People With No Names: The Undocumented #111

This 6' by 4' oil on unstretched canvas is of two women recently deported from the United States.  I realize that I made the hand (on the woman in the back) too small...especially when you consider the amount of work she probably does with that hand!  They are both separated from their families who live and work in the United States,  a United States that is growing and changing. The "we" of "we hold these truths to be self evident" is always growing and changing. It now includes people of both genders, people of every ethnicity, and... as always...people from other lands. Who is the "we" today?  The "we" includes 11 million people from Central America and Mexico who are deemed 'unlawfully here' by the people in power today.  Tomorrow, the power may shift and the "we",  like any living organism,  need to grow and change or we will begin to die.  What to do with 11 million immigrants who are working and paying taxes in the United States of America?  At great cost to taxpayers, we criminalize, expel and build walls to 'attempt' to keep them out of "our" country.  It would be cheaper (not to mention kinder and more effective) to enfranchise and welcome people.  I was touched today, to hear that the country of Jordan is continuing to welcome Syrian refugees.  It is a strain on their water supply and economy...(and they are asking the international community to come alongside them)...BUT it is fundamentally WHO the Jordanian people are, to be a people of 'hospitality' and as such they must welcome refugees. 

People With No Names - The Undocumented #67

Okay, you may think that you have seen this painting before...you have seen a smaller, different version. This oil on stretched canvas is 24" x 12". It is of a boy who is part of a multi-family co-op that organically grows raspberries and strawberries. It is a wonderful story (all the more so because of it's rarity) of immigrants from Mexico and Central America finding/creating safe, dignified work to support their families. They had help from kind community members securing a lease on the land, learning effective organic methodology, and selecting desirable crops to grow.

This immigrant story is highly unusual. As Father Daniel Groody (Notre Dame professor and scholar on world-wide migration) writes, the immigrant story most often follows the "four 'action verbs' of the Last Supper narrative---taking, blessing, breaking, giving. People 'take up'the decision to leave their homeland, 'bless God' for the gift of their lives and families (even in the midst of tremendous suffering), 'break themselves open' so that they can feed those that they love, and 'give themselves away' for the nourishment of others, even at the cost of their own lives." ---A PROMISED LAND, A PERILOUS JOURNEY p. 304-305.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #49

This Guatemalan refugee is the proud owner of a modest cafe in Tucson.  She, along with 1-1.5 million Central American people were driven from their homes by violence and civil war. (A war that we have since learned was aided and abetted by the United States.)  Hundreds of thousands of these people made their way north into Mexico and on into the United States.  The New York Times called their flight one of "the most determined and concentrated migrations of any national group to the United States in recent history".   The official U.S. government response was to greet the migrants as criminals, imprison them and return them to the death squads, guerrillas, and military sweeps. Fortunately, ordinary citizens listened to their stories, saw their scars and thus began an official "Sanctuary" movement and a new underground railroad. The Arizona Daily Star, a daily newspaper that was sympathetic with the underground railroad, commented, "America at its greatest has always been an America as a refuge from persecution, as a protector of the helpless, and a voice for justice." Amen. I am getting a lot of information and quoting liberally from a book titled 'Sanctuary- A Story of American Conscience and Law in Collision' written by N.Y. Times reporter Ann Crittenden.

why i paint what i paint #7

Today I was painting, and heard a story on the radio about "space tourism". Apparently, Richard Branson has gotten one step closer to his goal of operating his new commercial space travel business. He is doing tests at his new space station and hopes to soon begin offering flights to 8 people at a time, with fares STARTING at $200,000. He has 200 people signed up already. The flight will include 5 minutes of weightlessness at the edge of space, and then return to earth. Where is this very expensive airport located? It is in New Mexico, right next to the border with Mexico! Wow, many people say that we cannot afford to welcome our poor neighbors to the south. There is always trouble when there is great economic disparity between neighbors; and even more so when the rich neighbor flaunts his wealth in the face of the poor neighbor. Our Central American neighbors are sacrificing greatly to provide bread for their children...and we are flying into space...for fun.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #16

This is another of my "ladder paintings". I have noticed that ladders are a recurrent image in many of my paintings, due to the fact that many jobs such as gardenwork, painting houses, cleaning houses require the use of a ladder. The ladder is a metaphor for the journey. I will walk step by step up, from down in Central America to El Norte to find opportunity and work for my family. I will leave the comfort and safety of terra firma (my culture, my family, my language). If I am short in stature (as are many indigenous people) I will take more steps. I will start at the bottom of the ladder: walking, weeding and waiting. I will prop my ladder against a wall of opportunity, possibility and hope. (Note that I painted this in squares, merely focusing on the beautiful colors in each quadrant of the image, because many pieces have to come together for these people to gain a chance at a new life. Also I purposely decided not to let the ladder come all the way to the ground to indicate the precarious position that the immigrant is always in.)

People With No Names - The Undocumented #3.

This man was moving stones into a real estate agent's Lexus in Tucson. It was 108 degrees outside.