Art as envoy: US artist Sigel Bussel's journey to Sofia is a new highlight of the American embassy's engagement with art in Bulgaria.

It is rare for a living, foreign artist to be granted a solo exhibition at Sofia's Gallery of Foreign Arts. So rare in fact, that Sigal Bussel was the first American artist to be granted the honour.

With a BA in Economics from UCLA and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Bussel is not your average artist. Her work has been exhibited around the world, and is part of private collections in China, England, Israel, Mexico, Switzerland and the US.

For her work she uses everyday materials, ranging from a childhood game of pick-up sticks to rusty chains. In the work shown at her exhibition in Sofia, she uses the head--reduced to a mere outline--as a visual leitmotif.

During her stay in Sofia for the preparation of the exhibition, the American embassy helped organise several events for Bussel, including a lunch with Bulgarian artists, and a children's art seminar.

Sigal Bussel's exhibition at Sofia's Foreign Art Gallery, entitled Conversation with Humanity, can be seen until July 17 2009.

Cutural envoys

Bringing artists together to stimulate cultural exchange has been a successful approach for the American embassy for many years. In the first half of 2009, several US musicians and artists visited, performed and took part in Bulgarian cultural life.

In May 2009, contemporary acoustic folk and blues guitarist Steve James visited Bulgaria as US cultural envoy. During his visit, James gave several workshops for children up to collage age. He also performed at Sofia's National Palace of Culture, together with Bulgarian Bluegrass group Lilly of the West. A video of their performance of the Hank Williams classic Your Cheating Heart can be found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BWgOBLm3quA).

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Also in May, American playwright Edward Albee visited Bulgaria for preparations for his play The Goat or Who is Sylvia. The play is to open in Sofia's National Theatre Ivan Vazov in the autumn of 2009.

Earlier in the year, in February, Gospel singer Janice Harrington visited Bulgaria for a series of workshops with high school and university students in which she explored the influence of African Americans on American history.

Art in embassies

The American embassy and residence have not one, but two art collections.

When the current embassy building was built in 2004, a collection was created with works by American and Bulgarian artists in a range of techniques, including photography, painting, sculpture and sculpture. These works are currently on permanent display throughout the embassy.

Separately, in the residence of US ambassador Nancy McEldowney, works from the ART in Embassies Program (ART) are on display. The ART collection consists of 3500 original works of art lent by US citizens. The works are displayed in public rooms of about 180 US embassy residences and diplomatic missions worldwide. Every ambassador makes his or her selection from this collection. The selection that McEldowney made when she came to Bulgaria was guided by two themes. The first theme was a love of nature and a belief in the need to respect the environment, the second was that all artists represented in the selection have spent time living and working in McEldowney's childhood homestate of Florida.

More about the artwork in the US residence, including reproductions of all works, can be found on the website of the embassy (http:// bulgaria.usembassy.gov/media/pdf/art_sofia_ dec_9.pdf).