People With No Names - The Undocumented #52

This is and oil on masonite 8"x12". This little girl was at the 'Comedor' in Nogales, Mexico. It was a cold January day but she was bundled up in a jacket, scarf, and hat and she was smiling. One sees few women and even fewer children in the deportee/refugee/immigrant population. Part of this is due to the dangers and hardships that all immigrants are subjected to, and part is due to the fact that many immigrants choose to leave more tender and vulnerable family members behind in order to 'go ahead and prepare a place for them'. It is a re-enactment every day of service and sacrifice, (recall Jesus going ahead of us to prepare a place for us, and then gathering us to himself.) Also, I am reading about the Chinese immigration to the U.S. in the 1930s and how the laws had provisions for men to come and enter the work force, but made it particularly difficult to bring in women and children. Women carried within their bodies the threat of increasing numbers of American born Chinese children. So, I can't help but look at this little girl and think, "Is she the next Vera Wang?" In the 30s, we certainly did not want Vera Wang's relatives in this country. Today, we are thrilled to call this very talented, hard-working, creative woman our fellow American!

People With No Names - The Undocumented #29

This woman from El Salvador is receiving a simple nourishing meal at a refugee shelter in Nogales. A young woman from my church observed that, "serving others in the context of hospitality is a powerful act, and a beautiful 'welcoming of all' at the table of our society".

Works In Progress #5

This is the beginning of a large painting where I am combining three different people who are doing the dishes after one of the two daily meals provided at the Kino Border Initiative shelter for refugees. I realize, more and more all the time, how important it is to stay VERY open for as long as possible. Painting and drawing teachers try to teach this, but we all want to "go in for the kill", make some kind of recognizable image, and show we have some competence. Let's face it...it is just so uncomfortable to dwell for any length of time in uncertainty, but that place, sometimes that dark place, is where possibility and beginnings exist.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #25

Yesterday I painted another 40x60" of the two women who are waiting in the refuge. I let the mother/older women be all drippy and enigmatic because I just read that Simone de Bouvier said, "If a woman gives herself 'consent' to growing older, she is changed into a 'different being', one who is more herself, one who is complete". Unlike their first world sisters, these women are not fighting the aging process, or trying to stay forever young, they are fighting to stay alive and help their loved ones.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #20

This mother and daughter,( two of only a few women among many males) were very serene in the midst of great uncertainty. They do not know if they are going back to an untenable economic past or forward to a completely unknown future. As they dwell temporarily in a women's refuge and eat at a shelter, I thought about how real the New Testament passage in Matthew 8:20 is: foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.

Works In Progress #2.

This is a preliminary sketch for a painting of a young woman, pregnant, deported, doing the dishes in a refugee center. She is a modern day Mary, the mother of Jesus. Father Gregory Boyle says, "to embrace the strategy of Jesus is to be engaged in downward mobility".