Blue is selling another wonderful painting. She also needs some help urgently, I learned today.

I met with students and teachers at Bishop Maginn High School today in Albany. Blue, the young artist who is so gifted and warm, brought in another painting for me to sell. I told her I love being her agent.

She calls this one “Goldfish,” because it is a representation of her idea about goldfish, which she says are her favorite animal. In her imagination, this is what the spirit of a goldfish looks like. She hopes to own one some day.

Sue Silverstein, her teacher, says Blue is an enormously gifted artist, Maria said the same thing when she saw her work. Maria wants her to come to the farm to meet with her and see her studio, Blue loved the quilts she saw on Maria’s website.

Maria hopes to set up a show, online and off, to show the art of Blue and some of the other very gifted artists whose work we’ve seen at Bishop Maginn.

Out of the pain and sorrow of the refugees – the terror and violence, the camps, the flight to a strange country, the loss of everything, the poverty – comes an artistic sensibility that is powerful.

Instead of being welcome and supported by the country that was built on refugees, these children have faced poverty, uncertainty and harassment. Two of the boys at the school had their hair set on fire by hostile classmates at a different school a year or so ago.

Blue needs some assistance.

I’m offering this painting – “Goldfish” – for sale for $50, ([email protected]). She was thrilled to get $30 for her painting last week. I think Goldfish is a work of great imagination. The painting is signed.

But I learned a lot more about Blue this week. Her mother is very sick, the family has absolutely no money.

Blue has an amazing attitude, she just has so much confidence and presence, she was kidding with the other students, and she had great charisma, Maria and I were both so comfortable with her. There is not a whiff or self-pity or lament from her.  I would not have guessed she comes from so difficult a place.

The family are refugees from Japan. The poverty among the student refugee community at Bishop Maginn is profound, even heartbreaking, but Blue is among the neediest of all of them, I am told by her teachers. They are desperate to help her.

Listening to this new information, I felt the best way to help Blue is to raise $500 for her, so she and a teacher can go to Wal-Mart and buy some urgently needed personal toiletries and a change of clothes. She has neither.

I think the best way to do this is to send the money to me. We have other projects coming up that are best served by donating directly to the school, those contributions are tax deductible.

I’m  hoping some small donations will help us help Blue. If there is any overage, it will go directly to things the school needs – laptops (inexpensive laptops -there is not a single one in the school – and microscopes, there is not one of those in the school either.)

I’d like to move pretty quickly on this one. If you wish, you can contribute directly to me, Jon Katz, Blue Project, via Paypal, [email protected], or by check, Jon Katz, Blue Project, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

I plan on returning to the school Thursday.

And if anyone wishes to purchase Blue’s painting, “Goldfish,” it will cost $50, and will be shipped out quickly.