Art & Letters
Under Siege: Scenes from an Occupied Neighborhood, Journal of the Southwest 67, 1 (Spring 2025): 22-25
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 the Journal of the Southwest 67, 1 (Spring 2025), Yale’s ISM Review, America Magazine, Open Democracy, the Society of Southwestern Authors Storyteller Magazine, She Magazine, The Global Sisters Report, 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.
In 2024, volunteers shipped the exhibition Bordando Esperanza – Embroidering Hope; prayers, and memories stitched by migrant families, to Universities nationwide, including Suffolk University in Boston, the University of Miami in Miami, and the University of Illinois in Chicago. At the University of Miami, students led and organized bilingual tours of the exhibition.
Presentations & Contemplative Border Arts Workshops
After one Border Arts workshop here in S. AZ., a group of students from Boston College returned to Boston with many embroidered story cloths created by asylum seekers at the shelter la Casa de la Misericordia y Todas Naciones in Nogales, Sonora. The students created their own exhibition on campus sponsored by the college’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Presente: El arte de la Humanidad, and then auctioned off the borderland embroideries with the proceeds benefitting dreamers and undocumented students.
Service work at la Casa de las Misericordia y Todas Naciones
Volunteers carried out ongoing service work in trauma-informed, healing-centered arts at shelters for migrant families on both sides of the border. The weaving program at the House of Mercy – la Casa de las Misericordia y Todas Naciones in Nogales, Sonora, blossomed with grant funding from Tucson’s Handweavers and Spinners Guild, which allowed us to purchase two more small tabletop looms. Another modest grant from the Mennonite Central Committee enabled us to send grant monies to four of our former teachers from the shelter who are now settling in the U.S. and working to make a go of it with their craft. Two private donors from Washington D.C. and Tucson contributed enough funds for us to be able to pay a modest monthly stipend to the shelter’s on-site weaving teachers through 2025.
Casa Cardo, a home for women and children, opened in Tucson. With a former teacher, ABB created la sala de las artesanias (the craft room) in an on-site outbuilding. Our teacher worked with new arrivals to create woven gifts to sell over the holidays.
More than any accomplishment in 2024, it is our privilege to be able to work with and forge lasting friendships with our intrepid new neighbors. Stressed on so many levels by a new administration, healing-centered familial and cultural arts kept us all together.
Writers and scholars: Email ArtisansBeyondBorders.org to access to ABB’s Annual Reports dating back to 2018.
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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Hi Valerie,
I am writing a journal article about religion and the politics of mourning in the borderlands. I think Las Madres is an extremely impactful piece and I would love to include an image of it in the article. I would be happy to share a draft of the article with you if you prefer to see it before giving permission. Please feel free to reach out by email.
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