The residency is in partnership with the Florida International Festival.
Numerous opportunities are available free to the public to view the construction of the mandala.
From all the artistic traditions of Tantric Buddhism, that of painting with colored sand ranks as one of the most unique and exquisite. Millions of grains of sand are painstakingly laid into place on a flat platform to form the image of a mandala. The subject of a Tibetan sand painting is known in Sanskrit as a mandala, or cosmogram, of which there are many tuypes. In general all mandalas have outer, inner and secret meanings. The creation of a sand painting is said to effect a purification and healing on these three levels.