Back in 2023, following the events on Oct. 7 that reignited a decades-old conflict in Gaza, Phoenix artist Joan Baron started a project she calls “Tiny Prayer Space.”
It’s a participatory exhibition. Baron invites visitors to her workspace to join her in sitting on the floor, making tiny clay beads for each life lost in the war — Palestinian, Israeli, and aid workers alike. So far, she and her guests/collaborators have made over 45,000 beads.
Baron joined The Show to talk about the origins of the project, which continues to this day.
Full conversation
JOAN BARON: I had a very strong inclination to speak to it through my artistic practice and I had to figure out what was I going to look like.
SAM DINGMAN: Once you decided that you wanted to figure out a way to speak to this conflict through your artistic practice, how did you happen upon bead making specifically? How did that come to you in your thought process?
BARON: So I was looking for something that we all had in common through our history. And the bead making came up, and I thought OK my practice focuses on working with Earth materials, clay, the bead was like so clear to me that that would be the form in which I would express my concerns.
DINGMAN: What was it about beads specifically?
BARON: It was something that was used in so many different ways, within meditation practices. It was also a, a means of body adornment. As a ritual you would wear beads during ceremony. Love was a huge component in the evolution of choosing the beads because you don't make beads to express anger, you make beads to express love in some form or another, so it became a story …
DINGMAN: I've never really heard of anger beads.
BARON: Right. So it was also a way to make people comfortable, for coming to tiny prayer space, which is a separate little room that I embellished with rugs and pillows and welcome people to come and sit with me, on the floor, on the pillows in a grounded way.
DINGMAN: It's interesting to me that you had this instinctive reaction of wanting to connect with love, of wanting to ground people, of wanting to make these objects that you associate with these warm feelings, because I know I don't have to tell you, this conflict has generated such intense partisan feeling. And It would also make sense to me if you as an artist were to say, I feel compelled by what's happening here to make art that is in support of the Palestinian cause or in support of the Israeli cause, but you have made a different choice.
BARON: The idea of looking at a life lost in this conflict was more significant to me than taking sides. And I really wanted to address that. Where is the value of a life? And if we think about it in those terms, we're not, we can't take sides.
DINGMAN: Can I ask you about the prayer component of that though, because what you're expressing there is not necessarily spiritual, but the idea of spirituality is encoded directly into the name of this project. It's Tiny Prayer Space.
BARON: So the incorporation of prayer. It has to do with an incident that happened to me when I was very young. I was with my brothers and cousins, and we were playing in Lake Erie, and we would jump off my uncle's little boat. He had anchored it in the sandbar, so when we would jump, we would hit the sandbar no deeper than our knees. And we would do this for hours, climb back up the little ladder, jump off the boat and just have a great time.
One of those jumps I did not hit the sandbar. I remember the feeling like I'm sitting here today with you. I remember the feeling I'm drowning, and I was moving my arms. I remember how cold the water was because the deeper you are in water, right? It gets colder.
DINGMAN: So just to make sure I understand that you jump in a way that you've jumped a bunch of times before, but instead of the sandbar stopping your fall, you just keep falling deeper into the water.
BARON: Yes, so what was happening was the anchor had allowed the boat to drift just beyond where the sandbar ended, so. The next thing I remember were hands lifting me up out of the water and carrying me to shore. When I asked my family, my cousins, did you see what happened or did you see anybody carrying me to shore, and nobody saw anything.
However, when we got home, one of our dear family friends who happened to be a minister at a small church nearby asked, did anything happen to one of you barren kids over the weekend at the lake? And so why did you ask? And she said, well, I was in the middle of preaching and this overwhelming feeling of concern came over me and I asked my congregation if we could pause and pray for the barren children.
DINGMAN: Right around the time when you're same day.
BARON: It was a Sunday.
DINGMAN: Hold on, wait, I, I have to ask you a couple of follow-up questions here. So that's a remarkable story. So when you asked your, it was your uncle's boat, when you asked your uncle and your brothers, that it wasn't that they had jumped in after you?
BARON: No.
DINGMAN: So from, from everybody's standpoint, Joan jumped, Joan was underwater, and the next thing they knew you were on the shore.
BARON: Yeah. So the power of prayer entered my life and became part of my DNA.
DINGMAN: In the congregation we're praying for you right around the time that you were somehow saved.
BARON: Yes.
DINGMAN: That's a powerful experience. That's a powerful experience.
BARON: As a result of that childhood experience, I was compelled to try to understand more about prayer and if I can use my art in a way to continue to deliver the message of love, then I feel I have taken on a piece of that responsibility that I was told that I must take on when I was a very young person.
DINGMAN: So you have brought in some of the beads here. We have them here in the studio and I'm looking at them.
BARON: If you were to lift in your hands several of those, they make a beautiful sound.
DINGMAN: I'll do that. I'm being careful because I don't want to break any of them.
BARON: Yeah, you won’t. Right, so it's, it's, it could be the sound of the shofar, it could be the sound of …
DINGMAN: It looks like a little shofar.
BARON: Yeah, it could be the sound of the sheep and so many symbols and shapes came up for people. There are not any two beads alike, just like there are not, not two human beings alike. I feel like Tiny Prayer Space is an extension of me, so I refer to it as a living being, the very act of setting up an environment where you feel comfortable and safe will allow you to then express your concerns, your fears, talk about the trauma that you have experienced as a result of this conflict and how might we create sacred space together.
