West Seattle artist, photographer, and gallery owner Cora Edmonds will show nearly 130 of her own photographs she has taken worldwide over the last 15 years to coincide with her Pioneer Gallery's gallery’s fifteenth birthday. The show, “15 Years of Cultural Exchange: The ArtXchange Journey” opens Thursday, Sept 2 and runs through Oct. 30 at her ArtXchange Gallery, 512 First Avenue South.

The West Seattle Herald reported on Edmonds last March, just four months after she and her husband, Phil Crean, adopted three children, siblings from a Ukrainian orphanage to join their two other children. With her super-sized family, Cora still manages to get away from their Admiral District home and operate her busy gallery, now with the added pressure of hanging a large show.

“This show is really quite a dream come true,” Edmonds said. Her gallery generally features one artist or a theme with different artists, and she holds six main exhibits per year with smaller exhibits reserved for a large corner of the studio. “To dig into the archives was quite a project, to cull through thousands of shots to curate a body of work that makes sense.

“Our gallery’s mission is to foster cultural exchange through art, film, and photography,” she said. “Our work has always revolved around bringing work in from different cultures. For me to have traveled so much to bring in so much, people, things, objects, cultures, things that move me, that is what is important.

“The format will be easily digestible,” she said of the display of numerous images. “There will be a grid of 40 faces from around the world. We really want people who walk into the exhibit to be walking into the world, and the world welcoming them.”

Also featured are grids of photographs from about eight nations, including Ukraine, Egypt, and Vietnam. There are landscapes too, including a surreal image of a cozy cottage tucked into a forest seemingly overwhelmed by trees covered in fluffy white snow clomps, in New Zealand.

Faces include people she said she befriended on her journeys rather than strangers passing by, like the Sudanese camel trader and an Egyptian woman selling individual glasses of camel’s milk.

“I probably played for hours with most of the kids I photographed before taking their picture,” she said.

There is a photo of two kids playing with toy guns in the Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan, which borders Nepal. Edmonds was there in 2005.

“These kids were novitiates, not established monks,” she said. “It’s obvious since they’re playing with guns. Bhutan is a wonderful country. Most countries measure output by GDP. In Bhutan they measure output in gross national happiness. They are asked at the end of the year how they feel. This is important to the king and government. About 10 years ago they started getting satellite television and the Internet. They are not sure what twists and turns this will cause their culture. Does seeing other things in other countries grow your desire to have more things, or, like the basic Buddhist philosophy, can we be here now with what we have and be happy with that?”

Visit: www. http://www.artxchange.org

Late correction: We originally reported that the gallery was located in Sodo. However, it is in Pioneer Square. The address remains correct: 512 First Avenue South. We regret the error. Thank you.