Category: Uncategorized

Logo, News from Neem Fdn, Website update

The Chibok Project got a logo in December designed by Bill Wurtzel.  Thank you Bill!

BIG NEWS The Neem Foundation, having received your donations of $15,000 in December delivered services to over 600  participants in Expressive Therapy Techniques, including Art, Dance, Theatre, and Music in two communities identified as being in precarious need of mental health services to adults, adolescents, and children.  We are so proud to have partnered with Neem Foundation.  If you look at their website https://neemfoundation.org.ng/ and other partnerships, you will see that they have been providing exactly these services to the communities witnessing the massive influx of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and horrors of the insurgency in Northeastern Nigeria.

Children of Simari Jere Community who have witnessed extreme traumatic experiences work with skilled art therapists processing their fears, bonding, and finding new hope.

We hope you will take some time to look over the 276 sculptures that have now been photographed and posted on the sculpture page of The Chibok Project website.  All proceeds (excluding shipping) from each one of these sculptures, numbered inside, and in the photograph will go to benefit the work of the Neem Foundation in Northeastern Nigeria expressly supporting healing through art therapies in safe spaces.

Thank you for supporting The Chibok Project and for your encouragement and trust through the years.  With so much love, and in solidarity, Angela

Post Pandemic Good News

 The pandemic interrupted the sweet partnership of working with Sana Musasama at Hunter College in NYC.

 

I have been working on a new series of girl/mothers that transition from the the first 276 completed at the beginning of the pandemic, March 2019.

Those 276 sculptures,  with turbans, roughly 12″x7″x5″, were shown in part at the Apple Barn in October 2019 and again at ChaShaMaNorth, Pine Plains, NY, in April 2021. https://chibokproject.angelafremont.com/wp/page-13/

 In August, I met with my friend and supporter, Professor Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome of Brooklyn College who is the founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement in New York City.  With her guidance, and the support of the artist and activist Oluwaseyi  (Shayee) Awoyomi I was introduced to the great Nigerian artist, Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye, founder of The Nike Art and Culture Foundation. This foundation works with women and girls in both Lagos and rural areas of Nigeria, and it has agreed to be my gateway for outreach. I now have the amazing opportunity to work with an experienced, country-based partner with existing infrastructure to implement my vision of providing therapeutic art activities to survivors of trauma in Nigeria. Pictured is Chief Nike with a drawing of the Chibok Project that she was gifted.

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And, since my last writing, The Chibok Project became a program of the non-profit Fractured Atlas. The Lee Anderson Memorial Foundation gave a generous grant of $5,000 in January 2022 to the Chibok Project through Fractured Atlas!!  THANK YOU!

 

 

Presenting March 17 at NCECA

If you are a ceramic artist or art educator teaching ceramics as part of your K-12 curriculum, the NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) https://nceca.net will be holding their national conference virtually March 17-21. I am proud to be a presenter and will be talking about the intersection of art activism and the response to violence against women and girls. Very Good rates, and very, very worthwhile!

276 girls completed

I’ve been busy at work and have completed 276 girls with turbans cut, folded and tied on as well as many drawings and paintings. I am happy to report that I am preparing for a benefit for the Project and invited representatives from Fearless!, a local organization helping women at risk. Go to the benefit page for details. Perhaps I’ll see you there and you will see my work in the benefit show.

Milestone in the studio

Numbers 200, 201, 202. My dear mentor and friend Sana Musasama was here last week and we worked side by side under the apple tree in the morning shade. Talking and breathing in the fragrance, sharing stories of families and art. Slowly I have reached 200 girls. Friends visit the studio here and I share the girls, my story, and now reading Isha Sesay’s account of their kidnapping on April 14, 2014 in her new book, Beneath The Tamarind Tree, I include new details of the girls’ story. The book is compelling and I recommend it. Isha is a CNN journalist and has had unique access to the story and the girls. I would love to talk with her. Toni Morrison died this week.   I keep thinking about her impact on art, thought, race, culture. Making the girls with eyes wide open now.

2 day Film shoot in New Haven

100 girls in a white box room with enormous ceilings allowed Brittany Bland, MFA Projection Designer, Yale, with Barb Korein’s help to create effects on the girls and in the space using the images of the kidnapped girls on their bodies and creating powerful resulting shadows.

I want the film to tell the story of the kidnapping; that violence against women and children is a global phenomenon with up to 1 billion children between the ages of 2-17 experiencing violence in the past year; and that as a teacher of young children, the girls felt like my own students, but it is my own first hand experiences with trauma and violence that finally I understood was the source of my empathy for the girls.

First 24 Girls Successfully Once-Fired in Callicoon Center, NY

The 4th of July was filled with family activities and no studio time. I marinated chicken and pork, made Brunswick stew and coleslaw, roasted broccoli and potatoes, baked peanut butter brownies, a fruit galette, and a coconut cake. After everyone left I laid down with a fever and slept for 4 days. Then I went back to the studio and carefully loaded my girls into the old cone-firing Skutt. I still managed to bump a foot in haste and couldn’t paper clay it back on successfully. Still, the girls came out looking great. My last batch of the Laguna #391 and the first of the new Laguna #80. So happy with this new clay body. As creamy as the last batch and the color is very beautiful. I had terrible and frightening dreams the night of the firing of the girls blowing up in the kiln, their faces cracking. I kept waking up. What a joy to open the kiln and find this photo!! Thank you, kiln gods. Thank you, Mama. Thank you, Jill. Thank you, Sana. Thank you, Olivia. Thank you, Marina.