Coeur d’Alene- The CDA Arts Commission unveiled a statue dedicated to peace and unity in the community on Sherman Avenue across from the Human Rights building on Friday.
Artist of the “Monument to Peace and Unity” statue, Ai Qiu Hopen of Humanity Memorial, inc., was the main guest of honor at the ceremony to dedicate her new art piece in front of a general audience with members from the CDA Arts Commission for the local community that stands at the entrance to the City of Coeur d’Alene on Sherman Avenue.
Inspired by people who courageously fight for peace and the Committee’s statement that “we support the self-evident truth that all persons are created equal,” Hopen created the monument that creates peace in a unifying matter for the community that unifies everyone across cultural backgrounds and race.
“Our common goal is much greater than the division we have,” said Hopen. “The embracing two columns encircle the birds of peace circling together as global peace as the piece of humanity that we all can look up and that we can all reach up to and in welcoming all includes all.”
Hopen has faith in a foundation of communication and understanding of each other that there is love and compassion in everyone as human beings, which is a key inspiration for the monument.
Hopen was awarded the contract beating out 22 other applicants to promote and create an art piece that resembles the values of the community promoting human rights and equality.
According to a member of the CDA Arts Commission, John Bruning, the lengthy process involved a Call to Artists that looks at artists regionally, and nationally, where artists submit their work to the Arts Commission and then the Commission sift through those submissions fitting the theme and budget. The process involves a subcommittee who makes the recommendation, sending that recommendation to City Council to be voted on for approval with a budget of $75,000.
CDA Arts Commission Vice Chairman Jennifer Drake mentions that the art piece was originally going to be installed last year, only to have plans scrapped due to Covid-19 and a Steel shortage.
For what the statue represents, Drake said the monument was “not only a welcome to our city, but also a symbol that we behind human rights, basic human dignity, and continue to fight for those causes as long as we have hate.”
Members of the community, like Delaney Ingman, a High School student, stopped by with her Middle School friends, Olivia and Hannah.
“We are all created equal, but that doesn’t mean that we all need to be set in stone and all alike and we are all unique, but we are all equal at the same time,” said Ingman.
The monument had attracted onlookers and other pedestrians, along with drivers who drove past and some curious enough to get a closer look at the words carved into the structure itself with the globe on the ground resembling North America.
Cecil Kelly III, who has written “60 human rights letters in the last 18 years” and “one of the better-known unelected people of Coeur d’Alene,” views the monument as something that gives North Idaho a better image.
“One more step towards dispelling the image people have of North Idaho or Idaho in general,” said Kelly III. “So as to show that there are a lot of good people out there who are opposed to the bigotry and intolerance and hatred that has been on our community by a various loud, but very small minority.”
Ai Qiu Hopen has future art projects in the works, like the “Landmark of Inclusion” for Florida in Sunrise City and a 20ft steel structure in Vermont called “Embrace and Belonging.”
