The story of "A Labyrinth Journey," began in January 2003, when my childhood friend Maida Owens and I started the Baton Rouge Labyrinth Project.
The Baton Rouge Labyrinth Project is a volunteer initiative to teach the Baton Rouge community about labyrinths, and to install permanent labyrinths in public spaces. About twenty enthusiastic people showed up to our first meeting at CC's Coffee House, including Daria Woodside, John Nagle, and Michele Fry, who I am naming here because of their continuing commitment to the project, and to our shared vision to bring labyrinths to the Baton Rouge community.
After the initial launch meeting we debuted our first labyrinth at the Earth Day Festival in Baton Rouge, followed by another labyrinth walk at FestForAll (a popular community arts festival) three weeks later. In June 2003 (around summer solstice) we hosted a labyrinth walk at BREC City Park in collaboration with The Baton Rouge Gallery.
Inasmuch as the labyrinth is a contemplative experience, I was particularly worried about the kind of art that would be featured in the gallery at the time of our labyrinth event. Sometimes art is meant to provoke, disturb, shake people up. A labyrinth, on the other hand, is meant to be a reflective experience, a way to slow people down. Maida, who has been involved in public arts for years, had warned me that we wouldn't have any control over what would be on the walls of the gallery during our walk - and we'd just need to accept that.
However, synchronicity prevailed. To my pleasant surprise the artist who "happened" to be exhibiting at the gallery on the day of our labyrinth debut was New Orleans visionary artist and sacred symbolist Theresa Herrera. Her work is grounded in the principles of sacred geometry , as is the ancient pattern of the labyrinth . I ended up purchasing one of Theresa's paintings of a medieval labyrinth superimposed over a luscious seascape (It graces the walls of my office as I type this now).....and this really is the beginning of the story of "A Labyrinth Journey."
