After the work first debuted at ArtPrize 2014, The Scarlet Cord Pop-up Galleries, mini installations, were created to expand the original mission: freedom and healing for boys and girls trafficked worldwide.
Responding to The Scarlet Cord work, Judge Patricia Gardner said, “Today kids are producing their own pornography.” Unfortunately, it’s true. One of The Scarlet Cord works called Targeted—portraying a child, a bull’s eye, and a roll of film—pictures how childhood innocence is destroyed through erotic material. “Sexting” is sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages,…
Pamela will be presenting The Scarlet Cord: Healing for Sex Trafficked Children at the Kent County Courthouse to help educate about commercial sex trafficking—called modern day slavery. Violated “Are you the artist?” the young woman asked from the distance of fifteen feet. But before I had a chance to move within normal conversation range, her…
In 2006, while attending the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College, I met—would you believe?—Makoto Fujimura. In his book signing line, I showed him my out-of-date Xerox portfolio. Mako kindly leafed through the poorly printed images and said something that changed my paradigm: “Your art speaks of healing.” Within five minutes, Mako named…
That night I couldn’t sleep. Images of humans displayed like animals in a pet store window haunted me. When I was nineteen, while traveling through Europe, our tour bus stopped at the Red Light Windows of Amsterdam. As I stood in the middle of the district, window after window displayed women perched on chairs—selling their…
A year ago when Jim Waring, the vice mayor of Phoenix, spoke at The Scarlet Cord Exhibit opening during the 2015 Super Bowl, he had a message for the buyers of sex: “We are coming after you.” Listening to the vice mayor, I felt like I was on the set of a Batman movie. According…