Detail of “Day At The Beach”

Words stitched into this piece…

“His name was Aylan Kurdi and he was three years old.  His parents left war-torn Kobani in Syria with their two sons, Aylan and Galip; they paid over four thousand dollars to a smuggler in Turkey to get them to Greece.  When the seas got rough the smuggler abandoned them, twelve of his passengers drowned.  Aylan’s father, Abdullah Kurdi, swam from his wife to each of the boys in turn, time and time again, trying to save one and then another and then another. Despite his frantic efforts, his wife, Rihan, and both Aylan and Galip drowned.

Today is my daughter’s 31st birthday; she tells me she is not getting older but simply celebrating another successful solar circumnavigation. Becca has given me a wondrous granddaughter.  Today is also the anniversary of the day my mother slipped away at age 88. Today thirty-three more refugees fleeing from carnage drowned in their desperate attempt to cross the Aegean Sea, many of them children, many of them mothers, and perhaps even grandmothers.

I am heartbroken over our country’s pathetically stingy response to the refugee crisis. We enjoy an embarrassment of riches, our per capita annual income is $54, 629 yet we give a paltry $16 per person in refugee aid. This compares with Norway which has given $240 pp in Syrian refugee aid alone.

More than money, I am appalled, saddened, and outraged at MY country’s attitude towards refugees.  Why do we do not rise with One United Voice of Protest when a major political figure publicly states that we should not only ban refugees but, gee, let’s go ahead and ban ALL Muslims……….all billion plus of them………..because, wow, you never know when someone fleeing death and famine and torture might show up at your doorstep with an AK 47.  

So I say let them in, bring them here to live in my neighborhood, I’ll take my chances.

Or maybe I’ll just spend a Day At The Beach.”

“Bulldozing Millennial Olive Trees”

mixed media diptych, each panel 30 “x 15” x 1.5”

Israeli military forces have destroyed thousands of Millennial Olive Trees in Palestine, trees that live up to 3,500 years, recognizing that the olive harvest season is a lifeline to 100,000 Palestinian families. The right-wing Zionist occupation armed forces protect Israeli Settlers while they steal trees and sell them in garden stores, uproot and destroy other trees and burn or spray chemical pesticides over the remaining olive, grape, and almond saplings knowing full well it destroys Palestinian’s source of revenue.

continued below

 Please Note:

I made this piece several months prior to the horrendous, inhumane events of October 7th perpetrated by Hamas that resulted in 1200 violent deaths and the taking of 140 helpless hostages.

Israel’s Response to this terrorism has been swift, indiscriminate, and deadly, bombing refugee sites, hospitals, mosques, churches, schools, and private residencies. This is considered, by most of the world today, a War Crime just as the Hamas terrorist attack is a war crime.

To date, November 19, 2023, over 12,000 Palestinian lives have undergone Burial by Bombing including at least 4500 children. The West Bank has undergone IDF (Israeli Defense Force) attacks as well with the intent to kill even more Palestinians and their Millennial Olive Trees and take over thier land.

Today I had the honor of being a featured artist on the Palestinian FB site” Contemporary Palestinian Art.”

Continuation of original piece statement

The decimation of olive trees is a metaphor for the obliteration of Palestine, its land, its timeless history and vibrant culture, by the Israeli violent right-wing Settlement residents. Countless Palestinian livelihoods are being ripped asunder by the onslaught of new and old settlements. Palestinian village properties, schools, churches and mosques, and homes are literally bulldozed to satisfy the relentless drive by Israel to establish yet more illegal settlements upon historically Palestinian land.

 In the five Gaza Wars since 2009, 4,279 Palestinians were killed and tens of thousands injured in contrast to 95 Israeli deaths. Israel has become a literal high-tech lethal weapons manufacturing machine that sells to countries around the globe using the sales message “battle-tested”.  Its infamous “Iron Dome”, funded by the USA, protects Israel’s population while the Palestinian Resistance fights back with the comparative military equivalent of slingshots.

My hometown friend, Hasan Hammami, is a native of Jaffa, Palestine prior to its destruction by Israel; he is a survivor of the Nakba, or Catastrophe.  The Nakba was the forced expulsion of 750,000-800,000 Palestinians in 1948 when Israel was arbitrarily established by the United Nations in a Partition Plan, a “Plan” that gave away 56% of Palestine without its permission. Now in his nineties, Hasan’s knowledge of Palestine’s plight is extensive and deeply personal. He was forced out of his hometown of Jaffa at age 15 along with his family.  Hasan Hammami’s recent globally distributed interviews commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Nakba as a survivor are a historical treasure.

Hasan tells me:

“The clear definition of Apartheid by Israel: after stealing Palestine in serial wars, annexations, committing massacres, driving out over 75% of its people, taking over their private and public property, demolishing over 550 villages, Israel now wants to deny the existence of the People of Palestine whom it wants to erase. While there’s a new awakening in young and progressive Jews outside Israel, it’s not enough to stop this living crime and its perpetrators. Justice, where is thy face? Where is thy presence? Since it’s obviously absent in Washington, London and Tel Aviv, come out Mother Justice wherever you are.”

“Treasonous Clowns”

National events unfolding pre and post the January 6th, 2021, insurrection are divisive to our national soul.  They are disruptive to our democratic norms and legal procedures. These events are too numerous to elaborate…but the packing of the Supreme Court, the overturn of Roe V Wade, the constant drumbeat of hangover clouds from Trump’s vile, criminal, and incompetent “presidency” as well as perhaps our biggest threat, the intense radicalization of white supremacist groups who will continue to spew violent hatred towards our Federal Government well after Trump is dead and gone…all these and more portend a dire future for our country.

We must VOTE in the midterms to put a stop to this insanity or our Nation will drown in conspiracy theories, violence, and hatred.

Clowns from left are QAnon Shaman, post-Reconstruction Knight of KKK, Proud Boy in Charlottesville, and civil war confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest who massacred 300 Black Union troops in April of 1864 after they had surrendered and were held captive.

Forrest later became the first Grand Wizard of the KKK.

The clowns are standing in a 3D silk organza Declaration of Independence that is burnt on all edges.”

VOTE THIS NOVEMBER’S PRIMARY ELECTION !!

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“The Georgia Gazette “

Two million Africans perished on the gruesome sail to the United States after capture in West Africa.

Overall, for every 100 Africans captured, 40% are estimated to have died either during capture or during their horrific journey. The arrival of survivors in Savannah was documented by The Georgia Gazette in advertisements for the sale of these men, women, and children on the auction block.

“The Georgia Gazette Revisited” documents these horrors of human cargo and enslavement but also relates them to the turbulent times in which we live.

After 400 years…through the 13th Amendment (freedom from slavery), Jim Crow, the 15th Amendment (Black vote for men), the horrors and lynchings of the KKK, the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act, white supremacists, police brutality and murder…to the Black Lives Matter movement, throughout all these historical events Black Americans continue to be redlined, murdered by gun violence, and doomed to poor education and poverty as a result of our country’s history of white domination.

Monetary reparations cannot erase this inhumanity but we, as Americans in all of our glorious colors, can begin a course correction at the ballot box. Let us step up and vote for those who both acknowledge our history and allow our children to learn that history…

because we are only scarred by the past if we ignore it.

VOTE THIS NOVEMBER’S PRIMARY ELECTION !!

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“Wounds the Size of Oranges”

“TREASONOUS CLOWNS”

“The Georgia Gazette”

“Wounds the Size of Oranges”

“Their exit wounds were the size of oranges”.

The size of oranges.

Emergency room doctors describe their horror and helplessness when addressing the immense damage done to our children by the bullets from an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon, damage that is impossible to treat successfully.  First responders are unable to stem the rivers of blood and physicians are unable to repair the massive tissue and organ disintegration. The shooter does not even have to make the effort to aim; once his target is hit it is a virtual death sentence. As one ER doctor said, “They had no fighting chance at life”.How does an artist convey her visceral reaction to this horrific imagery? And how does she plead with responsible gun owners to end this nightmare of private ownership of weapons that are designed for war?

And how do we end the death grip of the NRA?

I wish I knew.

#NEVERAGAIN

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