Intercambio, marcos de chaquira... and tile bead auction piece

It's been a busy week in my studio. On Tuesday a group of exchange students and their teacher from Pino Suarez, in Jalisco, Mexico joined me for an afternoon of beading. My friend Carmen, from the Basque region of Spain  (who was also my Spanish teacher 2 years ago) assisted.
Each winter Moscow High School families host a group of Mexican students as the counterpoint to the Turtle Trip exchange, when a group from here head to Playa Gloria, in Jalisco to help on a project to restore sea turtle populations. Our visitors take part in many different community events, and with luck experience some skiing - or at least snow. I have a great fondness for the kids, as they come from the community I have visited each year for the past six years. One of the boys here was in my first residency at Tenoctitlan Primaria Escuela!
Clockwise from left: me and Pinta, Maestra Fabiola Graciano Lopez, Edward Alexander Pérez, Ulises Antonio Quezada Carrillo,  Yaxziri Coral Cisneros, Carmen Cerdá Aldama (with Charlie in her lap), Alba Regina Renteria Salazar and Cristian de Jesus Cuevas Macias.

The small beaded frames were stitched by members of my Artist's Way group at our first meeting this past Sunday. More about this later, but it's a great group and I look forward to getting to know everyone a little better as we work our way through Julia Cameron's classic volume of the same title. Several of us have done the program before, to great benefit, and for me: It's Time again!

I just delivered the framed beaded mirror to the Prichard Art Gallery. It will be up for bid at their gala biennial fundraising auction, and I am happy to donate this piece which was created from 'overage' (NOT leftovers) from the Million Bead Project, exhibited in '07. This piece was created using Czechoslovakian tile beads, which are extinct now. The factories where they used to be made (I learned from the US Czech Consulate while researching them) have been "disassembled." Another casualty of the plastic age; modern little petroleum-based equivalents may at first glance look the same... but they are not.
Anyway, this piece is a full donation, to support children's art programing at the Gallery, and the winning bidder is going to get super deal. The auction will be Saturday Feb 8th at 7pm. The show opens before that, on Jan 24, and pieces can also be previewed at https://www.facebook.com/PrichardArtGallery