Art for Good: Morton Contemporary Raises Funds to Fight Gun Violence
Unconditional Love by Suave Gonzales is being sold at auction as a fundraiser by Morton Contemporary. Image courtesy of Morton Contemporary
Debbie Morton, the proprietor of the art gallery Morton Contemporary (see accompanying article), is co-sponsoring a fundraising auction to help fight gun violence and support its victims.
Last August, while waiting at the impound lot (“The only time in my life I’ve been towed,” she says), Morton, a Swarthmore resident, connected with the woman in line behind her. As the wait stretched to hours in the hot sun, Cora Wilson*, a mother of five, told Morton about her son who had been shot to death in Philadelphia the previous month. The killers had waited for him to use an ATM and then taken his $25 and a pack of cigarettes, Wilson recounted. She also spoke of her eldest son, who died of an accidental drug overdose, and her daughter, who died of lupus.
“She’s an extraordinary woman,” Morton says of Wilson. “A force of nature.”
Morton says she could not stop thinking about Wilson: a single mother, working 50 hours a week doing in home care for the elderly and disabled, pandemic and all, while housing and caring for her 72 year old mother, 4 grandkids, and one daughter still at home. Then the gallerist thought of a way to help.
Morton Contemporary could give Wilson a painting of the three children she had lost, and it could host a fundraiser to help her family. A second painting, also of Wilson’s children, could be sold at auction, with the proceeds donated to Wilson and to the cause of fighting urban gun violence.
Morton asked one of the artists she represents, Suave Gonzales, if she could hire him to make the two paintings. She says he was thrilled to participate.
Next, she invited the foundation of former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, which fights gun violence, to partner with Morton Contemporary. Together, they organized an online auction that ends on June 4 — National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The auction is hosted on the gallery’s website, mortoncontemporary.com, and can be accessed directly at swat.ink/morton-auction. A GoFundMe fundraiser is running simultaneously.
All of the proceeds are being donated to the family and to the Giffords foundation, Morton says. If the auction is successful, she hopes to organize a similar project every year.
*Name changed for privacy.
