ABOUT US

                Imre and Lorna with some of the "Ancianos" (elders) of San Juan La Laguna

  Imre and Lorna both come from multi-cultural backgrounds. Imre's parents were European and instilled in him an appreciation for other cultures. Lorna grew up in Mexico  in remote mining camps and absorbed the culture and language as a child and has a long lasting love and affinity for Latin American cultures. We have also had the good fortune to have traveled throughout Mexico and Central America.
We first began spending time in Guatemala fifteen years ago when our son married a Guatemalan woman and started a family. In addition to enjoying our family there, we became more and more captivated by the country, the culture and the people and decided to spend part of our lives living residing there.. For the past five years, we have been living in the predominantly Mayan town of San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlan. We have been deeply moved by being embraced and accepted in the community. We wanted to be contributing members of this community and were involved in a number of volunteer projects. We came to appreciate that this is a culture that values work and self-reliance and we saw how many of the extremely talented artists and artisans were struggling to survive. We decided that ultimately we could make a bigger difference by helping them sell their creations so they could better support their families and their communities, rather than by encouraging a dependence on outside volunteers and resources. As a result, we came up with the idea of creating a socially responsible business that would include an open, fair and collaborative working relationship with the artists and artisans, would utilize some of the funds generated from the business to support local initiatives, and would have a component of creating a greater understanding and appreciation of the Mayan culture and crafts.
We decided to start out by selling coffee-themed art in coffee shops in Massachusetts. We had very positive response to this initial “testing of the waters” and decided to continue and expand the project to include different themed art such as food, typical markets and Mayan culture and more of the beadwork. We have focused most of our energies selling at the Cultural Survival Bazaars. Cultural Survival partners with indigenous people around the globe to support them in preserving their cultures and conducts fairs in New England to sell indigenous arts and crafts. We also expanded by selling at other venues including food coops, stores, and fairs and galleries. In addition, a body of work representing a diverse subjects and themes ranging from traditional to contemporary art has been featured at exhibitions in several gallery shows including the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, Taller Latino in New York as well as two shows at the Discovery Museum in Turners Falls Massachusetts, to name a few. We are currently buying and selling the work of twenty plus artists and two families of beadworkers. We are impressed and excited by the number of new artists we discover each year in the two Mayan Villages of San Pedro and San Juan.
We strongly believe in a world in which there is mutual understanding, appreciation and cooperation across borders and cultures to create a more equitable, peaceful and just world. Our hope is that our new venture can help to realize that vision in some way.