After much deliberation I have decided to close The Painted Door on Feb 15th 2010.

Don’t worry, I will continue to be available to show the work in your home or other venue in addition to selling online.  And I love opportunities to lecture on the subject of Aboriginal Art.

  RELATIVE POVERTY ……….. 2.5 Billion People
Able to feed, house and clothe family with little extra. Often living on <$3000 per year.  

  MODERATE POVERTY …….. 1.5 Billion People
Living on $1 – $2 per day; While not actually starving, extreme hardship is part of daily living.   

EXTREME POVERTY …………… 1 Billion People
Ill, hungry, destitute; they live near death; earn pennies a day while living mostly in rural areas.

They’re in the “Poverty Trap”………and haven’t actually made it to the ladder yet.

Saturday 11 am to 4 pm

 Rising International is part of an exciting, optimistic, hardworking, global movement that has pledged to end poverty in our lifetime. Yes, it seems overwhelming, but it is possible now as never before. Unprecedented levels of communications, technology and human awareness make solving global poverty possible. But to do it we need to act now and act together. 

Rising’s contribution is to open markets, through the very successful home party model of sales, in the United States and, eventually other counties, for individual and collective women producers of art products and crafts living in high risk areas of developing nations. Secondly, because the Rising home party takes place in the intimate setting of your living room or office, you and your friends share the inspiring, brave and sometimes funny stories of the crafters and artisans along with the chance to purchase beautiful creations.

Solving the massive problem of global poverty will not be easy.

Hear what experts have to say:  

Two of the world’s leading economists, Stephen Smith and Jeffrey Sachs agree that when poverty is extreme, the poor do not have the ability to escape by their own efforts alone. And, although the traps seem hopeless, both agree that there are ways out of all them.

The biggest challenge the poor face is getting a foothold on the ladder of economic development… just a foothold. Once on the ladder, evidence suggests that people, households and countries continue to climb up the rungs of development.

Rising International’s focus is to increase access to economic power for women at the very bottom — the women of the developing world, especially those living in high-risk situations, so that they may reach the first rung and move up toward economic safety. Many women in developing countries already produce beautiful and practical items using traditional techniques of their own unique designs. However, they lack access to the markets where those with disposable incomes live. They may also lack basic tools of production. Rising helps with both of these.

Research shows that when women in developing countries are given the chance to earn money and educate children, it triggers an inspiring sequence of results:

Enhanced nutrition, health and life expectancy
Lowered infant and maternal mortality rates
Improved housing and sanitation
Increased family planning
Gross domestic product grows

 By empowering impoverished women, we change the world.

pre-Columbian fabrics (ca. 500 – 1000 BP)
cotton, wool (camelid), natural dyes, plant fiber, natural pigment

 $25 each

These dolls are contemporary Peruvian pieces made using ancient textile fragments. The dolls are near facsimiles of a doll making tradition that was in practice along the arid central coast of Peru 1000 years ago. Indigenous Peruvian artisans maintain the connection to their ancenstors by making and selling the dolls them as a contemporary style of folk art that has ancient roots.

The Chancay people inhabited the Chancay and Chillon valleys on the central coast of Peru. They are best known for their textiles. Thousands of Chancay textiles survive in museums around the world.

Most of the surviving ancient dolls that have been recovered had been placed as grave furnishings. Indeed, the vast majority of ancient Peruvian fabrics in museums today, such as the fragments used to clothe the dolls shown here, were most likely recovered directly or indirectly from funerary contexts. This is because these areas are less likely to be disturbed over time and subject to the elements than other more active areas such as those around residential areas.

 The desert of the Western Andes is one of the driest regions in the world. Thanks to low humidity on the coast, many Peruvian textiles have survived in the dry sandy soil. 

Joanna Macy’s book “World as Lover World as Self”  is easy to read and inspiring.  It “teaches us to consider our world and its creatures as nothing less than an extension of ourselves.”

In it she quotes Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

Being rock, being gas, being mist, being Mind,
Being the mesons traveling among galexies with the speed of light,
You have come here, my loved on…
You have menifested yourself as trees, as gress, as butter flies, as singeld-celled beinings, and as chrysanthemums;
but the eyes with which you looked at me this morning tell me youhave never died.

Just thinking out loud. V