By Ann von Dehsen, December 31, 2020 — My sister Ellen is a wonderful artist, known in the Southern Virginia and Northern Tennessee area for her watercolors and her murals. Her last mural, completed last summer, celebrates the woman suffragettes upon the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.
Her latest project started with an article written by a college friend named David Carasco who is now a professor of the study of Latin America at Harvard University and once lived in El Paso, Texas. His article marked the tragic first year anniversary of the mass shooting at the Walmart in El Paso in which 23 Mexican Americans were targeted and killed. Many of the victims were at the Walmart doing back-to-school shopping, and some were killed while protecting their children from the gunmen. The author of the article returned to El Paso last year and visited the disappointing makeshift memorial in the Walmart parking lot. He was very disappointed and upset to see that there was not even a plaque listing the victim’s names, turning them into mere numbers rather than fallen humans.
After reading this, my sister took it upon herself to research the victims online, read their stories, and do a portrait of each victim based upon their online photos. Her goal was to gift them to the families, hopefully by Christmas. Once Ellen told Professor David of her completed project of all 23 portraits, he was so excited and he put all the people in his Latin Studies office to work, writing emails to the families and contacting officials in El Paso, including the Mexican consulate. After several Zoom meetings with all involved, including Ellen, the portraits were successfully delivered, most arriving on Christmas Eve Day. Ellen has since received many emails from the families thanking her for replacing the hate they once felt directed towards them with love. In addition, El Paso officials are now planning a healing garden in the park section of the city, where copies of Ellen’s portraits will be displayed. They’ve already invited Ellen and her husband down to that, but everything depends on COVID. Some people are also wanting to contact that CBS Sunday morning show to see if perhaps this could be a story on their show, like a story of healing and reaching out.
It started with my sister wanting to paint and do something and it kind of mushroomed. The paintings are beautiful. It’s just their heads and she put their name on the top and then at the bottom she gave what their name meant in English. And she also got me to read a lot of their stories. Oh my god. But the whole purpose of why I’m telling that is the whole thing of connecting a face, instead of…you know even COVID, certain people that I know who just talk about the numbers and don’t connect the numbers to a face or a real person.
