I am so glad you came to this page!!
That just lets me know that you are genuinely interested in our little gallery here!
Well here is the nitty gritty of it all, by Aldi:
Rivers of the World has been around for countless years. I mean, ROW goes way back to the 80’s when I use to walk around with hot pink checkered biker shorts and neon geometric hair clips! Well Ben Mathes himself recalls meeting a whole bundle of people in pretty much every country he’s been to who make crafts and create art as a way to make a living or supplement it. Who wouldn’t want to help those people out? Ben and the Rivers of the World staff and close friends certainly do! Then a few years later, that’s when I, Aldi, met Ben Mathes face to face.
It was a dark and stormy night…
in the deep jungles of the Congo. I was chewing on some unknown species of a bug huddled under a make-shift tent that I had to keep fixing every 5 minutes because of the crazy rains. I had just been kicked out of my room of a nearby house after getting into a heated argument over primary colors and oil versus acrylic paint with the man of the house. Something about not having a lot of art supply stores in Congo is most of what I remember about that. Anywho, I was huddled under my little tent when I heard rustling about 6 yards to the south. The thing is, the river is down south of where I was at, so most likely this means something scary and dangerous has just crawled out of the river and is headed right for me!! Sure enough, out of the thick brush this wild animal comes catapulting through! It was the one and only Ben Mathes with knives thrashing around mumbling something about wet socks to some guy named Omba. Well, my little tent here was so fantastically crafted that I had basically become a chameleon. Ben was one step away from stomping on my little foot when he stopped dead in his tracks. He bent over ever so slowly and lifted up the corner of my tent and I put on my best puppy dog whimpering pathetic face I could contort. See, I have just witnessed this man single handedly tear through some pretty thick brush with his fancy knife work. Now combine that with constant muttering about socks… and I’m not sure I want to cross paths with this creature! Well, here we are. As soon as Ben saw my face in full contortion, he just smiled one of the biggest smiles I’d seen in… a really long time. So I smiled back. He invited me to come along with his crew and said if I carried his pack for the rest of the two mile hike, he would feed me and find some dry clothes for me. So how can a girl refuse? I followed the crew and we seemed to get along just fine! Later that night, Ben and I had sat down to some hot dinner and he asked me how I managed to get myself in such a situation. I told him about the arguement of how oils are better than acrylics and that green isn’t a primary color which apparently wore out my welcome. I guess Ben thought that if anyone were going to help him start an art gallery, I was as good as any!
So, what you probably really wanted to know about ROWArt
ROWArt is a fund-raising division of Rivers of the World whose objective is to sell art from around the world. The proceeds will go to fund ROW projects!
ROWArt purchases artwork from artists in the countries where ROW currently serves. Each piece is then placed in our online gallery and made available to the public for purchase. The majority of these profits will help fund projects in the communities where the artists live. However, the buyer can designate for their contributions to benefit any community ROW serves. For example, if Charlie buys a Mayan mask from Belize, the proceeds will help fund a project in Belize; or he can designate his contribution to go to Kenya. A smaller percentage of the funds will help buy more art and operate the gallery. All operations are directed by the ROWArt Museum and Gallery curator.