People With No Names - The Undocumented #74

This is a 30" x 40" oil on canvas. The title is "Trouble Doing Homework". The little girl in the back on the left is having trouble doing her homework, because so many people live in her family's cramped quarters, and she has no private space. She is lucky though, because her third grade teacher, "Mr. Ramos, grew up, one of eight children 'following the lettuce' too. Home was a farm labor camp near Salinas and he has traveled far. The camps---a setting for John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath"---were the subject of his undergraduate thesis at the University of California, Berkeley.   In his classroom, he has built an altar of sorts:  a collection of Berkeley memorabilia, crowned with the inspiring message "Class of 2024".   "But even for the most determined students here,  poverty and college do not mix", states the article in the Sunday, March 13, 2011 New York Times.  And yet...Oscar Ramos is a potent, everyday reminder to his classroom of migrant children (and their parents) that an education is possible,  that the ability to settle down and stay in one place is possible.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #73

This oil on canvas is 30"x 40". It shows two deportees peeling and chopping eggplant to help prepare the meal served to their fellow deportees. It only took an hour or so, but as I helped, I thought that my hands were freezing and that their peelers were dull. To my embarrassment, I actually went into their tiny kitchen to ask if there were any other, sharper peelers. Seriously??!!! I just read an article in the Sunday New York Times about seasonal farm workers (who these deportees are aspiring to be) who "toil in the vast fields of Salinas Valley, cutting spinach and broccoli and packing romaine lettuce from a wet conveyor belt; nearly 13 heads a minute, 768 heads an hour, 10 hours a day." This article goes on to say that originally many immigrants "came to the United States in the 1960s through the federal "bracero" program that imported Mexican agricultural workers". We needed "arms" to harvest our crops. We also needed espaldas (backs). But it is never a good idea to view other human beings as mere useful bodies...divorced from their hearts, minds, spirits, intellects and families. More on that tomorrow.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #72

This oil on canvas is 30"x 40" and titled "When You Eat This Bread, When You Drink This Cup". I am thinking a lot about the fact that immigrants would rather NOT 'eat the bread and drink the cup' of the immigrant experience. Like Christ in the garden, they wish that this cup could pass them by.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #71

This is an oil on masonite 16" x 24". It is a scene depicting two immigrants trying to cross the freezing desert in winter to enter the United States. Some Samaritans (a group of volunteers who comb the desert with water, food, blankets and medical supplies) found these brothers exhausted and freezing. They wrapped the one on the right in a high tech warming blanket. He is lying on the ground smiling because of the simple warmth he is feeling.
I heard a writer, who specializes in American history, speak yesterday. She talked about the Founding Fathers and their belief that The United States really was a shining 'City On A Hill'...a light...a beacon of goodness and hope to other places in the world. They actually believed that they were setting up a sort of heavenly place. So, I found myself thinking about the U.S. as a sort of 'lighthouse' and thinking, "of course people try to get here. If they are in trouble, if they are in stormy seas... they try to get help, they try to get to shore."

why i paint what i paint #16

I got to go to a Modern Dance recital this week, and for those of you who have read Julia Cameron's stuff, it was "an artist's date". I felt like I was being challenged and opened to new ways of seeing and thinking, and one piece looked like a Gauguin painting come to life. But the piece I just keep thinking about was called "An Identities". Two dancers came out on stage with their backs to us, and masks of blank-faced, red lipped mannequins on the BACK of their heads. Fortunately, they just paused there for a bit...so that we had time to figure out what we were looking at. Our eyes told us that something was wrong, but our brains kept trying to make it work. (I know in my brain I kept asking if the well-muscled back on the one girl could possibly be her chest cleavage???) Then they began to dance. Sometimes only one was facing us with her real face, sometimes both...they continually flipped front and back/real and unreal. In myself, I found an interesting phenomena taking place: I began to crave their real faces. Their real faces weren't perfect, flawless, etc. but they were REAL, TRUE...NOT FAKE. And it got me thinking about how much time and energy we spend trying to project a false self to others, a self that we assume is more desirable. (Just look at those ridiculous Christmas letters we get every year!, all that plastic surgery, all of our inflated job titles!) And this dance piece made me see once again, that there is NOTHING more desirable, more restful, more true than just being our authentic selves. So let's raise a glass to truth-telling and being...and to doing work that reeks of authenticity.

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 #69

This oil on canvas is 2' x 5'. This is not the whole painting...top and bottom are cut off. But the gist of this image is that there is literally tons of food to be harvested (and consumed) in this country. A certain undocumented demographic (very vulnerable) is doing this work... yet many of them are not able to feed their own families, while they toil amidst this plethora of produce. This image is meant to convey, that certain people are our arms, our legs, our backs.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #68

This is another version of the couple in the freezing cold deportee center in Nogales, Mexico. It is 12" x 24" oil on canvas. I was recently visiting my daughter's college campus for 'Parents Weekend', and as I was wandering around her beautiful campus I came upon an amazing sight...a REAL CHUNK OF THE BERLIN WALL! I exclaimed, and my daughter confirmed that, "Yep, it is the real thing...an amazing piece of history". Recently, in my immigration studies, I read about the jubilation that went through the Western world when the "symbol of separation between the material abundance of the West and the economic scarcity of the East" was torn down. The Berlin Wall "represented the dividing line between freedom and slavery, opportunity and oppression, prosperity and poverty...Ironically, as the great wall of separation was coming down in Europe, an even greater and more dangerous wall of separation was being fortified along the 1,952-mile border between the United States and Mexico...it is a wall of separation between the citizens of the United States and the poor of Latin America. As doors were opening to those who escaped the tyrannies of communism, doors were closing to those who were trying to escape the tyrannies of the unjust economic, political, and social structures of their own countries." p.13 Border of Death, Valley of Life

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 #66

This 8" x 12" oil on canvas is the result of looking at a lot of Gauguin lately. Hence the blue hair on the woman and the green face on the man. Every time I listen to NPR, they say that the program is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, "Dedicated to the idea that ALL PEOPLE (really, the announcer always emphasizes those two words) deserve to live healthy, productive lives. " Every time the announcer says it, he doesn't go on to specify any particular geography or people group...so I am left thinking that they just really mean ALL PEOPLE.

why i paint what i paint #15

This is a little oil sketch on cardboard of the Guatemalan wife and mother I met at the Nogales deportee center. She was standing alone...alien, unwanted. To endure this hardship, and search for a better life, she had made the difficult choice to leave her four children. Yesterday, ( in church in Tucson, AZ.), we were admonished to "Love our neighbors as ourselves". It always sounds so simple. I just have to answer the questions: (1) Who is my neighbor, and (2) How do I love myself? Who is my neighbor? Could it be anyone... whose need or suffering comes to my attention? Does geographic proximity play a part? Is my economic well-being tied into others...my neighbors? What makes me feel loved? Well, certainly 'inclusion' makes me feel loved. And 'being wanted' makes me feel loved. Certainly, rejection does not make me feel loved.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #65

This oil on unstretched canvas is 2' x 3'. Notice that the husband is looking directly at us, but his wife is looking away. She also has sunlight behind her...a sort of rectangular halo. As I talked with them, I learned that she had left her four children behind in Guatemala, with her parents, in order to accompany her husband in their quest to find work. She began to weep. Her husband is looking directly at us...eager to meet the future, find work, support his family. She is 'in her heart and mind' back with her children...where she wants to be...where all mothers want to be.

why i paint what i paint #14

Well, I am thinking about the word "immigration" in a larger sense after having lunch with a wonderful 80 something, delightful woman yesterday. She is someone, who in her lifetime, has moved out of the land of 'not knowing about homosexual people' to the land of 'having two gay sons, who both died of aids'. When people move from one country to another, there is often a considerable shift in thinking that follows the equally large shift of location. When people move from one set of assumptions, to another...a shift often (not always) occurs...sometimes it is like tectonic plates shifting under ones ground. This particular woman moved into the land of volunteering with the gay community; and told me that in the early days of the aids epidemic it was necessary to form friendships quickly. She said that in this new land, life was precarious and precious, and futures uncertain. Being forced to leave our old country and move to a new land can be very scary and even life-threatening...but it does remind us that futures are uncertain, and life is precious.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #64

This 8" x 18" oil on museum board shows three immigrant attemptees, who have been caught and deported back to Nogales. I don't know how many times they have tried to enter the U.S. The average,remember, is about four times until success or death. And many times, the attemptees are so exhausted, cold and hungry that they just give themselves up when they see a border patrol person. (Because, often their coyotes "paid guides" have lied to them about the length and arduousness of the journey in order to get their money.) Despite the fact that it is expressly, legally forbidden to sneak into the U.S., the tempting serpent keeps whispering that there is lots of food, and work, and money in the rico El Norte. Wouldn't you listen, too, if you had nothing to lose?

People With No Names - The Undocumented #63

This is an 8" x 12" oil on masonite. It is of three people at the deportee center in Nogales. The three different angles of their bodies suggest the way that none of them really knows which direction their lives will go next. When we have money and documents, we have some semblance of control over our lives...or think that we do. We have the hubris to think that we know what is coming next. We don't. We are all the same in this.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #62

This is an 8" x 16" oil on museum board. I have titled it "We Three Kings". Here's the deal: We GIVE THEM a donation of socks...then they walk through the Sonoran Desert (risking either hypothermia or hyperthermia depending on the time of year) and then they eventually GIVE US most of the meat and produce that we consume in this country.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #61

This is an 8" x 12" oil on masonite sketch of immigrants choosing from donated clothes. The white slash on the left is a pair of socks that the man has picked up. Socks are a constant necessity for immigrants , as they will be walking miles and miles.
I have a wonderful son-in-law whose job involves constantly working around rich, spoiled, over-paid athletes. (No offense if YOU are a rich, spoiled, over-paid athlete and you are following my blog.   Anyway, my wonderful son-in-law was coming out of one of the huge sports arenas (I like to think of them as modern day America's version of Europe's great cathedrals) where he works, and noticed a familiar figure...a homeless man who regularly begged outside the arena. My son-in-law stopped and asked him a great question, "What is it you really need?" And the guy said, "Socks". So my son-in-law drove home, and went into his sock drawer, emptied it into a bag and took it to the guy. I love that my tender-hearted son-in-law stopped, took the time (he works long hours and travels a lot to support his wife and children...I am sure he was tired), and dignified the man by noticing and addressing him. It was a little thing...and it was huge.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #60

This oil on masonite  12" x 12" depicts a deportee helping with the preparation of the second of two meals per day that the 'Comedor' provides. He and others are cutting up buckets and buckets of donated eggplant. He and others are skinning it and then chopping it up into cubes.   As we were helping,  I confess that I was thinking, "I don't really like eggplant".   Then I caught myself and remembered that we were gonna feed a lot of people with FOOD...and when you don't have anything, ANYTHING is good. I don't know where it came from, but it was a LOT of eggplant.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #59

This is another oil on canvas 8"x 16". These are the deportees waiting in the cold for more assistance. Notice the one on the right putting on new socks.   As I am listening to the news of all the travel delays in the U.S. right now due to winter storms,  I find myself thinking, "If you are traveling on foot those flight delays don't apply to you!"
In my family we like to use 'neologisms' (made up new words). In my readings about immigration I read a great one...the 'Sanctuary' workers of the 1980s said that they were trying to 'conscientize' North Americans to encourage them to work for immigration reform. I guess its a new version of 'conscience raising' from the '60s. Either way, I like it and I think it is happening to me.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #58

This is an 8"x16" oil on linen. It depicts the recently deported men who wait in a loose line along the fence leading up to the 'Comedor' where they can receive meals twice a day,  donated blankets and clothing. These men often make at least 4+ attempts to walk across the desert (at night), before they successfully avoid La Migra and return to work and family in the U.S. (or commence their life of hard furtive labor in the U.S).   Note the figure in front, second from the left, who is putting on socks. Socks are hugely important to men and women who walk for days across the desert, whose feet become blistered and infected. Socks are amazing, valuable protections. They can keep our feet warm, dry and cushioned from the constant abrasion of shoe against flesh.   Immigrants need real socks and 'legal socks' to protect them.