Image to bring someone back from the dead, what would you say to them?

In the spring of 2023, with a nervous hand, I signed a Deed of Gifts to my alma mater, Cal-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 was the founder of  Self Help Graphics at Arts, a non-profit art center outside the city limits and blocks away from where I was born. My next feeling of nervousness was when I started writing Charity and Penance. Healing with Our Stories was an opportunity to fully open up Sister Karen 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 moved 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?

The works on exhibit at the Deleage Gallery at Casa0101 Theater from April 18 to May 18 supplement my 10-minute screenplay, Charity and Penance.