Dian Parker wrote a wonderful review of my retrospective exhibit in the July/August 2021 issue of "Art New England."

My retrospective exhibit - an honor, a joy, wonderful in so many ways!

 
Petria Mitchell, co-owner of Mitchell•Giddings Fine Arts, in Brattleboro, Vermont, has made a series of videos about my show at the gallery, "Precarious Shelters: Houses that Hold Us."

Click here to see the first one, about materials and techniques.

It was three days of color, plaiting, shaping, increasing, decreasing, painted paper. Many beautiful baskets were created.

We had fun! We made corners, shoulders, and rims, and made the best of all of all the good things that virtual learning has to offer!

We gathered from all over the country, and had a wonderful time together! Four days of coiling, looping, and stitching. All from the comfort of everyone's home.

These six wonderful students were willing to test it out this virtual pilot workshop with me. We all learned a lot, and we had a good time!

Welcome to San Jose,
Costa Rica

La Carpio, in San Jose, is the home of the largest immigrant community in Central America. There are 55,000 people crowded into a very small, poverty-stricken area. The streets are narrow, winding, and hilly, with structures/homes created mostly of discarded metal roofs and lumber. There are ditches on both sides for rainy season. The streets are filled with people, kids, very skinny dogs and cats. It is noisy and busy.

Sifais was created in the midst of it all. It was founded by Maris Stella Fernandez, at the urging of Alicia Aviles Aviles, a community organizer in La Carpio. Alicia was determined to find solutions for some of the problems in her community. She found Maris Stella.

     Sifais is an organization that promotes social integrations through art. Within the safety of its physical building, Sifais offers lessons in many arts: music, ballet, crafts, boxing, as well as educational and marketing opportunities. It is a safe and welcoming place in La Carpio.
     I was there for five days, teaching 14 neighborhood women to both coil and crochet using recycled fabrics and plastic bags. I learned as much from them as they did from me. With the help of varied and wonderful translators, we cut, stitched, and crocheted. We laughed a lot, often at my disjointed sentences in Spanish.

Cimarrones is a small, rural village in Limon Province, in the southeast of Costa Rica. It is one of the communities that is visited by the hikers traveling with Mar a Mar, a non-profit association for rural development in Costa Rica. The goal is for these women to make objects that can be sold to the hikers.

My second workshop was in Cimarrones, where I was the guest of Miguel and Mireya Arana. Mireya's English is better than my Spanish (which isn't saying much at all). She is the president of the town, and seems to be the organizer of all that happens there. This included my workshop. She is very rich in family and friends, and in the respect she has in her community.

     Our workshop was full, with many creative and excited women. Their children generally joined us in the early afternoon, after school let out. The women worked with recycled fabric, plastic bags, and local abaca fiber. They created baskets and bags / canastas y bolsas.
     I had a translator, and finally learned enough Spanish so that I could make a few jokes. We talked about pricing. They felt a fair price would be 2000 colones per hour, equivalent to about $4.00.

Costa Rica vacation,
here we come!

Corcavado National Park
We walked, and walked, and walked....

So many thanks to Sylvia Saborio, who made this trip possible.

Here she is with her good friend, Jose Sancho, Costa Rican sculptor. We had a special visit to his home/studio/gardens.

Collaborations with other artists help us look at our usual work just a little more creatively, to see what is possible. In the end, one plus one equals three.

"Botanical Vessels"
10" tall. Woven of hand printed copper etchings by botanical artist Bobbi Angell. Click here to visit her website.

“The True Love” is a collaborative piece created with Steve Lloyd and Cecil Maxfield. Steve and Cecil painted the paper and wrote the words from a poem of the same name, by David Whyte, a poem read at the civil union ceremony in 2007. These words were woven into their basket
 
 

What a great group of excited and creative students!
In Scottsville, KY, hosted by The Basket Maker's Catalog.