MOSIER, OR - ‘Art for the Sky' is a unique, large group, team-build- ing experience for schools, com- munities, events and festivals. The end result of each art project is a giant ‘living' painting made out of people - a metaphor, demonstrating the power of collaboration and the value of holding a ‘big picture' view of the world.

Human ‘paint drops' are organ- ised into their places using a mega- phone from a high vantage point, such as a crane. At ground level, these stunning creations seem, at first, to be just a mishmash of peo- ple, props and materials. To make sense of each piece, one must literally ‘reach for the sky'.

Each project helps the partici- pants to awaken their ‘skysight' - a term coined by founder Daniel Dancer, describing a manner of viewing the world in a ‘big picture' way - learning to see through the eyes of all beings; through the eyes of future generations. "With skysight we can access our highest creative potential and better solve the problems we face as individuals and as a society," he says.

Before going ‘out to the field', Daniel encourages the ‘painters' to learn about their chosen art form through interactive multimedia pre- sentations - information on the creature's plight, its significance as part of the wider ecosystem or its symbolic importance to cultural groups.

Daniel, a part-Mohawk environ- mental artist, author, educator, singer-songwriter and photogra- pher, became fascinated by ‘sky art', while travelling around South America and coming across the fa- mous Nazca Lines of Peru.

As a result, Daniel decided to bring an entire primary school out to perform as beads on the head- band of a 25-acre American Indian head. A decade later, the parents of one of the ‘beads' informed him that the experience was the most memorable thing their son had ever done in school. It had taught him that things are not always as they seem and how a ‘big picture' view is essential - so, in 2000, ‘Art for the Sky' was born.

With hundreds of people collab- orating to become an animal or a symbol from nature, each living painting becomes an act of cultural splendour. The projects help erase some of the boundaries that often exist in school or office settings and signify a promise to better care for our world and each other. "Being part of something glorious - some- thing much bigger than ourselves - is rare in life," explains Daniel. "So, when it happens in our school years, it sets a kind of ‘true north' in our internal compass, which we can always reference."

Native Sky: an Indian Art Rising is one of Daniel's current projects. Expected to take up to three years, it brings ‘Art for the Sky' to 12 In- dian Nations, as a unified response to the present environmental crisis - a message to America written on Indian lands; giant living paintings formed by living and breathing bodies of Indian people and their supporters.

Daniel has also begun to facili- tate river and wild land clean-ups, using the found materials as intri- cate parts of his images. For exam- ple, his recent ‘Kids Light the World' artwork featured 2,100 stu- dents forming a lighthouse, rising out of ‘rocks' made from rubbish collected during a beach cleaning event.

 "This art is medicine for our- selves and the wild. It's a way to give thanks for all the beauty that surrounds us and to seek forgive- ness from Earth for the damage in- flicted by humankind," says Daniel. "Through story, intention and par- ticipation with others, each piece activates a healing responsiveness. Despite their impermanence and perhaps because of it, these works have real and intrinsic value... like Earth herself