Peoria gourd artist Jan Downey will be part of Arizona’s largest studio tour this month

Editor's note: This article first appeared in Sun Life Magazine , a Daily Independent publication .

Jan Downey was in Ethiopia when she fell in love with her first gourd. She was working as a cultural anthropologist with the National Museum of Ethiopia, helping them with their ethnographic collection.

It was a gourd used by women in the very hot, remote desert to carry milk. She was struck by how even a utilitarian object used by semi-nomadic people was designed and embellished.

Now Downey devotes all her time to creating unique gourd sculptures.

A Peoria resident, she is one of 164 artists participating in Arizona’s largest and longest-running artist studio tour, Hidden in the Hills, which

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