Mirka Mora and Creative Lives Lost

Mirka Mora

An artist can only hope to live to the place that Mirka Mora is in this picture.  Standing in front of a wall size painting wearing a matching sweatshirt.  She is triumphant.  One of the few to make it out of a Nazi concentration camp alive and go on to spread so much energy and effusive joy through her work and life.

I've been thinking a lot recently of all the life and also artistic brilliance lost to war and circumstance.  How many paintings never made and books never written and impacting lives never lived.  Here are two remarkable stories I heard recently: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram, a woman in the Vietnam War on KCRW's Unfictional and Abdi and the Golden Ticket, a Somali refugee's struggle on This American Life.  

I wonder if anyone reading who knows of a good way or organization to aid refugees, immigrants, or other most vulnerable populations would post or email a comment to me.  I feel so lucky to be able to spend so many of my days in the studio and am looking for ways to be supportive of others.  It's a seed of an idea but I'm always surprised where the conversations that come from this blog take me.  Thank you.