What power does art hold in your life?
Is it a means of expression? A way to share your story with the world, remind yourself of what you love and what you have lost? What you’ve left behind, as the people and places who’ve shaped who you’d become serve only as distant memories? Or does it allow you to dream, start anew in a chapter that has yet to be written?
For the children who walk through the halls of the Casa Alitas Welcome Center in Tucson, Ariz., art is a means of healing and hope. Expressing all the pain and joy they’ve felt in their young lives within fabric squares, hoping their families and themselves are granted asylum.
Over a dozen quilts filled with such drawings currently reside in First Congressional United Church of Christ, or UCC, in Eau Claire. As a part of Welcoming Week 2024, the exhibit is designed to push past the common narratives attributed to asylum seekers entering the United States along the southern border.
In 2019, the quilts were displayed in various locations around Arizona, including alongside a project featuring quilts made from clothing left behind by migrants in the Tucson Sector at the Arizona History Museum. Its arrival in Eau Claire marks the first time the public could experience the quilts outside the state of Arizona.
It all began through an annual conference in Patagonia, Ariz., attended by several members of the UCC alongside fellow Eau Claire institution The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd through activist and advocacy group Voices from the Border.
Ginny Close is the church member responsible for bringing the quilts, and their message, to the Chippewa Valley. Close previously volunteered for the organization, and the event has inspired several community initiatives.
Close learned of the quilts during this trip. In 2018, four individuals, later deemed the Esperanza Quilters, crafted practical, vibrant quilts for the migrant families who began the long journey of seeking asylum at the Casa Alitas Welcome Center.
The quilters sought to create a positive memory for children who recently arrived in the U. S., even designing bags to carry the quilts.
The bags were complete with a front pocket to hold a book families could read together. However, many of the messages they’d seen outside of the center were based in hate and fear.
“The big thing was drawing pictures. They’d draw pictures of what they loved, what they’d left behind,” Close said. “Some even showed scary things, like a five-year-old drawing a picture of someone holding a gun.”
Gale Hall, one of the Esperanza Quilters, saw this culture of fear, and wanted to counteract that narrative about how the people of the United States view asylum seekers.
In order to welcome future migrant youth, she asked children to draw pictures on fabric squares of what they love and what’s important to them. These squares were then fashioned into quilts and, upon the expansion of the center, placed into an exhibit entitled ‘The Art of Asylum: Hope and Healing.’
The exhibit toured various locations in southern Arizona in late 2019 and early 2020 before India Aubry, a board member of “Voices from the Border,” requested the exhibit move to Patagonia. There, nearly a hundred local students took field trips to the exhibit in order to participate in a curriculum run by Hall.
Under her guidance, the students learned the stories of the migrant children through their art and were offered the chance to draw their own quilts, which were filled with welcoming messages and what they loved. Hall and the “Esperanza Quilters” then fashioned these into a complementary exhibit in early 2020.
The beginning quilts from the Patagonia community featured symbolic colors and an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Catholic title of the Virgin Mary. According to NBC, The Virgin Mary is “a powerful symbol of Mexican identity and faith.”
Later additions replaced this symbol with a butterfly to still show a symbol of hope but reflect the changing demographics of Asylum seekers.
“She wanted the quilts to tell a story too,” Close said. “[They] wanted this to be their first real welcome to the U.S.”
India Aubry and another member of Voices from the Border met with Close about potentially displaying the full exhibit elsewhere. After Close sent a proposal to the city in conjunction with Welcoming America, the church got to work.
“We focused on what we could do as a church, and then that brought us to the quilt idea,” Debbie Gough, a UCC member, said. “I would say the church leadership is very supportive of this kind of thing.”
Church volunteers spread the word about the quilts at the Multicultural Festival held at Phoenix Park in late August and got over 100 community members to participate in drawing their own squares, just as those in Patagonia did.
Now, a quilt made up of Eau Claire residents of all ages can also be seen in the exhibit representing a community intent on a positive, welcoming message to asylum seekers.
“My personal anxiety was to begin to counter this negative narrative, and not wait another couple of years,” Close said. “Communicating and educating through art is a more positive way to have a conversation.”
If you would like to draw your own fabric square, the exhibit is open to the public during limited hours from Sept. 18-29.
Heidtke can be reached at [email protected].
