Blaise, Misha

Misha Blaise
Austin, TX

Some of the design elements I incorporated into my brick are reminiscent of Eastern European folk art, a shout-out to my Croatian family. I painted a bird as a symbol of the migrant. Human's have migrated around the planet for all of human history, just as birds migrate.

When I a child in Toronto, my family hosted a refugee family who were escaping the Vietnam war. It was a father and his young daughter, and they arrived in the middle of the Canadian winter wearing shorts, t-shirts, and flip flops. They lived with us for 2 years, but tragically, the father was never able to reunite with his wife and baby boy, who he was forced to leave behind in Vietnam as part of the refugee program.

As I've grown up, I've always just considered them as part of my extended family. Refugees and immigrants are the same as the rest of us; we are just one just human family sharing one planetary homeland, and one common future together.

" The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” -The Baha'i Writings