Art & Letters
Migrant Woman Fleeing Violence Find Beauty and Healing in Embroidery
From The Eyes of Babes: The Art of Asylum
The Migrant Quilt: restitching the Fabric of Community
Calling All Souls: Spiritual Activism on the Border.
Published in Yale’s ISM Review, America Magazine, Open Democracy licensed under Creative Commons, The Global Sisters Report, the Society of Southwestern Authors Storyteller Magazine, She Magazine, and The Hummingbird Review.
After many years of creating collaborative Fiber Arts Memorial sculptures, installations, & altars in the community, more personal Devotional arts reflect the tenor of the times.
Presentations & Contemplative Border Arts Workshops
2022 Artisans Beyond Borders-Bordando Esperanza – Embroidering Hope
It has been another very busy year for Artisans Beyond Borders. Though ongoing COVID restrictions made public exhibitions of art difficult, volunteers managed to mount four showings in Arizona, California, and Ohio of the devotional exhibition Bordando Esperanza/Embroidering Hope – hand-stitched prayers and memories by our neighbors in forced migration. Hosts were the University of Southern California School of Religious and Spiritual Studies; St. Mark’s Episcopal in Columbus, Ohio; the Good Shepherd UCC church in Sahuarita; and our very own Grace St. Paul’s sanctuary. For Info, photos, or to book the exhibition: https://artisansbeyondborders.org/events
Of the 10+ ABB PowerPoint Presentations given in 2022, on Zoom and in-person for schools, guilds, and clergy, perhaps the most notable was a bi-national panel discussion produced by the International W.A.R.P. (Weaving a Real Peace) that advocates for the rights and self-determination of textile initiatives around the world. The panel discussion included and highlighted the work of Sister Lika Macias, the Director of the shelter La Casa de Misericordia y de Todas Naciones, plus one of our rock star embroiderers Eleuteria, who has successfully launched her own cottage craft industry as she waits for asylum in the U.S.
ABB’s Educational Mission includes Contemplative Border Arts Workshops for youth from across the U.S. here for Border Immersion. We hosted a group of visiting youth at Tucson’s Shalom/Mennonite Church, and at Grace St. Paul’s we hosted undergraduates from N.A.U., and graduate students from Simmons College in Boston exploring the role of the arts in community health.
By the time we closed ABB’s Etsy shop at year’s end, we had also offered for donation the artisans’ original embroideries at 6 in-person events. In fulfilling our mission to lift up heritage arts and their makers, we filled hundreds of orders for heritage craft through the Etsy shop that we established in the Fall of 2020 during the height of the pandemic. We planted the seed and now we’re pleased to see other craft-based initiatives thriving at a number of humanitarian NGOs on the border.
In 2022, ABB received generous media coverage. We were profiled by Columbus Monthly, NPR, Yes Magazine, and Arizona Daily Star – This is Tucson,
Monetary donations from Individuals and Textile guilds plus a small grant in 2022 allowed us to provide some starter funding for fourteen U.S.-based ABB artisans to develop cottage craft industries if they wished to in their new communities across the U.S.
We also continue to be blessed with wonderful donations of fiber arts supplies from across the U.S. Volunteers meet monthly at Tucson’s Ward 6 Councilman’s office to compile “Maker” bags filled with handwork materials for asylum seekers and refugees in Tucson at the Casa Alitas Welcome Center and the Ishkasheeta Refugee Network. Going forward, we continue to actively source supplies and facilitators for healing-centered arts and activities for asylum seekers stranded at the border and beyond.
2021 Artisans Beyond Borders
Continuing Textile Tradition, Mexico Zoom, WeaveARealPeace.org
Edinburgh, Scotland Guild of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers, Zoom
Rio Grande Borderlands Ministries Canvas of Hope Zoom
Simmons College Graduate Program in Public Health, Zoom
2020 Art of Asylum / Artisans Beyond Borders
Artisans Beyond Borders Zoom, The National Cathedral Sanctuary Committee, Washington D.C.
Common Ground on the Border, United Church of Christ, Sahuarita, AZ
AZPersonal, Political, Spiritual: Arts on the Border, Shalom-Mennonite Church, Tucson
Tucson Friends of Artisans Beyond Borders, United Nations Association Center, Tucson
Art of Asylum, Leaving Home: Migration through the Eyes of Children: Patagonia, AZ
Artisans Beyond Borders, Kino Border Initiative, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico
2019
Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, AZ
The Unitarian Universalist Church, Tucson, AZ
Episcopal Border Summit, St. Philips in the Hills Episcopal, Tucson, AZ
Church of the Apostles Episcopal Church, Oro Valley, AZ
Theology Uncorked, St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church, Tucson, AZ
“Images from the Border,” Coalition for Immigrant Neighbors (COIN), Indianapolis, Indiana.
“Embroidering the Border,” University Religious Center, USC, Los Angeles.
Art of Asylum, USC Border Immersion at Casa Alitas Monastery shelter, Tucson, AZ.
Sisters of the Holy Cross Bordando por la Paz y Memoria Project, Fuentas Rojas, Mexico City, Mexico
2018
Art of Bordado on the Border Pop-up, 2018 Border Ministries Summit, Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, El Paso, TX.
Un Bordado Destacado en “Voces Fronterizas; Border Voices,” NAU, Flagstaff, AZ.
Skype / Eye Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands in conjunction with Alejandro C. Iñárritu’s Carne y Arena Exhibit.
USC student Border Immersion, UCC Good Shepherd, Sahuarita, AZ
Sisters of the Holy Cross, “Devotional Arts & Immigration Experiential & Presentation, International Conference/Assembly, Notre Dame, Indiana
Back Matter
In the U.S., collaborative Las Madres Sculptural Migrant memorials can be found at Tucson’s Pima Community College & Southside Presbyterian Church.
The Border Art Installation: Hardship and Hope: Crossing the U.S./MX Border (2010 – ) is housed in permanent collections at The Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Select Media: The Wall Street Journal, Utne Magazine, Univision, Tucson.com, Italy’s Corriere della Sera, Tucson Weekly, NPR’s Latino USA, Sculptural Pursuit, Fiber Arts Magazine, and Patheos. Com.
Faith
Benedictine Oblate since 2010 of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration recently returned to the Motherhouse in Clyde, Missouri after 80+ years at their Monastery in Tucson, Arizona.
*I began this blog a decade ago as www.AZartsandletters.blogspot.com, stopped to make lots of Art but never stopped documenting my days in the Arizona borderlands. As a former art therapist, I want to dedicate this blog to Freddy, a wayfarer from Oaxaca to Arizona who discovered along the way that he was an artist.
© 2017 Valarie Lee James
Art & Faith in the Desert 
Hi Valarie…I am a member of Voices From The Border and helped organize the Mothers Across Borders event. I just recently saw your blog (and post from the MAB event), wonderful, poignant writing. May I get your mailing address so I can send you something? You can reply to my email at indiann1111@hotmail.com. Thank you! India Aubry
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Thank you, Cornelia! Giving this a read means alot to me.
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You got it! I’m so pleased to be welcomed. You are doing very important work here in the Borderlands, spirit and soul…
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Lovely, poetic musings. Thanks for what you do.
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I recently read your American Magazine piece, and I am wondering if you are doing any work to organize the donation of crochet and embroidery materials, as well as other art supplies to the migrants in detention. I am moved to contribute in this way.
Thank you so much for your work.
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Thank you Aviva! We are working on that as we speak. If you are interested in donating materials or earmarking a check for supplies to Tucson’s Casa Alitas shelter for migrant women and children please see http://www.ccs-soaz.org to donate online. If you wish to provide supplies for women and children waiting in refugee centers on the other side of the border you could also donate to the KinoBorder Initiative.org in Nogales, AZ. They’ve been feeding and sheltering peiple for many years and would welcome any and all support. For either shelter, be sure and attach a note that your donation be directed to supporting women’s handmade enterprises. Thank you so much for your interest!
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Hi Valerie. I am the mother of a adopted daughter from Guatemala. Not a day goes by that I do not consider what her life might have been like if she were in Guate. I would like to come and work with you at the shelter. I can stay for as long as you might need me. I am certainly able to pay for lodgings etc. Thank you Marguerite Mains Connecticut
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Dear Marguerite,
Thank you so much for your loving response. Your daughter is fortunate to have you. At this time, due to forces beyond out control, the Casa Alitas Shelter is relocating to another facility. We won’t know what our needs actually look like until We are moved in. With your permission, I’d like to revisit your offer in September. Please feel free to email me anytime between then and now. Bless you!
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Hi Valarie, I want to thank you for your article in the Spring WARP magazine. I was moved by your story and impressed by the way you express yourself in arcs that are both lyrical and concise. I was hoping to share it digitally on a Facebook page I manage, but found your article “Migrant women fleeing violence find beauty and healing in embroidery” and shared that instead. Warmest good wishes for the valuable work you are involved in, Wendy
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Thank you, Wendy! Your feedback is so welcome. It’s not often that any of us seize the time to comment so cogently on each other’s writing. It means the world to me especially on days when it’s all so impossible to put into words, you know? Bless you. P.S. I will look for you on FB 🙂
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