07/15/2007

Auction for action

Art to benefit impoverished Guatemalan families

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS

mdrahos@record-eagle.com

Special to the Record-Eagle
Gabriela Spearing draws from a still life in preparation for an auction of work by local Guatemalan children that will benefit Great Lakes Friends of Safe Passage.

TRAVERSE CITY — Gabriela Spearing was just an infant when Tonie and Charlie Spearing of Suttons Bay adopted her from a transient family living near Guatemala City's enormous garbage dump.

But it wasn't until recently that the couple learned about Great Lakes Friends of Safe Passage, a non-profit group working to improve the lives of impoverished families living on the periphery of the dump. For Tonie Spearing, the timing couldn't have been better.

"I didn't feel like I was doing enough for Gaby's home country,” said Spearing, a marketing sales representative and cottage rental business owner. "I felt that I wanted to actually physically do something — and how funky that these people in Traverse City, where I live, work hand-in-hand with the children in the same neighborhood that I got Gaby from.”

Now Spearing is a volunteer working as the assistant to Safe Passage board Chairwoman Sharon Workman of Cedar. And daughter Gaby and other local Guatemalan children are using their budding artistic talents to help the organization raise money for children back home.

Their art work — the result of a one-time class with Cedar artist and teacher Molly Phinny and assistant Peg Turney — will be auctioned Tuesday at a fundraiser for Safe Passage organized by Great Lakes Friends. Called "Fiesta,” the second annual benefit will take place from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Hagerty Center in Traverse City, and will feature a "virtual visit” to Safe Passage, live music, food and drink, and a film tribute to late Safe Passage founder Hanley Denning.

As far as Phinny and Turney are concerned, however, the highlight of the evening will be live and silent auctions of Guatemalan arts and crafts, including a dozen original paintings and pen-and-ink drawings by local Guatemalan children. Besides 5-year-old Gaby, a student at Leelanau Montessori School, the young artists include Maria and Mario Cassem, 10, of Cedar; Jacob Salgat, 6, of Traverse City; and Jacqueline Hardman, 6, and Jenna Hardman, 5, of Lake Leelanau.

"These children worked for an hour and a half in silence and could have kept it up for another half hour,” said Phinny, who held the art class in her garage studio on Little Traverse Lake. "Their sense of focus and pure joy with being in tune with what they're doing was really a pleasure to see. Usually you can keep (children's) attention for about 45 minutes.”

The art class was organized after a plan to go to Guatemala City to work with children living around the garbage dump fell through, Phinny said. When a round with cancer KO'd her travel plans, she decided to paint with local Guatemalan children instead.

She set up a still life of flowers on a vibrant striped cloth from Guatemala, showed the children work by the artist Matisse and displayed a plaque of the Virgin of Guadalupe — complete with twinkling lights — for inspiration.

The result was colorful and free-flowing art works in the style of Picasso when he was trying to paint like a child, she said.

The art class was similar to those Phinny teaches for elementary students at her art center in Patagonia, Ariz., 20 miles north of the Mexican border. Like the Hispanic children there, the Guatemalan children here showed an unusual artistic sensibility, she said.

"They are often the most free painters. They often have a color sense that non-Hispanic children don't have, maybe because they have so much color and different fabrics in their homes,” she said.

Tonie Spearing said she is surprised by the artistic ability shown by Gaby, who learned to draw without help.

"One day she was coloring,” Spearing said. "I was expecting to see her scribble on the page, and she was coloring in the lines. She was 4.”

Phinny said the 12-by-12-inch framed works will have a minimum bidding price of $30 to $40.

"I would expect them to go pretty high because they are beautiful pieces,” she said.

Tickets for the fundraiser are $25, available at (231) 590-6072, safepassageglf@yahoo.com or at the door.