What do a shoe, a spoon and a tattered prayer card have in common? They were all left in the desert by an immigrant trying to cross the border, and they are all now pieces of art.

Deborah McCullough, 57, is a Tucson, Ariz. artist who takes what many call trash and creates moving and inspirational works that tell the story of those who once carried them.

Originally from Maryland, McCullough moved to Tucson 20 years ago and later joined several humanitarian organizations, such as BorderLinks, No More Deaths, and Samaritans. In 2001, responding to the rising number of immigrant deaths while crossing the desert, groups of Samaritans began walking the migrant trails, looking for those who were in dire need of food, water and medical help.

McCullough and her husband, Ed, were immediately hooked.

"You start to meet the people and see the human side of it all," she said. "It tends to draw you into it more and more. If we can't find a solution, we certainly are going to work on not adding to the problem."

This is where her art comes in.

In part, it is a way for McCullough to relieve herself of the burden of such "endless and heartbreaking" stories.

"I'm trying to find a way to express my own sadness about the situation," she said. "This is what the artwork does; it helps me get it out."

It is also an effort to make Americans see that the migrants are "human beings that we need to treat with dignity, kindness and respect," she said.

Without any formal training, McCullough started creating art 12 years ago and developed her own unique artistic style, incorporating many different mediums into her pieces. A multi-media artist, McCullough creates mainly 3-dimensional pieces inspired by and using objects she finds along the trails: sun-weathered shoes and boots, empty medicine containers, silverware, faded pictures and worn prayer cards.

One piece, called "How Far Would You Walk to Feed Your Family?" highlights a metal spoon found along a migrant trail south of Tucson and makes the viewer reflect on just that very question. Another, displaying a young girl's shoe with wicked-looking thorns pointing inward, summons images of the crippling blisters that immigrants deal with as they walk days through rough, rugged terrain.

Her most well-known work is called Lucresia's Mother. The piece is based on the true story of Lucresia Dominguez Luna, a young Mexican woman who, in the summer of 2005, died in her 15-year-old son's arms while trying to cross the Arizona desert.

The figure in a plain black dress and tattered apron represents Lucresia's aging mother, the narrator. The viewer must lift up each layer of the apron to read the story, which ends with the image of a hand displaying three rings, the only way Lucresia's father was able to identify her body.

McCullough is now working on a series of pieces called "A Walk of Faith," inspired by the prayer cards that many migrants carry with them on their journey.

She hopes to show that many of "these people are of faith; good people forced into desperate situations, not interested in harming the society in any way, just desperate to feed and take care of their families."

Hear Lucresia's story...