Art&Seek Director Anne Bothwell is traveling in Turkey with a group of North Texas artists and writers. Read her previous post here.

Who exactly is here in Turkey?

Now that we’ve been traveling together for a week, I can tell you a little more about the folks on the trip.

Kimberly Alexander is an artist and she teaches English as a second language.  Some of her artwork is inspired by her students, who come from all corners of the world. Believe she told me that more than 20 languages are represented in her classroom. Kim’s also the ambassador of our group – she can’t have lunch or visit a museum without making a new friend.

John Lunsford, former director of the Meadows Museum at SMU, and before that, curator at the Dallas Museum of Art,  is the kind of guy that makes tour guides tremble. John’s the only one in our group who’s been to Turkey before, and he’s delightfully generous with his knowledge of the artwork and architecture we’re seeing.

Art&Seek folks know Sarah Jane Semrad, director of LaReunion and one of the founders of Art Conspiracy.  She’s going to be guest blogging on the trip, if we can keep the computer working. She’s also sorry to have missed SEED this weekend (as am I).

Jamie Baker is an attorney, art collector and member of the La Reunion board.  She’s admirably direct, and one heck of a shopper. She’s also hilarious.

We have two novelists among us: Ben Fountain and David Searcy. Both of them are working on new books, and David will be doing a little research for his while he’s over here. Maybe more about that later.

Tim Coursey is a designer and artist, and sounds like he can pretty much make  anything – or at least tell you how it’s done. He’s the one who looks at the domes of a mosque or an ancient bath and explains to us how they were put together.  He also makes beautiful jewelry.

Nancy Rebal is an artist, and the person who brought most of the group together. I’m hoping to learn and share more about a project she and David are working on that is taking them around the world.

Ginger and Rick Geyer are a great couple from Austin, but they have strong North Texas ties. She’s a visual artist – and a former deputy director at the Dallas Museum of Art. Her most recent Dallas show was at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary just about a month ago. He’s a consultant and video producer and, it turns out, a former KERA board member.

Barbara Miller is an executive director at Baylor College of Dentistry. Pam Sparks is a photographer. They are both dancers. And they get the gold star for travel. The rest of us flew over from Dallas, but they met up with the group in Istanbul after a trip to Georgia.

Just a brief overview. I’m hoping that you’ll here more from them this week. Tomorrow, a little bit more about the folks leading the trip, and maybe, just maybe, some pix.