painting by Deirdre Towers

Since the fall of 2025, Deirdre has been creating with Mara Aceves, Mexican born, Paris-based interior designer,  a tiny pavilion to serve as an alternative to a park bench, granting privacy to dance, dream, or doze. We’d like this project to be a Swiss Army knife of projects, many things to many people in different circumstances, at different times of the day. Twelve hours open to random visitors, twelve hours programmed for artists, cleaners, and healers.

This project has been ten years in the making. While searching for a black box to film a flamenco solo a few years ago, I began to dream of creating the space I was looking for. I asked myself, “what if you expanded the size of a photo booth to accommodate 1-2 people for a video shoot?  Add a control box for camera angles, lights, sounds, smells. Put in Times Square. The idea could pay for itself.

At the time, I was exploring polarities, and creating digital duets around the theme of YES/NO valentines. As stress levels rose in 2025, I felt a need to support the people most negatively impacted – those without resources – and do something more than march in a parade.  And so, our focus shifted from a place to a film, to a cleaning room for the mind/body/spirit.

What could this oasis look like?  I reached out to my collaborator Mara who made a few years ago a labyrinthine model for me for the Venice Biennale.  We had met through a sound healer from Spain, Rakel Terceno, so we listened to her voice as we imagined our sanctuary. Together, we study restorative spaces, and the many ways nature heals itself.

We began asking ourselves,  “What could be most effective in a short amount of time?” What could top popping an aspirin or Xanax? My rebel heart longs to offer an alternative to prescription drugs! By opening the ceiling of our pavilion, the entrant will look up – a neck-saver for all of us doom-scrollers  – gaze into the light, and breathe.  With a prevalent mental health crisis, this one posture change could help. Read more about the “science of pausing” in Psychology Today

labyrinth by Andy Galsworthy

Mara, daughter of sculptor/painter Gustavo Aceves, and I, daughter of an architectural buff/woodsman keep returning to spirals, natural materials, and indigenous architecture. Colombian architect Ana Mara Gutierrez is a major inspiration with her Organizmo. Our 6′ wide by 9″ high structure has the shape of two hands cupping each other partially concealed by a wave, made of burnt and raw wood that.  The  wood floor, with the resonance of a drum built for dancing, has a mandala, lit from below with light and water at its center.

Table of Silence 9/11

As a way to subsidize our public/private  peace lab, we are exploring business models for sustainability. We have secured a non-profit Carlota Santana Flamenco Vivo as an organizational partner to assist for public permits and insurance.  We are doing research on the legalities putting the pavilion on a swimming raft, so can test this idea afloat. Invite some other dreamers to come ….other performers to perform. In this incubation period, we are also learning from the success stories of public arts projects, such as Table of Silence 911 created by Buglisi Dance Theatre which has become a collective ritual at Lincoln Center. Habitat for Humanity is celebrating its 50th year with Pop up Doors art installation. We are learning from their commitment to people around the world to have a safe, healthy home.

What does peace feel like? Can we grow it?! Fertilize it?

Painting by Deirdre Towers

We are all peace farmers, just unschooled, undisciplined and contaminated by toxins we have chosen to imbibe.  Flying in the dark, sailing in the fog, driving without a gps, we bump around potholes of life, with all the ditches, landmines, and evil temptations. In this pavilion, you can be free, rant, dance, dream until you find peace within. Be silly and crazy, knowing that this place is built for it! Giving everyone a reprieve, an inspiring place to regroup, and pray for calm is an investment in peace.

What shall we call this sanctuary? Given our Irish/Mexican backgrounds, we are intrigued to make a cross between the Celtic symbol for Awen, Cornish and Breton word for inspiration, and the Mayan glyph for Ik, wind, breath, life… We might call this haven Tzik’awen or Tza’wenik!