Handmade figurers of three massacred Uvalde children, El Progresso Memorial Library, Uvalde, TX (triptych), 2023

The Robb Elementary School shooting occurred in May 2022 in Uvalde, TX. Nineteen young students were killed along with two faculty members, and 17 students were injured but survived. The Times of India reported Thousands of unsolicited gifts have been flooding into the Uvalde library including childrens books, care packages and money to support programs. Rather than emphasize the unspeakable death of Uvaldes children, our visit here was to record how a heroic library could be a positive force in a community desperately in need of finding a way through a very dark time. One moving gift was a stack of 19 boxes, each containing a hand-made wooden cut-out painted figure of each victim. This made each of the lost children and teachers seem very real.