"Art can impact the social context of family dislocations and can serve as a powerful tool in encouraging an open national dialogue about Zero Tolerance in our country"
So (sew) America Cares is a participatory social art project with a commitment to raise awareness about the lives of the children separated from their parents at the border. All the faces stitched together strengthen the very fabric of our own society.
In 2018 a Zero Tolerance immigration policy was announced, requiring that all families who cross the border shall not only be separated but also charged in federal court with the misdemeanor crime of illegal entry.
This Project’s mission is to advocate for these children and to extend an invitation to anyone who would like to participate. Thread by thread, fiber by fiber, a participating community will increase its understanding of the circumstances of these children who never asked to be illegal aliens. The project consists of 10 different faces that will be repeated 100 times each to add 1000 faces. The faces had been laser etched on raw canvas to allow the participant to use any kind of thread, yarn, wool, fabric, paint etc. So (sew) America Cares has a plan: to "sew" them back, to never allow these children to be lost again, to create a quilt of 1000 faces representing a portion of these children.
We cannot allow these traumatized children to disappear and in time, be forgotten.People are encouraged to stitch, sew, knit, knot, crochet, embroider, or braid these drawings so as to symbolically recover these children’s faces and lives again.
​
So (sew) America Cares is an international call for people to participate and raise awareness as to the consequences of this immigration policy and its devastating effect on children. As citizen, artist, mother and a child that suffered being separated from my family for eight years, I am concerned about the hundreds of separated children across our country.
INTIMACY SERIES
Inspired by the woman-child theme in Mary Cassat's work, this series draws attention to the relationship between a young child and her great-grandmother, each representing the early and end stages of life. The child is aware of the fragility of her great-grandmother just as the old woman seems acutely aware of what this young child represents - a reminder of her life lived deeply and long. The obvious tenderness between the two, the acts of nurturing and gentle play are but the universal gestures of an old woman and a little girl at her knees.
As observers, however, we understand the inevitable cynicism that also defines these moments, moments that we know occur too rarely in a hard-driving busy life.
These ten works draw attention to the kind of intuitive relationship a great-grandmother has with her grandchild. The child is aware of the fragility of her great-grandmother and the great-grandmother reminisces about her youth. The artist portraits the acts of nurturing and gentle play as universal gestures. The artist suggests that too often we are too busy to make those moments a regular activity until perhaps the end of our lives.
