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Happy Holidays from Rayela Art! I had a lot of fun putting this Christmas card together.  My friend, Pat, took about 20 photos of me and the dogs sitting on the porch outside of my house.  My dogs HATE being photographed and I look like I am choking them in all the pictures.  At least on this one, they are both sitting next to me...
I send you my best wishes for a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate it.  And, along with that, may all of you have a great end of the year and receive the new one with the hope and joy that comes with new beginnings.
Peace on earth!
Good will to all!
(Lofty aspirations for the mess we live in,
but we can all keep on trying and hopefully make a difference...) 
Posted by Rachel Biel at 5:55 PM 
Art Quilt Challenges by Donna Hussain 
Posted by Rachel Biel at 12:07 PM
Labels: Architecture, California artist, Color, Donna Hussain, Quilts 
Obsessions Manifested: Stereoviews

When I was a kid, I spent my allowance on two things:  arts supplies and stamps.  Both were obsessions.  If I wasn't making something, I was organizing my stamps, spending hours and hours pasting them into my various books, eventually ending up with over 15,000 of them.  Yes.  I counted them!  I learned a lot about the world through those stamps.  How different countries called themselves, their landscapes, historical happenings.  It broadened my interest in the world and I traveled around through them.
Now I have a new obsession:  Stereoviews.  Also called stereographs, stereo optic cards, and many other names, these photos were the first 3-d images to capture the public's imagination and thirst for world travel.  A special camera with two lenses captured the scene at a slight change in position.  When mounted on a card, side by side and viewed with a viewer (called a stereoscope), the images popped into 3-d:
I've picked up a couple, here and there, at antique shops, just because I thought they were interesting.  But, recently, I was able to purchase a whole slew of them, around 300 cards and have started to organize and list them on Etsy.  You can see them in my shop:  click.  I didn't really have an idea of their value so I've had to do some research.  Stereoviews enjoyed over 60 years of popularity and millions of copies were made.  They were used as educational tools, parlor entertainment, and were treasured as windows to the world.  Photographers captured the Wild West, historical buildings, everyday scenes, theatrical plays, vegetation, animals, and almost anything you can imagine.  They are an invaluable record of life in the late 1800's.
The earliest stereoviews were actual photos pasted on to cardboard.  Later, lithographs were made of those same photos and towards the end, collections were printed by the thousands.  Of course, the most valuable are the earlier ones, dating before the 1880's and those of photographers who became famous and collectable. About half of the ones I have are lithos and the other half are the old photos.  Many are in poor condition, but who knows?  Maybe a couple will win the lottery!  As I list them, I look them up on google and have been fascinated by the stories I am finding.
One example is of the Cliff House:
The above image is the card that I have for sale.  It has a fold in it and is not a great, collectible item.  Looking at it, I wondered why anyone would build a big old mansion on the end of a cliff like that....  Turns out there is whole story behind it and one man has made his obsession manifest:  Gary's Cliff House Project.  He has pages and pages of documentation on this grand old hotel in San Francisco, visited by Roosevelt and other dignitaries. Cliff House Project: Stereoviews Page
Gary's project is a fascinating documentation of history zoomed in on one spot on the globe.  The Cliff House did not last long, consumed by a fire in 1907:
His site documents the fire, news stories, reconstruction, and on to current day images of the site, a total transformation.  One could spend hours going through everything he has collected.  Why?  Because this snapshot somehow tells us about our own history, how our collective past shaped the world as it is today.

The photographers who went out and collected these images had to have an adventuresome spirit and the physical ability to face the challenges of carrying the equipment and putting up with the hazards of travel: no infrastructure, living in tents, exposed to the elements and to hostile encounters.

One of the photographers who made his mark on history was T. Enami, a Japanese photographer who captured the late 1800's and early 1900's in Japan with thousands of sensitive, beautiful and historical images. Nobukuni Enami (T. Enami),
Stereoview photographer
Rob Oechsle has a website dedicated to his work, T-Enami.org, another place you can spend a good chunk of your day. Photos by T. Enami

As the stereoview obsession grew, so did the publishers who collected images and reproduced them, often without any thought of copyrights or ownership.  I have a couple of Japanese litho cards listed, but do not know if they were originally Enami's:
Some of the commercially printed cards have stories about the image on the back.  These can provide some pretty shocking attitudes of the times, especially towards native peoples.  I have this card listed of an Egyptian girl:

The text on the back says:
No. 1380. PORTRAIT OF BISHARIN GIRL, UPPER EGYPTIf beauty is but skin deep, so is ugliness, and both are a matter of taste. May we not assume that the boy in the background personifies open-mouthed wonder at the beauty of the idol of his heart? Or did the poet think that this girl when he smote the lyre, singing: "A kiss from her two rosy lips would make me hale and whole?" The man who took this picture is authority for the fact that the original was the proud daughter of the richest man in the village, who owned twenty goats, two donkeys and four camels, a wealth unparalleled among all the Bisharin tribes twenty miles around, and that she was considered a great beauty among all the marriageable young men of her race, but was held as a great prize by her father who would not give her away for less than one camel and ten goats. The background of the picture is formed by the wall of the tent, made from plaited grasses and stretched on poles which the Bisharin call a house, easily folded together and carried away on a donkey's back, when the animals have eaten up the scant vegetation in one place, and quickly set up again a few miles further on.
Yikes!  Ethnocentric to say the least...

It will take me awhile to get all of my cards listed and I will have to re-open my shop on eBay.  That is where the stereo view community congregates and I don't want to overwhelm my Etsy shop with non-textile items.   I'll announce it here when that happens, so stay tuned.
How about you?  Have any obsessions manifested themselves in your life?  Collectors often seem like the nut in the hood, but some of these obsessions have also preserved stories from the past for the rest of us.  Is it a mis-fire in the brain that takes us to an extreme in pursuing an interest?  Or, is it the same part of the brain that propels scientists to zoom into the minute details of how the world operates?  Share your obsession with the rest of us.  It is bound to be an interesting story! 
Labels: stereoviews 
New Textile Stamps from Oshiwa!

We got some more textile stamps listed on the Etsy shop.  We used an old, rusty iron table that I have as a background and they just pop!
Oshiwa Designs is a fair trade carving workshop in Namibia.  Rayela Art is their North American rep.  These stamps are great to use to print on fabric or paper and can also be used to press into clay or soap.  The carvers insist on making one of a kind designs, although there are similar themes that pop up often, like elephants...
Here are a couple of examples of fabrics printed with the stamps: Great gifts for your artsy friends and a wonderful stocking stuffer!  Come shop! Paulus, one of the carvers, shows how to use the stamps on fabric. 
Posted by Rachel Biel at 1:05 PM
Labels: Africa, Namibia, Oshiwa, Textile Stamps 

Yesterday I got a nice package in the mail:  a gift from one of our TAFA members, Silvia of Galeria Octagono in Costa Rica.  (See her member profile on TAFA).
coffee.  macadamia candy.  brochures.  ornaments made by her kids workshop.
Silvia joined a couple of months ago and has been a joy!  She participates actively in several of our forums and we share many common interests with Latin America, nature, and of course, how things are made.  As the SDA representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, Silvia has a broad range in her role as an artist, educator and member of the world textile community.
As I was thinking of her and where she lives, I thought I would check it out on Google Earth: Sil had sent a marker, which made it easier:  "If you look up "Bosque de la Hoja, Heredia, Costa Rica" you'll get Galería Octágono campus. We're at the intersection: the road continues north to the Divide, and we're outside a huge fancy residencial development (Residencial Ave del Paraíso)."
They have a small B&B with a cabin and in my imagination, I am there, hiking around in the local hills and mountains.  Here is one of the photos from her husband's, Rick's, blog: Paradise, eh?
From there, I killed a couple more hours looking at Google Earth.  I went to Kabul and ran away.  What an awful place!  Down to where I grew up in Brazil.  Now everyone in my old neighborhood has a swimming pool in their back yard!  Puh-leeze....  I don't want to hear any griping from my Brazilian friends about hard times!  Went and took a look at Chicago, came down to Paducah and then the bird got tired and went to bed.
Woke up this morning....  and yes...  I had a wonderful cup of that Costa Rican coffee.  Thought of Silvia again.  She had told me she was sending me a bag of coffee, but I had no idea it was going to be so big!  Looks like I will be thinking about her for weeks ahead!

Galeria Octagono is a lively place with many community programs and projects.  Silvia is now a radio celebrity, with a weekly program aimed at getting regular people to think about art, nature, and other topics.  It's all about education, meaningfulness, creating community, making life rich with color, texture and collaboration.  I think about how each of us has the potential to impact our local communities.  How we live in such faraway places, but in a click of the button, we can get a bird's eye view of our neighborhoods.  How we can never meet yet still be friends.
Want to share a cup of coffee with Silvia?  I doubt she can send bags all over the world, but she is there, interacting with our online communities.  Visit her website, her blog, and if you can, go down and spend some time at their B&B.  And, I bet that if you have some craft supplies that need a new home, Galeria Octagono would be a good place to send them.  Buy their art, send donations, and make new friends.  It's a beautiful world and it warms my heart that Silvia is down there, doing her piece to make it so.
Thank you, Silvia! 
Posted by Rachel Biel at 3:06 PM
Labels: Central America, Costa Rica, TAFA 
Top stories on BBC
News on this day of thanks:
Unrest, violence, and anger all over the world...

Occupy Wall Street has spread to major cities around the United States.  As we hail on the Arab Spring, our leadership here cringes at our homegrown dissent of the status quo.  Arrests, pepper spray, beatings, evacuations... 
Posted by Rachel Biel at 11:38 AM
Labels: Native American, Thanksgiving The small gift can sometimes be the most memorable....  Diamonds might be some girls' best friends, but there are others of us who like something a little more rustic,   something that comes from far away and has a story..............
May I suggest my shop on Etsy as a source for such mementos?  If the Christmas stocking is still a tradition in your home, you might find just the perfect small stuff over at Rayela Art!  Click on the captions of the following suggestions and it will take you to the item's listing: 
Definitely not your run-of-the-mill stocking stuffers!  The shop is stocked so look around.  You will definitely find something really cool for that special person.
AND..............  there is a sale going on through Thanksgiving Day, November 24th.
25% off of
everything in the shop!
Use this coupon code when you check out:
(You must use the code to get the discount.  Etsy will automatically figure out the discount after you enter the code.)
For those of you here in the US, have a happy Thanksgiving Day! 
Posted by Rachel Biel at 5:51 PM
Labels: Rayela Art Isabel Allende's message to women: Be passionate and change the world!

I have loved Isabel Allende's books over the years.  Blending that special Latin magical realism with history, both real and imagined, her stories capture the passion possible through characters that mirror our world.

She was a guest speaker for a TED conference.  These 18 minutes will make you laugh and will inspire you towards the change that most of us are wishing for our world:  justice, freedom and kindness.  This was filmed in 2007 but is more than relevant for today.

See her books and learn more about Isabel Allende on her website. 

Posted by Rachel Biel at 11:17 AM
Labels: Society 
Posted by Rachel Biel at 1:20 PM