Long Awaited Treasure

Last November we saw a beautiful piece of art done by Karen Arevalo and called her to see if she would consider doing a piece for us to take home.  We went to her home studio and looked at things she had done, pondering what we would love as a keepsake of our nearly two years in Guatemala.  Karen pulled out some ideas and we selected this one for her to reproduce in pastels.  

She is a remarkable artist in that she has had little formal training.  She is taking evening art classes similar to what we do in the U.S. in community education.  The gift she has is innate.  Three things were important to me to bring home-folk art (found that when I bought my flying dragon skeleton, aka Miguelito), an exceptional huipil (bought one made in Colotenango), and art work from local people.  This will be a beautiful daily reminder of the vibrant colors that Guatemala is known for and it's very typical of what you see every day in rural Guatemala.

The problem comes in getting it home.  She said her instructor told her not to spray it with a fixative, that spraying it would damage the color.  He said to frame it immediately.  Well....it doesn't make sense for us to do that.  We would have to re-frame it once we got it home and hand carrying a glass frame out of the country isn't my idea of fun.  This will require some heavy duty pondering.