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, two 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.  Everyone would happily pay for their video – available to them upon leaving, like a digital receipt.

At the time, I was exploring polarities, and creating digital duets around the theme of YES/NO, exploring that line when couples swing towards and away from each other, loving and hating themselves. 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, something that might positively support them.  And so, the above mentioned idea morphed from a revamp of a photo booth to a public sanctuary. Our focus shifted from a place to a film, to safe space to hit pause, 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

Mara, daughter of sculptor/painter Gustavo Aceves, and I, daughter of an architectural buff/woodsman keep returning to spirals, natural materials, and indigenous architecture. We hope to build this 6′ wide by 9″ high structure with bioluminescent wood. As of now, our pavilion is covered with ropes. The floor could be as a soft as a meadow during the day; at twilight, the wood floor, with the resonance of a drum,  becomes a sacred space to dance or just relax.

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 Meow Wolf, and the Ministry of Awe.  Both these art projects are dense with possibilities, whereas our direction is more directed to peace, self-reflection, than entertainment.

What does peace feel like? Can we grow it?! Fertilize it?  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, a  safe place to be  alone, 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.