From: Examiner.com
Poverty, pain, and a burgeoning humanitarian healthcare project in the Amazon rainforest inspired artist Sean Anderson's latest show, "Art + Bolivia," http://seananderson.com/home.html opening November 7, 2009, from 6-9 pm at the Anderson Art Collective, 410 Palm Avenue, #A2, in Carpinteria, California.
Anderson helped deliver medical and art supplies by boat to natives in the trackless jungle, and the show features his own work, plus art from some of the 60 children he taught there. Clasically trained at the Academy of Art University of San Francisco, Anderson's first commission was a portrait of SF mayor Gavin Newsom.
Everyone's invited. "Hope you can join us for fabulous art, tapas, wines, music, a wonderful cause and maybe a live feed from the staff in the rainforest of Bolivia," e-mailed Christopher Brady, who has directed the healthcare project www.netzerbrady.org/ since the untimely death of its founder, visionary physician Louis Netzer. The event is open to the public. The artwork will be on display until November 29th, with a closing reception November 28.
The Rio Beni Health Project delivers primary health care, education and training, and potable water to the indigenous people in the upper Amazon rainforest in northwestern Bolivia. Initially a small endeavor to bring mobile health care to a handful of isolated villages along the Beni River, the work now covers over 60 villages in an area of more than 2000 square miles, and is expanding into even more isolated regions and river systems to the extremely poor T'smane ethnic group.
It sprang from the travels of Dr. Lou Netzer, born to immigrant parents in Washington, DC, in 1940. A compassionate latter day Livingstone, he began his practice among the Quinault Indians in the rain forests of the Olympic peninsula, continued it in Borneo and Mexico, and ended it in the Bolivian jungle on a remote tributary of the Amazon called the Rio Beni. He read Joseph Conrad's novels as a boy, sparking a lifetime fascination with the jungle that was to change many lives. Starting in 1997 in a hand built hut, Netzer treated some 50,000 patients in the Rio Beni project alone, many of them among the poorest people on earth.
He had practiced in the Santa Ynez Valley from 1971 to 1997. While carrying on a full time medical practice, he founded the Family School and an elder care facility known as Friendship House, plus an Alzheimer's facility, and a successful coffeehouse known as Side Street Café. He raised a family, moderated discussion forums, was a storyteller in schools, took dance classes. He was the last doctor in the area to do house calls, pulling up in his Mellow Mobile Medical Clinic, a converted Land Rover. He was larger than life, yet a kind, open, approachable soul, and a dervish of humanitarian ideas, many of which he brought to fruition. He once bought a Chinese junk, with plans to sail it around the world as a floating medical clinic.
"My problem isn't that I can't make my dreams come true," Netzer said, "my problem is that I have so many dreams." On the Amazon upriver from Rurrenabaque, he built a grass shack, and laid out some plastic to catch fresh rain water. Then he mailed a letter.
The missive landed in Christopher Brady's mailbox in Mozambique. "I got a letter from Lou Netzer, covered with Bolivian stamps. It said, ‘I've started a health project. Help!’"
Brady has decades in international development, primarily in Latin America and Africa, working with local community groups and non-government organizations. At the age of 13, he spent the summer volunteering with a group assisting poorer families in Sonora, Mexico. "This led to an increased awareness of the struggle the poor face in fulfilling even the most basic necessities of life, and an interest in finding out more about the people involved in this struggle and what could be done," said Brady. He earned a BS in Development Studies from UC Berkeley, and a MA in Intercultural Management and Development Administration from the School for International Training, Vermont.
Christopher Brady's brother Jim, a former Peace Corps volunteer, has headed up numerous educational safaris www.edsafaris.com to the project region. Since 2003, over 70 participants have traveled to Bolivia in support of the health work. Sean Anderson went along in 2004. "That remarkable experience inspired me to return and paint the region and its people," he said.
Praise for the work has come from many. "As the former mayor of Rurrenabaque, and now the Director of the Board for the newly formed Rio Beni Health Foundation, I clearly understand the work that the Project team carries out---its huge support and assistance for poorer, isolated communities and people with less resources," said Dilo Negrette Arze, the former mayor of Rurrenabaque.
Pre-med student Daniel Seible of the University of California, Santa Barbara spent five weeks volunteering with the Rio Beni Health Project, and called it an experience of a lifetime. “Never have I met or been a part of a team of people who give so deeply to the underserved, or love their work so much. Language struggles or situational dilemmas are no barrier to these people, who work together to serve in an effort to meet the challenges of extreme poverty's repercussions in health," he said.
Alejandro Alvarez, lead guide and naturalist at the Chalalan Eco-Lodge in Madidi National Park said, "I would especially like to thank Netzer-Brady International for having had the vision to create an important health project for the isolated and sometimes forgotten communities that the central government does not or cannot attend to, like my community of San Jose de Uchupiamonas, and so many more.”
Direct Relief International www.directrelief.org/WhereWeWork/Bolivia/RioBeni.aspx has been integral to the success of the work in Bolivia. When the health project began in 1998, Direct Relief sent down small amounts of medical material to help the work grow. Since then, Direct Relief has consistently shipped supplies to the Project once or twice a year as needed. To make an online donation, select the link to Direct Relief International's donation web page. Specify the Netzer-Brady International or the Rio Beni Health Project when making your contribution.