PEACE PORTAL : PROCESS

“Freedom and wholeness are what all beings seek. But we are closed in by invisible political and social walls. As a person born in Canada, freedom took the form of a Greencard.  Early in my life I used the border crossing from Canada into the US called “Peace Arch”, known by locals as “Peace Portal”. The place represented a flurry of conflicting emotions. Excitement, anxiety, danger. Would I be allowed to pass? Would I be welcomed into the US, or turned away? The flippant decisions of border guards affected my life profoundly, and my ability to make a living as an artist. Strangers held my fate in their hands. This reality causes a deep vulnerability to grow in a person, one that to this day still affects my daily work and my worldview. 

“When I received legal documentation in the form of an Extraordinary Ability greencard years later, I no longer feared crossing and “Peace Portal” took on new meaning. I was free to move anywhere I chose, in a way that many people take for granted. I certainly never will lose respect for this privilege. As a result of this decades-long struggle, the yearning for freedom appears in my work often, in language and in my use of the circle as a symbol for wholeness and what all beings strive for: to be in control of their own existence.”

- James Verbicky, 2020