“If I don’t make myself a peaceful place who will?”
–From Janeil Engelstad’s Peace Plates
At particularly stressful times in a family or friendship, the table may be set especially nicely with fine table linens pulled from drawers and the best plates taken from the top shelves of china cabinets. At these times, those who are at odds with one another are invited for dinner. The unspoken part of the invitation: “Let’s get real. Let’s talk.”
Whether or not folks clear the air by the time they clear the table, it is here where, very often, the talking begins.
“The table offers a landscape in front of those coming together to meet,” says Chris Conley, assistant professor of human-centered product design at Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design. “Left fairly open, it is also neutral and a space across which we can negotiate and offer proposals to each other.”
It was with the table’s role in the peace process in mind that media artist Janeil Engelstad brought together art and social concerns in the form of Peace Plates, an artistic dining installation that combines words and images. It’s on display at I.D., a contemporary home-furnishings and eyewear store in the Wrigleyville neighborhood until the end of this month.
At the heart of Peace Plates are porcelain china dishes set on a round Shaker-style table. Seven sets of salad and dinner plates designed by Engelstad seem to float up in the air with their serene images and hues. (She chose seven as the number of individual place settings — as opposed to the traditional six or eight — because the number seven “has spiritual significance in many cultures, religions and sacred texts.”)
Each salad plate has a different photograph by Engelstad that conveys the message of peace — an image of open hands, another with calming sand and sea, a woman standing in prayer. On the border of the seven dinner plates is food for thought: individual statements or poetic phrases meant to prompt conversations around the table.
And, like a mantra, a blessing is etched onto each of Engelstad’s seven wineglasses: “hold hands hold silence let peace be a song that is sung end each circle as it was begun.”
The award-winning artist, who has homes in Chicago and Dallas, has been designing and producing community-based art projects for more than 10 years. Inspired by the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Engelstad was moved to use her art to express feelings about solutions for world peace.
The table was a natural canvas for her because, says the 41-year-old artist, “It’s a gathering place, the place where people come together at home and in international peace talks.”
(Some might remember that table design actually is credited with salvaging the Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam War. Negotiations broke down even before they really began because of disputes over seating arrangements. It took Danish architect/poet Piet Hein to design a “superelliptic” table — described as circle, square, rectangle and ellipse molded into one organic, geometric shape” — to equalize everyone’s position at the table and get the peace talks back on track.)
Engelstad’s 48-inch round birch table, constructed by Engelstad and Alan Lerner, a Chicago artist, is encircled by seven birch stools. Its simplicity is its most attractive feature and lets people and their stories add color to the space.
The table’s small scale should come with the warning: “Touching and talking is likely to occur.” It’s designed for close seating — elbow to elbow, knee to knee — making it nearly impossible to avoid contact or connection.
Was that Engelstad’s intention?
Definitely. “The table is where you want to come together with others,” she says.
“People who come into the store stop at the table,” says Steven Burgert, one of I.D.’s three owners. “It’s an immediate conversation piece because of the peace themes [photographs and sayings] on the plates.”
Before she began creating, Engelstad sent out 300 peace surveys to people she had met in her travels as an artist around the world. About 150 sent back their answers to the survey’s three questions: How do you define peace? Do you think world peace is possible? Do you have a message of peace you’d like to share? (A fourth question — Do you identify with a particular religion or spiritual practice? — was optional. Engelstad asked this because she wanted to know if spiritual practices played in with people’s ideas about peace.)
Those who responded to the survey “shared their personal dreams, visions and doubts about peace through poetry, prose, quotes, drawings, photographs and music,” Engelstad says. “People really didn’t have a vision for world peace. . . . The overwhelming belief expressed through the surveys was that peace has to begin within each one of us.”
All of this inspired Engelstad to set a table for peace talks and to bring the question of how to find it home.
She hopes that conversations around dinner tables — hers and others’ — will lead to talking and listening. Coming together at the dining table, she says, is not just about dining. It’s also a great place for meaningful communication.
Conley, design professor at IIT, agrees.
“The table provides a comfortable separation so that we do not feel awkward as we would . . . sitting in two chairs across from each other with nothing in between,” he says. And Conley adds, “The [tabletop] arrangements are an opportunity to create an appropriate atmosphere conducive to the conversations that need to take place.”
The entire Peace Plates installation — birch table, seven birch stools, seven two-piece dinnerware place settings and flatware, seven wineglasses and napkins — is $4,500 at I.D., 3341 N. Clark St., 773-755-4343. Orders of separate pieces can be produced.
———-
Editor’s note: We want to know what your Peace Plate would look like if you were the artist. Look inside for a blank canvas, then bring out your crayons or Cray-Pas, your scrapbooking gear or get to work on your computer. Send us your vision of a Peace Plate using the blank provided inside; Janeil Engelstad, Pamela Sherrod and Juana Conrad, president and founder of Women for International Peace and Arbitration will pick their favorite salad/dinner plate setting. Deadline: Entry must be postmarked by Sept. 22. The winning entry, which will be announced Oct. 12, will be produced as one salad plate and one dinner plate for the winner.
