This work is drawn (pun intended) from my artwork over the past two years. I always draw en plein air, quickly, seeking to capture the feeling of the moment rather than the physical details. As such, I completed each of these drawings with a brush pen within fifteen minutes. This has proven very useful to document my work as Refugee Resettlement Director in my hometown of Gainesville, FL.
“QQ on phone with Shakyamuni Buddha Statue at A Nan Buddhist Temple and Sculpture Park” is a direct response to this call’s invitation for irreverent work. My wife and I regularly visit the A Nan Buddhist Temple when we go to the nearby nature trail in our city. This time, I was keen to document the place for my book of drawings of our county, and my wife, QQ, found something else to do while I drew. It just so happened that she seated herself in front of the monumental Shakyamuni Buddha statue. I found the echo of poses to be fascinating: different kinds of meditation, or prayer, certainly, but also quite similar. In losing herself in her phone, she detached herself from the material world, falling into a doom scroll enlightenment of mindful mindlessness.
“Magrib prayers by the mihrab of Rüstem Paşa Camii” tackles the simultaneously communal and private act of devotion in congregation. I have always been drawn to the beauty of mosques (both physical and spiritual) in my travels. Those from the Ottoman Classical and Baroque period in particular inspire me immensely. This mosque, Rüstem Paşa Camii, is particularly special. I visited it while teaching in Istanbul, shortly after a health incident that prevented me from accompanying my students on a long field trip in the Turkish countryside that I had spent months planning. Surrounded by a bazaar and covered streets, with no obvious entrance, it is easy to miss. And yet the interior is covered with Iznik tilework like no other mosque. And so what I found and what devotees find is a measure of peace and respite amidst the noise and difficulties of life. In prayer, each devotee orients towards the same physical and spiritual point, connected to each other through cultural ritual like the Iznik tiles the mosque is famous for: beautiful alone, but resplendent together.
“Refugees applying for Community IDs” and “Intake meeting with IRC” come from my work with the Greater Gainesville International Center, where I am the refugee resettlement director as an affiliate of the International Rescue Committee. I was struck by the statement in the call that “Prayers are a testament to endurance: the devotee’s test of mettle in the wake of grief and loss.” These drawings attest to that, with a family praying silently through the Kafkaesque bureaucracy for a positive resolution to their plight.
In the first of these drawings, there is a communal prayer as well — that of the Community ID program to retain relevancy and efficacy in the face of increasingly restrictive legislation in Florida. The director of the Human Rights Coalition holds my phone with an interpreter on the line, praying to be understood on a practical level and on a greater, more purpose-informed one. In the second drawing, the head of GGIC and I pray for the success of this family and of the nascent refugee resettlement program.
Today, this work is being published after the inauguration of a president whose previous term was marked by the lowest refugee admissions in the history of the United States. In his first hours, he canceled the program entirely. Against this backdrop, I pray that my drawings inspire action to restore refugee admissions. I pray for the soul of our country, founded and built by refugees. I pray that my artwork can touch the policy makers in a way that my daily work cannot. In that sense, then, the publishing of this work in this anthology is itself a prayer.
