Support Freedom for the Iranian people-AZADI-آزادی

Today is the day to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran. I've been fortunate in my life to meet wonderful artists from Iran, and to count Iranians among my friends here in the United States. I want for those living in Iran the same freedoms that I so often take for granted: the ability to speak freely about what goes in my government, to be able to hold a conversation on the telephone about protests and not be cut-off, to be able to march in protest marches without risk of being sent to prison or worse, to be able to create art freely that expresses my personal opinion, to able to blog about things I care about with out risk of censorship or worse. I want people in Iran to know that we think of them and support them in their desire for a free society. AZADI - آزادی

A treat from Gitte

We've been meeting artists from many different countries. The artist across the hall is Gitte from Norway. She's in my cours Francais. She's a textile artist, as I mentioned in an earlier post, and we talked about fabric. She gave me some small samples of what she does. I'll incorporate them into my Purses for Change that I sell in my Etsy shop (which I've put into vacation mode while I'm away.) I'll send her some of my fabric scraps once I return home so she can work her artistic magic on them.

Tonight, we had a meet up with two Iranian artists. One lives down the hall from us. After seeing his really wonderful work, we went downstairs and around to the back of the building to the studio of another sculptor. We'd never been in these sculpture studios. They're very interesting. They have frosted glass walls with doors that open to the outside, not to a corridor like our door does. They have a sleeping loft that one gets to by going up a curved stairway. He had work in progress, too, and it was also very wonderful. It turns out that they know the artists we met two years ago, Fatemeh and Mashid, and we took a picture of the four of us to share with them. We carried on a conversation though we have NO Farsi, and they have limited English and French. We managed though and that's the amazing thing about being here and meeting artists from other countries. It's like what Rick Steve's says: Travel changes people. It broadens perspectives and teaches new ways to measure quality of life.