Change Makers Ball. Painting donated and sold!

What is the Change Maker's Ball?

Every year, Self Help Africa recognizes and celebrates the change that we see among the communities with whom we work.

Each year, tens of thousands more people will start a small business, have more than enough produce to eat and sell, introduce a new income to their homes, educate their children and expand their horizons because of Self Help Africa’s work in four key areas: food security, developing entrepreneurs, women and climate change.

Self Help Africa believes that working with communities in these four areas is the only lasting solution to breaking the cycle of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.

All funds raised at our Change-Makers Ball will go straight to supporting people – women, men, families and communities so that they have the tools and knowledge to be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

We aim to recognize four individuals who have put their names and support behind each cause to help to blaze a path to change for Africa. These are Self Help Africa’s Ambassadors for Change.

Our black tie event will showcase the four areas that we work in, and recognize our ambassadors for helping to bring change to the lives of so many.

Join us at the Ambassador’s for Change Ball to understand how we are working with communities in Africa to empower people to change their own lives, and how you can be a part of that change.

Margaret Brennan, a business reporter and host of Bloomberg TV’s “InBusiness with Margaret Brennan,” will act as master of ceremonies for the evening, which is sponsored by Digicel and includes a champagne and cocktail reception, gourmet dinner, live and silent auctions, and dancing to live music. The expected 400+ crowd of guests will be luminaries from the worlds of international business, finance, sports, diplomacy, publishing, philanthropy and development.

To toast the celebration, guests will have the chance to sip a signature Change-Maker's Cocktail, created especially for the night by two top tastemakers: World-renowned Chef Nils Norén is the former Executive Chef of Aquavit and now the Vice President of Culinary and Pastry Arts at New York’s French Culinary Institute and the Italian Culinary Academy, and he was a 2009 competitor on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters”; Norén will joined by his colleague, Dave Arnold, the Technology Director at the French Culinary Institute and an expert on high-tech cocktails. Together, the talented duo will prepare both alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions of their original cocktail blend.

Another highlight of the ball will be when Patrick Tully of PR/PR (Player Relations/Public Relations) takes the stage to lead a live auction featuring an array of exclusive international trips, unique experiences, sporting event tickets, golf outings, luxury products and more.

To showcase Self Help Africa’s four key focus areas – improving food security, helping farmers cope with climate change, developing entrepreneurs and investing in women’s start-up businesses – the Change-Maker’s Ball will honor four Ambassadors for Change, individuals who have put their names and support behind each cause.

The 2010 Self Help Africa Ambassadors for Change are:
Ambassador for Entrepreneurs: Heather James, Principal and Director of Research, Federal Street Partners, LLC.

Ambassador for Women: Ciara Smyth, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Ambassador for Food Security: Ronan Downs, Owner, Beckett’s Bar & Grill on New York’s historic Stone Street.

Ambassador for Climate Adaptation: Denis Hickie, Irish rugby legend and currently with Mainstream Renewable Power.

New England Sculptors Association (NESA)

The New England Sculptors Association, organized in 1948 and one of the oldest sculptors associations in the United States, represents a diverse membership of nationally and regionally recognized sculptors.

NESA members work and show throughout the world, and are represented in numerous private and museum collections.

NESA, with an increasingly expanding membership, eagerly reaches out to aspiring as well as established sculptors. Its members are selected by jury and work in a variety of media.

Please view our Member Galleries and Exhibitions pages. Contact a sculptor directly from the Member Gallery, or go to the Contact link to request information about pricing information and availability of sculpture.

NESA sponsors exhibitions and lectures, and promotes the work of sculptors of all levels of experience. We encourage you to become a member. Go to the Contact link for more information.

http://www.nesculptors.com

SWID!

I will be showing artwork here on the fourth of July weekend!
For more info... http://www.heartbeatcollective.org/front

Somerville Open Studios May 1-2, noon - 6pm

Somerville Open Studios

May 1+2, 2010
Saturday + Sunday, noon - 6pm

http://www.somervilleopenstudios.org/

Hello and happy spring to everyone. It is that time again when over three hundred visual artists in Somerville throw open their doors to the public. This is my eleventh open studio.... I've been embedded in this studio for a decade making art and being an artist. I knew from my first art class in college that art was no casual thing for me! My drive to produce beautiful things has been almost in full steam this spring. I have been carving Butterflies out of stone since my return from the Tropical Mecca of Costa Rica. I always look forward to helping new and past collectors in acquiring and owning my work. On that note I have a repository of about twenty older paintings that I have priced at five-hundred dollars or less (20%) off and as always during open studios I honor a (10%) discount on all works purchased throughout the event! This will be the first year I will also be opening up my little carving studio across the hall so people can get a feel for my carving! process! I do hope you can find a little time in your busy spring weekend to see some of my art.

I hope this note finds you well and the sun shining above you.....

Very Satisfying Photo Shoot.

photo credit: Peter Paradise


I just recently had a photographer over to the studio named Peter Paradise! I have been a big fan of his work for years. So much so that I maid a painting after one of his portraits of a Belly Dancer named Sara Wood! Peter has been a guy I see at community gatherings all the time and has a great rep. as a photographer of local musicians, dancers and hoopers.
His work is very clean and very distinctive. He actually told me during the shoot that he hopes people won't like twenty percent of the work he does, this really caught me off guard.
Peter arrived around three and it was a clear sunny day and the sun was shining bright in my studio as he detected with his light meter!
I am still amazed by the way he brought me out of my familiar facial expressions and set a tone for the kind of pictures he wanted to take. He told me to stop frowning and exude confidence which I think I did in the end! I really appreciate the way he took the image of me that I see all the time and changed it into the image he saw with his camera. I just wanted to take time to post some of the pics here as they are quite good.............

Pura-Vida, Costa Rica

It has now been several weeks since my return from the land of infinite paradise, Costa Rica. I wish I could sum up in feelings and sensations the way I still feel because of this land I visited for fifteen days including my birthday. Since I am blogging I will try to do some justice with words. Paradise, faith, the reward of trusting in self, just to name a few..... To have gotten out of the US and to a new country for the first time in twelve years is EXACTLY what I needed! It took so much emotional, psychic and physical inertia for me to take this trip, I still can't believe it did it. The land itself is like Jurassic park without the dinosaurs. As you are flying into the airport you fly right next to a volcano and arrive onto a land, half mountainous and half coastal! The land itself is like VErmont, Colorado, California etc. all rolled into one!
My time was divided up between the Diamante Valley and Dominical, sea side town! Vista after vista of beautiful trees, valleys, sunsets, Trees, waterfalls not to mention some very large spiders and Scorpions. One night while using the bathroom I noticed a huge tarantula spider on the door, so I decided to go elsewhere. This time on the farm was incredible and filled with friends from back home and new friends. After a week here we all emerged into the ocean town of Dominical. This fit me perfectly cause it was my first real taste of the culture of the country.
The locals and visitors there, which there are many as it is a big surf town have an expression "Pura Vida" Pure Life which they say and almost wish to each other as they walk down the street! It was in the recognition of this custom that I totally understood and begin to wake up to the blissfull feeling of life these people live each and every day. It was like being born again in the joy that is "Pura Vida." Not that life is not pure everywhere, but in this place, the set is fraught and filled with characteristics of paradise like the temperature, and it was hot, to the sunsets, ocean waves, puffy clouds and all the trappings of the tropics. One of my favorites was the cold coconuts chopped with a large knife and drunk using a straw! I also had the pleasure to experience many "vortexes" while on the coast. Beaches of such beauty and magnetic power, I felt them lifting my own vibratory energy field. On my birthday four of us hired a taxi to take us to a special beach "las Ventanas" the windows. Upon arrival to the beach our friend Jake scaled one of the many coconut trees there and cut down fifteen coconuts from which we drank from the rest of the afternoon into the sunset. They actually put a candle in one and sang me happy birthday. It was the best Birthday ever! We explored to caves within a cliff from which the ocean was whipping into and making a frightening noise. In no other beach in my life have I ever felt such raw power and mystery. We stayed for the amazing Pacific sunset and quickly got off the beach and back to the taxi before it got to dark! IT's funny, this whole day was so amazing and went past in the blink of an eye, like I knew it would.
I'm still sitting with the lessons and beauties I learned from this incredible place. I also think I re-met myself, a part of myself I had forgotten about not having taken a trip like this in so long. I know this was the first of many and hope to journey to Peru next to check out Machu Pichu and some of the other temple sights. My trip to Costa Rica taught me how to really trust in myself and the universe......................