Jan Ross and Sgt. Danielle Colson of west Cobb have never met, but they share a passion for the arts and for helping the women of Iraq. Lamia Talabani and Jamil Malak in Baghdad have never met Ross or Colson except by e-mail, but they and a handful of other female artists there are the first fruit of the Iraqi Women's Art Exchange, a budding arts movement there that is being midwifed by the two Cobb women.

Last December I profiled the work of Sgt. Colson, who was then stationed at Camp Adder in southern Iraq with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and who had launched a "donation closet" delivering clothes, school supplies and toys to the children in the villages near that base. She also had recently met with 25 female Iraqi artists, who she said used their art to convey the pain they felt as second-class citizens in a male-dominated society. She also noted that art supplies were hard to come by in Iraq.

She ended her e-mails to me with a quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Demosthenes: "Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises."

Turns out both he and Sgt. Colson were onto something.

Among those who read my column was Jan Ross of Kennesaw, 57, a professional watercolor artist whose work is currently on display at the Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art. Her husband and fellow 25-year resident of Cobb, Robert E. Ross, has spent much of the past two years in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development. She proposed creating a partnership in this country to collect art supplies, teaching materials and other equipment for shipment to women artists in Iraq.

"I contacted Danielle, who now is stationed in Alexandria, Va., by the way, and said I was excited about what she was doing and would like to help, and she said 'Go for it,'" Ms. Ross said.

So with her husband running interference on the Iraqi end, her idea for the Iraqi Women's' Art Exchange quickly gained approval of Iraq's Ministry of Culture and the U.S. Embassy there. She contacted her friends in the arts community "from California to Rhode Island," she said, and began receiving donations of supplies and money from friends, neighbors and others. And she received a federal grant for the non-profit group she created, with which to defray the cost of mailing the supplies to Iraq.

She gets "a good discount" from Cheap Joe's Art Stuff, an on-line outlet, and to date has shipped more than a half-ton of art supplies to that formerly war-torn country. First on the list were supplies for sketching and painting, with plans to later send the implements with which to do embroidery, metalwork and sculpture.

Her main contacts in Iraq are Ms. Talabani and Ms. Malak, both artists, with whom she has corresponded via e-mail.

"They're very enthusiastic about getting to know American women artists on-line so they can have true friendships," she said. "The hardest part of this is that we in this country are accustomed to going on-line on our home computer at any hour of the day or night. But over there, they have to go to an Internet cafe, and then they have to wait until the men who are on-line are finished before they can sit down at a computer themselves. And Iraq is still subject to power blackouts, so a lot of the time even after they get on a computer they lose what they were working on."

Ms. Ross hopes the Iraqi women are able to create a market for their work there, and says she'd like to eventually have an exhibit space here for their work, too. She also hopes to start an art library for them and is looking for donations of art reference books. Interpreters have already been lined up on that end, she said.

Ms. Ross also stresses that her group does not have a political or religious agenda.

"It's strictly a cultural exchange in a humanitarian way," she said.

She noted that conservative Muslims think it is sacrilegious to depict the human form in art.

"So I don't send anything with nudity," she said. "I am very cautious about anything that might be offensive to them. But the more liberal Muslims are perfectly excited about portraiture."

The Arts Exchange is focused for now on Baghdad, with feelers out in southern Iraq and the Kurdish area in the north.

"I'd like to expand it all over the country and if it goes well, then expand it to other countries, too," said Ms. Ross. "I'm passionate about this because I'm passionate about art. It gives women a chance to express themselves in a way that they may not be able to otherwise and helps build their self-esteem."

The Arts Exchange's Web site includes a particularly apropos quote from Picasso - "Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life" - apropos in that Iraq is mostly desert and noted for its ferocious sandstorms.

If you would like to help Iraqi Women's Art Exchange, go to www.iraqiwomensart.org. , or send by mail to: Jan Ross, Executive Director, Iraqi Women's Art Exchange, 316 Mossy Way N.W., Kennesaw, GA 30152.