PASADENA, CA.- Internationally celebrated artist Yoko Ono will present a major installation of her participatory work, Wish Trees, in the large central courtyard at One Colorado from August 2 through November 9, 2008. The installation will consist of a number of living trees selected by the artist, and which are identified with the environment or history of Southern California. Visitors are
invited to write their wishes on pieces of paper and hang them on the tree branches. Public access to Ono's art installation and the One Colorado Courtyard is free.

Wishes from Pasadena will be joined with wishes from all over the world and placed in specially constructed capsules to be buried in the area surrounding Yoko Ono's public art project in memory of John Lennon, the Imagine Peace Tower on Videy Island, off the coast of Reykjavik, Iceland. The tower, a column of light emanating from a base with a radius of about 10 meters (approx 33 ft.), is lit for two months each year starting on October 9, John Lennon's birthday, and ending on December 9, the anniversary of his death.

Yoko Ono's influence for this piece is connected to her early childhood experiences in Japan: "As a child, I used to go to a temple and buy a printed paper wish sold at the temple and tie it around the branch of a bush. Bushes in temple courtyards were always filled with people's wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar," she said.

The Wish Trees have been a part of several prominent exhibitions worldwide by Yoko Ono since the 1990s. Instructions are simple:


WISH PIECE -- y.o. '96

Make a wish.
Write it down on a piece of paper.
Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree.
Ask your friends to do the same.
Keep wishing
Until the branches are covered with wishes.

The act of wishing is described by Ono as a "collective prayer." Some wishes are deeply personal, some represent wishes for all humankind.