Independence woman collects Nativity scenes from around the world

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Like many people, Diane Houk is taking that Nativity scene, or creche, out of storage now that the holiday season is here.

But she isn't stopping at one.

Houk, of Independence, Mo., has creches made up of knitted finger puppets from Peru, figures woven from sea grass in the Philippines and from local artists in Kansas and Missouri. And more. Many more.

All told, she has 565 sets depicting the setting for the birth of Christ. She took about 200 of them to the Mormon Visitors Center in Independence this year for a free public display through Jan. 4.

Houk was inspired to start gathering her creches in 1962, when she went to an exhibit of Nativity folk art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

She'd been at the Country Club Plaza. It was snowing. She stopped by the art gallery, almost at closing time, and there, alone, she was astounded at how many different motifs came from different parts of the world.

"It seemed like a wonderful thing; it was one of those magical days," Houk said.

These days, she scours catalogs.

This year she's added a Mary, Joseph and Jesus carved in Bolivia from citrus rinds, and figures made out of gourds from Peru.

"I saw that and thought it was a scream," she said.

But for many years while her husband, E.T. Houk, was in heavy construction, the couple traveled the globe following jobs.

She hunted through markets in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Orient in countries where they lived or visited to buy folk art from various cultures.

Many of them were handmade to sell to tourists.

Most are inexpensive and small, not the kind you find filling a front yard. She's not collecting as an investment or a scholarly purpose. She just buys those that appeal to her.

Walls, tables and cabinets of their Independence home are covered with hundreds of pieces of all sorts.

Sometimes she persuades an artist to make a Nativity scene for her in the artist's particular style.

Rhett Johnson, a sculptor from Dearborn, Mo., made one of her favorites in 1993 at her request. It is of wood. Painted figures include a horse, a cat, a duck and a pig.

"Not the normal animals seen in the manger, usually a donkey and sheep," Houk said. The three kings were Midwestern farmers in work clothes.

"This was before he got really well-known, otherwise I probably couldn't have afforded it," she said.

She pestered Sandra Topolewski of Lenexa, Kan., after the two met at a Dickens Festival. Houk liked the artist's figurines. She asked Topolewski to make a Nativity set for her. Then Houk started arriving at her shows to ask whether it was done.

"I hadn't worked it out in my mind yet how I wanted to do it," Topolewski said. "I felt bad, I'd see her and I'd think 'Oh, dear, here she comes, and I'll have to tell her little Jesus isn't here yet.' "

"Five years later, it came in the mail; she made a gift of it," Houk said.

She has shared her collection at churches or opened her home to visitors to see them, and lent them for a display at the Center for Spiritual and Cultural Unity in Syracuse, N.Y.

Houk said she does not go to church and is not particularly religious. She is drawn to the ways different craftsmen express their cultures in a theme that is common worldwide.

And oddly enough, she said, in many cases the figure given the least artistic consideration is that of Jesus.

That figure is often too small to give an artist room to show much detail.

"It's interesting to see how insignificant he looks in these things," she said. "The baby is always tiny. It's hard to make him look like much more than a blob."