Unfolding Flight                                                   

the "Freedom to Create Leadership Award for Women"

One day my manager Tess got a call from an organization in Singapore called Freedom to Create, who had heard about my art honoring those who work for the greater good of humanity. 

They wanted me to create an award to give to the winners of a new internatonal annual prize.  It was intended to highlight women who are changing the world. We were of course extremely honored and Tess said we would love to do the project! 

At the first award ceremony, in South Africa, the prize went to Dr. Cynthia Maung, who runs a health clinic for refugees on the border of Myanmar and Thailand, a very inspiring story.
A young bird is totally unaware of the process by which its growth both prepares and compels it into a terribly rash act for an animal- leaping off into open space. That courage opens a new life for the bird carved out of its own inner nature.

For humans that flghtpath is not one of empty air but is rather a space pried open by the imagination, which wrests from a closed and opaque darkness clear vaults of possibility.

Seized with desire we forget all about how to do it or whether we can and simply leap. To our astonishment we've constructed wings out of our invisible viscera, a transformation that, in the words of poet Steve Palmer, pulls out of ourselves “the great height to leap into, in disbelief that we are not things of the sky.”

Dr. Cynthia Maung receives the first FTC award in Cape Town, South Africa, Nov. 19, 2011

Read the news article

Read the award story