In January 2000 a Calvin College interim class that included art and Spanish majors traveled to Peru. There, high in the Andes mountains, they met an American artist and author, Dr. Gail Silverman, who taught them about the woven art of the Andes.

Now, at the invitation of those Calvin students, Silverman will bring her hands-on teaching style to Grand Rapids for a series of talks on the Calvin campus.

On Monday, October 9, Silverman, a former Fulbright Scholar who hails from Michigan, will come to Calvin. Her day will begin with a talk for Spanish majors on "Culture and Language in the Indigenous Communities of Cusco."

In the afternoon, beginning at 4 p.m. in the Commons Lecture Hall, she will deliver a free, public lecture called "An Anthropological View of Andean Cloth Perceived as Pictographic Writing." Silverman studied anthropology at Wayne State University and the Sorbonne in Paris. For that lecture she will bring samples of weaving done by the Andean people. Those samples will illustrate her talk and be on sale after the lecture.

In the evening Calvin and the Woodland Weavers Guild will co-sponsor a talk titled "Andean Cloth: Its Technical Features and a Goal for the Future." This evening workshop is a more hands-on, technical view of Peruvian weaving, dyeing yarn and imagery. It takes place at 7:30 p.m. in the Commons Lecture Hall and is free and open to all.

Silverman and her Peruvian husband live in Peru where they encourage community among the Peruvian weavers and have a shop to help preserve and sell authentic, natural dyed products. Silverman also is an author who writes about the work of Peruvian artists.