What would you say to them if you were to bring someone back from the dead?

In the spring of 2023, with a nervous hand, I signed a Deed of Gifts to my alma mater, California State University, Los Angeles Library. These gifts included over 800 drawings, documents, prints, and paintings, all created during my Self Help Graphics & Art residency and my graduate studies at CSULA. That signage verified my place as an artist during the time Sister Karen Boccalero, a Franciscan nun who founded Self-Help Graphics at Arts, a nonprofit art center located outside the city limits and blocks away from where I was born. My next feeling of nervousness was when I began writing "Charity and Penance." Healing with Our Stories was an opportunity for Sister Karen to fully open up and ask, "Did I do the right thing?" The last time I saw her was in 1995; she passed away two years later, and the Self-Help Graphics organization relocated within city limits.

After writing Charity and Penance, I suddenly felt healed from my nervousness. Sister Karen had always had faith in me, heaven not in mind, but as an artist.

With my words in hand, I brought back the legendary Sister Karen Boccalero to ask her, "What if I never left this place, Self-Help Graphics?" So much heart I put into this that I filled their whole gallery space with works that I made during that time. 

​Charity and Penance

A ten-minute screenplay, written and performed at CASA0101, part of En Mi Jardin: Healing With our Stories, April 19-May 12, 2024.

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