Portraits of Immigrants: Unknown Faces, Untold Stories

Array
(
    [date] => Wednesday, February 6, 2019
    [scope] => 
    [year] => 
    [month] => 
    [post_id] => 87133
    [series_id] => 
    [day_titles_only] => 
    [exclusive] => 1
    [return] => formatted
    [formatted] => 
    [show_date] => 
    [show_meta] => 
    [show_content] => 1
    [admin] => 
    [debug] => 1
    [filter_types] => Array
        (
            [0] => primary
            [1] => secondary
        )

    [type_labels] => Array
        (
            [primary] => Primary
            [secondary] => Secondary
            [other] => Other
        )

    [the_date] => Wednesday, February 6, 2019
)

Array
(
    [0] => 2019-02-06
)

A Special Exhibition of Portraits in Andrew Hall, free and open to the public, on display weekdays 10am – 5pm, Jan 22nd – Feb 15th.

Join us this winter for a special exhibition at Saint Thomas Church featuring the work of artist and parishioner, Betsy Ashton, who set out to discover who today’s immigrants really are. Set in Andrew Hall, this exhibition is entitled ‚ÄúPortraits of Immigrants: Unknown Faces, Untold Stories‚Äù and features contemporary portraits of immigrants to this country. The exhibit will be free and open to the public on all weekdays from Tuesday, January 22 to Friday, February 15. Come and meet these fascinating people through this extraordinary medium.

Artist Betsy Ashton writes that her exhibit is ‚Äúabout seeing character in faces and reading details of lives to understand and feel the immigrant experience. Yes, I’ve included some challenging cases: one is a Guatemalan woman who crossed the Rio Grande at night without papers to find work in this country. I had to find out for myself why someone — a lone woman especially — would risk rape and even murder to travel 2,000 miles through Mexico to sneak across a river at night, then walk for two days and nights through parched desert on our side of the border.‚Äù

Her portraits feature people from all walks of life. Most of the people in the paintings, like the vast majority of today’s immigrants, came with little money, scrambling to work small jobs and to find a place in our society. These are American stories of surviving and thriving.