nature and The Senders of Peace
are examples of other families.
The
Golden Paladins have touched and inspired many individuals all over the world,
from the bouncer that works at a nightclub near Zwers’ studio to Barbara Marx
Hubbard (who Deepak Chopra calls “"the voice for conscious evolution of
our time"). Zwers acknowledges that he is just one of many artists of all
forms dedicating their creativity to noble causes. He says
he is continuously inspired by the artists he meets who emulate the qualities
of his paladins. “To be a technically-skilled
artist, or to be an eloquent writer, those are good mechanical skills,” says
Zwers. “But I think to me, the more important part becomes what are you going
to say with those words or what are you going to do with that artistic
ability?”
Connect with Gerald Zwers to become
a part of this global artistic movement.
www.BetterWorldArt.com
