2008: That was the Beatle year that was: Yoko Ono's art projects

December 21, 7:33 AMBeatles ExaminerSteve Marinucci

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Yoko Ono at the opening of her exhibit in Shangai. (AP Photo)

(If you were a Beatle fan, you have to admit 2008 was a strange year in regard to news from the Beatles. There was great news and there was weird news. This is one of a series of items we're writing as a review of Beatle news from the past year.)

Yoko Ono is not a Beatle, but her work as an artist does bring traces of the headlines she and Beatle John Lennon made before Lennon's death. The bed-ins,  the records (yes, even the "Two Virgins" nude record cover. They were performance art. they were unusual, but underneath it all, there was a sense of innocence and even humor.

Yoko's art work since Lennon's death has carried on that spirit. I remember her request for 10 minutes of silence on the day of the worldwide memorial for John Lennon just after he was killed.  If you watched the coverage of it at the time, those 10 minutes weren't just silent -- they had a spiritual feeling to them. For 10 minutes, Yoko Ono brought peace to a small corner of the world as she and John Lennon had tried to do so many times over the years.

She continues that tradition today with her Wish Tree and Onochord installations, her exhibits that are displayed through the world and the Imagine Peace Tower.

On the Wish Tree, you are invited to write wishes and hang them on a "wish tree." That makes the participant a performance artist. With the Onochord, you are instructed to blink a flashlight in a Morse code-type of message to mean the words "I love you." 

The Imagine Peace Tower is a powerfully designed statement in and of itself. In the cold atmosphere of Iceland, the tower beams a solitary stripe of light from the ground to outer space.  Ringo reportedly joked to Ono, "Could you put it up in the Caribbean next time?"

And she currently has a massive art exhibition covering two full floors at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in the UK.

Yoko Ono has become an ambassador for peace and love.  "We are in so much fear, confusion and anger now. And it's nice to have a moment when we think of love instead of anything else," she says in a video on her Imagine Peace website.

In her unique way, all she is saying is give peace and love a chance.