People With No Names: The Undocumented #126

This is a small study, 6" x 8" for the painting that I posted yesterday.  I actually prefer these loose studies because I think that they reflect more accurately the situation on the U.S./Mexico border. 'Who is who' is not so clear, it involves a lot of people, and it is a big legal mess.

People With No Names, The Undocumented: #123

These are two 6" x 12" oil on canvas panels side by side.  Depicted are two women waiting to be fed in a deportee dining room run by the Jesuit ministry The Kino Border Initiative. Today, the Advent scripture readings include the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes with seven loaves and a few small fish.  Every single day this miracle of feeding the multitude, with compassion, happens just steps from the walled border between Mexico and the U.S.

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 #70

This is an oil on canvas 18" x 24". The woman on the left has been working in the United States for 16 years. Her husband is dying rapidly of an incurable cancer. They have hospice care now. I know that his elderly mother wants to come up from Mexico to see him before he dies. I asked this woman when her mother-in-law was coming. She replied, "Maybe in three weeks". I raised my eyebrows to say, "Will he still be alive?" She said, "She has applied for a visitors travel visa...they don't know if it will be granted before he dies."

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 #55

This 11'x14" oil on canvas depicts a father who I met at the Comedor in Nogales, Mexico. He was picked up walking across the desert at night (in below freezing temperatures), and deported. He is wrapped in a large moving van sort of blanket as he shows me a photo of his toddler daughter who lives in the U.S. with his wife. Both his wife and daughter are U.S. citizens and the small family has been living and working productively in the U.S for years. Because he was unsuccessful returning to his wife, she has been forced to move in with her mother in California. He does not know when he will see his family again.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #40

This man came from Mexico and is a Native American. He owns a Mexican restaurant and introduced me to " an immigrant who really had a hard time ". He came from Bhutan by way of refugee life in Nepal. If I had not been introduced, and talked to him, I would have assumed that he was from countries south of the U.S. We can never assume.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #35

This is a Department Store in Nogales, (I think we were still on the U.S. side) and I thought it was a cheery pink store with a fairy tale name. It was only afterward, as I read more and more about NAFTA and immigration policies that I realized how very apropos it is to think in terms of Mexico as the mistreated step-sister. Cinderella is the one who does all the cleaning, and fetching, and is kept out of sight. She is not considered a legitimate part of the family and has no one to advocate for her. She certainly CANNOT go to the ball.

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 #18

These 4 women and about 75 men are eating the first of two meals a day at the Centro para Atencion a los Migrantes Deportados in Nogales, Mexico a few hundred yards from where Mexico borders Arizona. There, volunteers serve two hearty meals a day and provide basic medical care and clothes or shoes to those who need them. Many people tell the same story: namely they had been living and working in the U. S. for years, went home to visit a dying relative or some other equally important family event and then could not return 'home' to family and a longtime work situation in the U.S. One man even owned his own blacksmithing business near Seattle (having come to th U.S. as a small child), spoke fluent English, and now found himself in the no-man's land of the immigration debacle. He was eager to get 'home' because he has employees who work for him.

The Monk Librarian #4

Yesterday I went to Nogales, Mexico to meet with Immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. As I heard their stories, I kept hoping that I could, in some small way do them justice as I depict them visually. Their lives are characterized by: uncertainty, loss and physical hardship...things that can befall all of us...but in their case are pretty much a constant. By my accident of birth, I live in the illusion that I can prevent many of these things. I marveled at the ease with which I waltzed back and forth across the border...twice in one day!! I had no fear of the border patrol's guns and dogs; but trust me , they DID look very scary.

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.