First Friday Art Walk Galleries

Coppelia's View>July 4, 2008, Animas Beads Reception, Flagstaff, AZ : Peri Vi..welcome to Coppelia's View, my daughter Coppelia's photo reception at Animas Beads in Flagstaff, AZ on July 4th, in conjunction with the First Friday Art Walk. This was Coppelia's second gallery showing since returning from 2 years in Namibia, Africa, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer, working in HIV/AIDS education. While in Namibia, Coppelia became fully immersed in the languages, cultural aspects, the animals, the landscapes, and especially, the people of this vast Southwest African country. She truly became a part of the community where she resided, a small town in Northern Namibia, in the Kunene Region, called Opuwo (which means enough, in English). She fell in love with the people, and they fell in love with her. She experienced great joy & great pain during her journey: one of her proudest moments came when a Namibian family asked her to name their baby, and that would be the first of several, and she was further honored when the locals started naming their babies after her (unfortunately, one of the baby Coppelia's later died..the mortality rate for infants in Namibia is quite high, with the lack of proper health care, and nutrition). The HIV/AIDS rate is also very high, with approximately 20% of the population infected. Her job there was to educate the locals in prevention methods, condom usage, and trying to dispel the common myths, superstitions, and cultural issues involved in dealing with this devastating disease. If a person becomes infected, it is common for the entire community to turn its back on the sick individual, as they believe that the disease is rooted in witchcraft, so it takes a lot of work to overcome those feelings. In the process, Coppelia helped to educate many folks about the disease, to use CONDOM SENSE (she would hand out condoms in busy areas as the Condom Queen..lol), & tried to promote understanding of HIV/AIDS. It was a challenging, amazing couple of years for her, and she has memories that will last a lifetime. One of the major projects she worked on was called Opuwo Beads & Seeds, where she helped the local jewelers to get better organized to sell their bracelets & jewelry to help support their families & communities (you'll see several examples of their work in the basket that she's balancing on her head in the pics). She also worked with youth groups to gain a better understanding of cultural perspectives. The experience allowed her to indulge one of her artistic passions, photography, and this will give you a glimpse into her photographic journey, so I hope you'll take a few minutes to check out this gallery, and if you'd like to see more, please visit her website for higher resolution images: www.coppeliasview.com . As you'll see, Coppelia is a free-spirited, independent woman who truly embraced this incredible experience. She hitchhiked all over Namibia (that's the way most folks get around), and became very close to the Himba & Herero people in the area where she lived. She's wearing traditional Oshivambo attire at the reception. Here's the story on how her exhibit came about. I was in Flagstaff in March (I sell my buddy Andy's beautiful Galactic Glass to Animas Beads, and I happened to see a flyer for the First Friday Art Walk, and I asked Rachel, (the owner of Animas) about the Art Walk, and told her a little about Coppelia's adventures. Rachel told me to send her some pictures to consider, so Coppelia put a presentation together on her website, and I sent it to Rachel. About 15 minutes after I sent the email, I got a reply back from Rachel.."I love them!", and she asked if Coppelia could be in Flagstaff for the July 4th Art Walk? Cool! Coppelia chose 31 images, mostly from Namibia, along with a few from her trip to Bali right after her Peace Corps service ended in December, 2007. We sent out press releases to numerous outlets in Northern Arizona, and Coppelia was chosen as the profiled feature artist of the month by Flagstaff Cultural Partners,(which coordinates the Art Walk), and they published a very nice article on her work online, with several images, and links to her website, and then there was a big 2 page spread in local weekly arts newspaper, Flag Live, (including her name on the front cover) so she received some really great attention to her work, and there seemed to be a lot of genuine interest in the Flagstaff community to discover what she was up to. Thanks to all the great folks at Animas for helping her to get this exhibit going, and for their support. For the reception, they provided wine & snacks, and had a nice acoustic guitarist providing background music for the event, and there was a very nice turnout. So, come on in & envoy Coppelia's View. Obviously, we're pretty proud of all of her accomplishments! Comments always welcome. Enjoy, peace, joel, all images copyright 2,008 by joel tarantal.

Coppelia's View>July 4, 2008, Animas Beads Reception, Flagstaff, AZ

Peri Vi..welcome to Coppelia's View, my daughter Coppelia's photo reception at Animas Beads in Flagstaff, AZ on July 4th, in conjunction with the First Friday Art Walk. This was Coppelia's second gallery showing since returning from 2 years in Namibia, Africa, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer, working in HIV/AIDS education. While in ...

Updated: Aug 09, 2008 12:25pm PST