Despite his battle with mesothelioma, artist finds time to support a worthy cause

A mysterious string of murders is the subject of an upcoming art show at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Since 1993, hundreds of women have been brutally raped and murdered in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Official reports vary, with the total number of dead women estimated to be between 200 and 800.

Now, these murdered women are at the heart of an exhibition entitled "Ni Una Más (Not One More): The Juárez Murders," a free art show which will open this Saturday at Drexel University’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery.

Among the artists who will showcase their work at the exhibition is Philadelphia sculptor Frank Bender, a self-taught forensic artist who has made his living by creating busts and sculptures of missing persons in order to help officials track them down. Bender told reporters about the first time he helped officials with his forensic expertise.

"I’d been taking a night course in painting at the Academy of the Fine Arts. I went to the morgue, and I saw one unrecognizable body, a woman with a bullet wound in her skull, and I said, ‘I know what she looked like.’ I knew nothing about forensics and very little about sculpture, but I sculpted the face for them."

Sadly, Bender is now suffering from mesothelioma, a rare cancer that may kill him within months. Mesothelioma is caused almost exclusively by asbestos exposure, and the cancer affects thousands of Americans every year. Sadly, this rare cancer kills almost all sufferers within 24 months of being diagnosed. Bender is passionate about raising awareness of the Juárez murders during what little time he has left.

"I call the whole situation incompetence by design…Nothing is moving the way it should in Juárez. The police and the government share no information because they are afraid for their lives."