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Southern Oregon University to host Tibetan cultural festival

A festival of Tibetan arts and culture will take place in Ashland, Oregon at SOU’s Stevenson Union on Sunday, October 5 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Sponsored by SOU’s Art Department, local businesses, and individuals, this event will feature Tibetan art, religion, music, literature, film, fashion, dance, food, artistic activities for children, opportunities to shop for Tibetan art and religious items, and drawings for prizes.  Food will be provided by Tibet Treasures of Ashland.

Proceeds will be donated to the Kham Aid Foundation, a charity that works in Tibet to preserve indigenous cultural heritage.

Throughout the day, live presentations on Tibetan Buddhism, art, and culture will be given in the Rogue River Room.   These include:

• A film The Horserace, relating the history and early life of King Gesar of Ling, Tibet’s legendary Buddhist warrior, will be screened. The film was written and directed by Tulku Teglo Rinpoche of Serta, Golok in eastern Tibet.

• Choying Art’s Trish DeMers, an accomplished painter of Tibetan thangka (scroll painting), will speak about the spiritual symbolism and practice of Tibetan religious art.

• Author Julie Rogers will present a slide show of Tibetan art and architecture as it has been reborn in India and Nepal.  Her Vajrayana pilgrimage included India’s largest Tibetan Monastery at Bylakuppe, the holy city of Bodh Gaya, and some of Nepal’s most sacred sites.

• The Chaksampa Tibetan Dance and Opera Company of San Francisco will perform Tibetan songs and dance. They will also display diverse clothing traditions from across the Tibetan plateau in North America’s first-ever Tibetan fashion show.

• Dr. Pamela Logan, founder and president of Kham Aid Foundation, is the key-note speaker. She will talk about her organization’s discovery of an extraordinary cache of intact 500-year-old Buddhist paintings in a remote mountain temple in eastern Tibet and her efforts to preserve these remarkable paintings.

Festival-goers will also have the opportunity to learn about southern Oregon’s diverse Tibetan Buddhist communities.  The Kagyu Sukha Choling, an Ashland organization that recently broke ground for a traditional Tibetan temple, will have representatives at the festival; and Tashi Choling, which belongs to the Nyingma lineage and has a traditional temple and educational facility not far from Ashland in the Colestine Valley will also be present with pamphlets and materials. Tashi Choling’s bookstore, Mirror of Wisdom, and Mirror of Wisdom Video, will offer books and multimedia publications. Light of Berotsana, a non-profit organization based in Boulder, Colorado, will offer information about their translation of classical Buddhist texts and training of new translators to carry on the traditional teachings of Tibet.

The event organizer is Hilary Stetson of Ashland, Oregon.  Already an active member of the local Tibetan Buddhist community, she was inspired put together this festival after meeting Pam Logan and learning of the need to protect endangered art in Tibet.  She contacted Southern Oregon University’s art department, and they agreed to act as a sponsor by providing the facilities and the equipment for the event.  Other major sponsors for this event include: Soundpeace, Ashland Shop-N-Kart, Ashland Community Food Store, Wells Fargo Bank, Eugene Robbins D.D.S., Phyllis Norris CPA, and Tunbridge Hill Farm.

The event will take place in the Rogue River Room of Southern Oregon University’s Stevenson Union. Pre-event ticket prices are: children 12 and under – $5; seniors 65 & over and students with ID – $8; and adults – $10. At the door, ticket prices are: children 12 and under – $5; seniors 65 & over and students with ID – $10; and adults – $12. Each ticket enters the purchaser in a drawing to win a beautiful Tibetan painting from Choying Art and other wonderful door prizes.

Tickets go on sale Sept. 1 at Sound Peace and at Tibet Treasures, both located on Main St. in Ashland.

For general information and ticket purchase by mail, send an email to: hilary@khamaid.org or call 541 488-2308.  

To find out about Kham Aid Foundation programs to preserve Tibetan culture, go to www.khamaid.org or call 626 449-7505.