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Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collection, 2015.196.440.1, Connecticut Historical S ...
CCHAP Artists at the Institute for Community Research Conference 2007
Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collection, 2015.196.440.1, Connecticut Historical Society, Copyright Undetermined

CCHAP Artists at the Institute for Community Research Conference 2007

Subject (Somali)
Subject (Romanian)
Subject (Bosnian)
Subject
Subject (Assyrian)
Subject (Assyrian)
Subject (Hmong)
Subject (Hmong)
Subject (Hmong, died 2015)
Subject
Date2007 June
Mediumborn digital photography
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.440.1-.19
Description2015.196.440.1: Image of Somali artist Fatuma Ahmed with her woven bags at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.2-.4: Images of Elena Cupceancu with her Romanian lace at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.5: Image of Bosnian needlewoman Fatima Vejzovic with intern Romana Haider.

2015.196.440.6: Image of Norwegian rosemaler Eldrid Arntzen painting at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.7: Image of Hmong seamstresses at a table with textiles at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.8: Image of Assyrian lace maker Florence Betgeorge with her granddaughter, Maegan BetEnvia, at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.9: Image of Hmong seamstresses at the ICR conference marketplace. Pictured left to right are: Chue Yang, Mai See Her, and May Xiong.

2015.196.440.10-.11: Images of Hmong seamstresses showing their work with a story cloth behind them at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.12-.13: Images of Florence Betgeorge and Fatima Vejzovic at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.14: Image of Norwegian rosemaler Eldrid Arntzen painting at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.15: Image of Fatima Vejzovic and Fatuma Ahmed at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.16: Image of storyteller Linda Goss at the ICR conference marketplace.

2015.196.440.17-.19: Images of Linda Goss and Fatuma Ahmed at the ICR conference marketplace.
NotesSubject Note: The Institute for Community Research (ICR) produced Crossroads II: Community-Based Research for Social Justice, a 3-day conference held in Hartford, Connecticut on June 7-9, 2007. The conference focused on the promise, pitfalls, and “best practices” of community-based collaborative research (CBCR) to address disparities and inequities in the arenas of health, education, artistic and cultural representation, development, and the environment. The conference aimed to create an interactive forum to share perspectives, and discuss new approaches that integrated science-based and community-based knowledge to promote effective action for social justice. CBCR, based on principles of participation in the research process, blends local knowledge, activism and cultural expression with scientific theory-driven methods to generate new knowledge and action to promote social justice. CBCR also offers promise for effectively adapting research-based interventions for use in real world settings through its holistic and scientifically rigorous approach that integrates the knowledge, worldview, and experience of community members, service providers, and researchers. The keynote speaker was Philadelphia-based activist and storyteller Linda Goss. The Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program, based at ICR at the time, participated in the conference by organizing an interactive roundtable discussion “Creating and Sustaining Real Partnerships That Support the Cultural Heritage of Immigrant Groups” featuring local community leaders, and by organizing a marketplace to present the work of artists involved in CCHAP’s projects such as the Sewing Circle for immigrant and refugee women.


Biographical Note: Linda Goss was born near the Smoky Mountains in an aluminum factory town, Alcoa, Tennessee. She grew up listening to the storytelling of her grandfather Murphy, who shared stories of life under slavery as well as a heritage of folk tales. Her life’s work has been to research and present the wealth of African American oral literature.

Her education in storytelling began in her family — in the way that her grandfather told stories by first asking a question -- and in the repertoires and narrative habits of other family members and neighbors. Linda grew up absorbing this heritage of family folklore, oral history, and legend. Stories about ethical values, courtship, the civil rights struggle in Tennessee, stories from personal experience, play-party songs, and hundreds of stories that she has gathered over decades of serious study and performance of stories, are now in her repertoire.

Linda is the "Official Storyteller" of Philadelphia. A pioneer of the contemporary storytelling movement, she was co-founder of In the Tradition, the National Black Storytelling Festival and Conference, and The National Association of Black Storytellers. She is a founding member of Keepers of the Culture (a Philadelphia-area affiliate of NABS), and of Patchwork: a Storytelling Guild. Linda has authored numerous books, and is a contributor to several collections on African American storytelling. She has two Folkways recordings to her credit. Linda received the 2003 Oracle Lifetime Achievement Award in Storytelling from the National Storytelling Network, and served as a master teacher in the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program. She holds an undergraduate degree from Howard University, and a Masters degree from Antioch University. She is currently Artist-In-Residence at the Rosenbach Museum, and a featured artist in the Philadelphia Folklore Project’s Local Knowledge initiative.


Biographical Note: Eldrid Arntzen was born in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn in 1935, which had a Norwegian immigrant population of around 50,000. She has been painting various styles of rosemaling, decorative painting on wood, since the age of ten, studying with rosemaling masters in Norway and the U.S. Her work has received recognition from members of the Norwegian-American community by being chosen as the Gold Medal winner in 1987, and the People’s Choice Award in 2003 at Vesterheim, the Norwegian-American museum in Decorah, Iowa. In April 2004, Eldrid was an invited panelist and teacher for the first international symposium on rosemaling, organized by Vesterheim. This significant honor situates her among the leaders of this folk art form such as Nils Ellingsgard and Sigmund Aarseth from Norway.

Eldrid has traveled all over the country to demonstrate and teach rosemaling. In addition to her classes at Vesterheim's Handverkskole, shewas a regular summer teacher at Fletcher Farm School in Vermont and Land of the Vikings in Pennsylvania. She has taught American rosemaling in Norway and conducted workshops for the Sons of Norway in Fairbanks, Alaska. As a master traditional artist in The Institute for Community Research's Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, Eldrid taught rosemaling design to three apprentices from Massachusetts and one from Connecticut. Eldrid’s house is full of boxes, chairs, bowls, cabinets, trays, and containers that she has painted for her family to use.

Rosemaling on wood furniture, household objects, and even walls flourished in rural Norway during the mid 17th to the mid 19th centuries and was transplanted to America by immigrants. There are numerous styles within rosemaling, requiring different designs, colors, and brush techniques. As well as the Valdres style, Eldrid paints styles including Hallingdal, Gudbrandsdal, Vest Agder, Aust Agder, and her favorite, the asymmetrical Telemark style which itself has several variants. A hallmark of Eldrid's skill is that she is one of only a few in the United States who are excellent painters of rosemaling styles from so many districts.

In 1996, her paintings were selected for an exhibition, "Norwegian Folk Art: Migration of a Tradition" that traveled throughout the U.S. and Norway. She was one of three American painters to participate in the 2004 international symposium, The Art of Rosemaling: Tradition Meets the Creative Mind. In 2005, Eldrid was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) with its National Heritage Fellowship Award, the nation's highest honor in traditional arts. NEA bestows this award to only twelve artists nationwide each year, chosen for their artistic excellence, cultural authenticity, and contributions to their communities.


Biographical Note: Somalia has experienced a complex and continuous civil war among rival clans since 1991, leading to violence, famine, and dislocation for hundreds of thousands of Somalis and Somali Bantus. Fatuma Ahmed, along with her farmer husband and their children, belonged to the Ashraf, a Somali minority group often targeted by larger armed clans. With thousands of others, the family fled across country on donkeys and camels to a large refugee camp in Kenya in 1992. After thirteen years in the camp, Fatuma and her eight children received asylum in the United States, arriving in Hartford in 2005. Although she had not gone to school in Somalia, Fatuma was skilled at handwork with intricate twined designs, making woven sisal mats and baskets that brought some income in the camps. In her new home in Connecticut she continued her basket-making with the Sewing Circle Project organized by CCHAP. Practicing her craft reminded Fatuma of Somali cultural practices, and provided a way to contribute her personal skills to American cultural life. Fatuma moved to Minneapolis in 2014 and went back to live in Somalia in 2018.

Farming families in Somalia, both Somali and Somali Bantu, make mats, baskets, and bags from woven and twined sisal strips or palm leaves. These essential domestic items carry crops and food, store household goods, and transport shopping. Called dambiil in both Somali and Somali Bantu languages, the soft-sided baskets can be plain or patterned. The mats have several uses, each with a different name; they serve as prayer rugs, floor or wall coverings, serving platters, and winnowing trays. In Connecticut Fatuma uses plastic baling twine as the warp to shape the circular basket, then she twists colored yarn around the twine to build up the sides and adds yarn handles. She experimented with colors and basket styles to meet the preferences of the American market. Fatuma would sell her work at the Hartford Farmers Market and other venues, and has taught her daughters the craft.

Subject Note: The Sewing Circle Project began in 2007 as an initiative to encourage production, marketing, and sustainability of traditional crafts among the many immigrant and refugee communities in the Greater Hartford area and across the state. Developed by the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program based at the Institute for Community Research (ICR) in Hartford and at the Connecticut Historical Society after 2015, the project supported the remarkable traditional arts of these newcomers. Members of the Sewing Circle met regularly at ICR and also at the Hartford Public Library to work on their art forms, learn new skills, and share coffee and conversation. This cooperative environment fostered social interaction among the artists and public audiences, respected and encouraged their cultural heritage and artistic traditions, stimulated literacy improvement, and helped to develop marketplaces for their artwork. CCHAP organized gatherings, exhibits, workshops, marketplace events, promotional materials, and educational activities for the group’s participants. While most of the artists experienced war, trauma, and dislocation, they continue to practice their cultural heritage and artistic traditions, blending these with current experiences and materials to create artwork that is both beautiful and functional. Even when immigrants and refugees embrace a move that takes them to a more stable and prosperous place, resettlement poses challenges of physical and psychological adaptation. Many new Americans have eased transition by continuing, recreating, or reinventing familiar art forms. For many members of refugee communities now living in New England, practicing their familiar arts of weaving, knitting, basket making, lace making, music, dance, and storytelling helps them to cope with the trauma of the genocide and displacement their families have suffered.

Engaging with public audiences has given project participants a chance to improve their English-speaking skills and broaden their social networks and support systems. The project was a success because it brought some additional income to the artists and also because they became friends and co-workers sharing techniques, styles, and supplies as they created their unusual and exquisite textiles. Through a collaboration with Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services and the Hartford Public Library in its early days, the project expanded to offer small business training to the artists, thanks to grants from the Aurora Foundation, the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund, the Aetna Foundation, and the Knox Foundation. CCHAP worked with the Sewing Circle Project artists to promote their work through marketplace and museum sales, exhibits, demonstrations, and apprenticeships for the experienced artists to teach younger members of their cultural group.



Biographical Note: Elena Cupceancu makes exquisite embroidery-type needlework, in a technique similar to macramé that uses a crocheted braid that is basted onto a pattern on cotton cloth, then stitched over from the back, forming a raised lace piece after the basting stitches are removed. She and her husband Liviu, a woodcarver and woodblock print artist, came to the United States during the Ceaucescu regime.

Biographical Note: Florence Betgeorge was born in northern Iran in the Azerbaijan Province, a traditionally Assyrian Christian area. Assyrians speak a language similar to ancient Aramaic, and trace descent from the Babylonians of Mesopotamia. Florence attended Catholic school in Iran, also learning textile arts from the French nuns who ran the school. After her marriage and a move to Tehran, diplomats and other wealthy patrons commissioned baby clothes, bedcovers, and trousseaux from her. Persecution of Assyrians intensified in Iran after the fall of the Shah and during the Islamic Revolution from 1978-1982, and Florence and her family immigrated to the US in 1984. They settled in New Britain, CT where Assyrians have established a strong community with a church and a cultural center. Florence creates exquisite embroidery, lace, decorative home textiles, and she can tailor any garment. Sharokin Betgevargiz, Florence’s daughter, learned lace-making with her mother as part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 2007-2008 and continues to create lace earrings, necklaces, and table covers, sometimes using unusual threads made of metal. Florence has participated in many activities of CCHAP’s Sewing Circle Project from 2007. CCHAP has displayed her work in several exhibitions. One of her knotted lace pieces is in the collection of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, 2015.217.0, and a hand-picked handkerchief 2015.232.0.

Florence makes lace using only a needle and 2 or 3 ply fine cotton thread, in a French style she learned from nuns. This style creates knots that secure the delicate thread as the lace strands are built up, whereas in crochet lace the stitches are continuous and unravel if pulled. She describes her lace technique as “needlework” or dentelle in French. Her special addition to this technique creates writing in lace, with scripts in Aramaic.

Biographical Note: Maegan BetEnvia, the granddaughter of textile artist Florence Betgeorge, is an Assyrian community scholar and author of the book “Assyrians of New Britain”, Arcadia Publishing, Images of America Series, 2007. She has worked in several organizations focusing on community development and outreach, grant writing, social and environmental justice and holistic health.


Biographical Note: Fatima Vejzovic is a skilled weaver of traditional Bosnian wool flat-weave carpets made on a simple wooden loom constructed by family members in her home. She learned this traditional craft from mothers, aunts, neighbors, and friends in her village, using wool from sheep raised on their farm. After the war Fatima and many weavers worked for Bosfam, a successful crafts cooperative established in Tuzla to assist women with income-generating projects while providing therapeutic and social support. Their work has appeared in catalogues selling the carpets internationally. Fatima arrived in Hartford with her family in 2002. Greater Hartford is now home to over 10,000 Bosnians, most coming as refugees from the war in the former Yugoslavia. For the women in the community, many of them widows, continuing to practice their familiar arts of weaving, knitting, and crochet lace helps them to cope with the trauma of the genocide their families suffered. Fatima’s art works include large floor carpets as well as smaller weavings, and she fashions the woven tapestry fabric into bags, purses, and pillows. Fatima also makes hand-knitted clothes, crochet lace tablecloths, and Bosnian socks worn inside the home. She won a 2021 Connecticut Office of the Arts Fellowship in Folk and Traditional Arts.

Bosnian flat-weave carpets, called ćilimi after their Turkish antecedents (kilims), adorn all parts of the home – floors, walls, chairs and sofas, tables, and beds. The weavings also serve an important function as prayer rugs for these Muslim families. While sometimes made commercially with chemical dyes, the traditional rugs woven by village women still use wool processed by them and colored with natural dyes. Ćilimi designs maintain their Turkish roots but also show European influences stemming from Bosnia’s close connections with Vienna in the early 20th century. Fatima weaves traditional geometric patterns in seemingly endless variations, and she also enjoys adding floral motifs and creating new pictorial designs. Fatima does not use templates or printed patterns – her designs are created as she starts a weaving on the loom, depending on what colors of wool she has available. She developed a new idea for a weaving depicting a whimsical goat, that she made into bags and wall hangings that have become very popular. Fatima also weaves lettering and names into a ćilim, creating a narrative feature that led to a multi-year commission to produce commemorative banners in the organization’s colors for the Aurora Foundation’s retiring board members.

Through a partnership with Clatter Ridge Farm, whose sheep graze on the grounds of the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut, Fatima has created a series of weavings using their high-quality Shetland wool. The undyed wool gives the rugs a beautiful softness and durability as well as subtle variations of natural color.

Fatima taught her daughter, Fikreta Muratovic, to weave and they worked together for the Bosfam enterprise in Bosnia. As part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 2005, Fatima taught loom weaving to a younger Bosnian woman in Hartford, helping to pass on this beloved tradition in their new home. Fatima has given weaving workshops to Hartford students at four schools through Hartford Performs, and to students from Miss Porters School and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. Fatima has worked with three interns from Trinity College through the Sewing Circle Project. As part of the Hartford Performs program for teaching artists in schools, Fatima has taught the basics of loom weaving to students in Hartford, Windsor Locks, and Miss Porter’s School.

Fatima was one of the founding members of the Sewing Circle Project, which began in early 2007 as a partnership to encourage cultural sustainability among the many immigrant and refugee communities in the Greater Hartford area and across Connecticut. Engaging with public audiences has given Fatima opportunities to improve her English-speaking skills, broaden her social networks, and showcase Bosnian cultural traditions. She has demonstrated and sold her work at the Hartford Public Library World Refugee Day; Hartford Open Studio Weekends; the University of Connecticut; the Hill-Stead Museum; the Vermont Folklife Center; the American Folklore Society; the New York Folklore Society; the West Hartford Art League; Ten Thousand Villages; several local house parties; and at the Billings Forge Farmers Market. She enjoys creating new designs for private commissions. Fatima’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Institute for Community Research, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut Office of the Arts Gallery, and the Clare Gallery.


Biographical Note: May Xiong was a remarkable and talented seamstress and embroiderer of traditional Hmong textiles and needlework of all kinds: paj ndau, skirts sewn entirely by hand, reverse appliqué, cross stitch, hats, making the entire costume in the different Hmong styles. Like many older Hmong women over 40, their mothers taught them traditional textile skills around the age of 14, in their Hmong villages in northern Laos. First they learned how to make the cross-stitched collars for the back of the shirt, then they learned the rest of the outfit, with the embroidered apron last. They also learned the paj ndau-story cloths from mothers and female family members. May and other women make whatever clothing Hmong people need, especially for the New Year celebration in November. May was involved as a teacher in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program with other Hmong embroiderers from Massachusetts and Connecticut, from 2006-2008. She was the wife of Boua Tong Xiong. May passed away in 2015.


Biographical Note: Chue Yang from Springfield, Massachusetts was involved as an artist in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program from 2006-2008, working with other Hmong embroiderers including Mai Lee from Massachusetts and Mai See Her and May Xiong from Connecticut. Chue is a talented seamstress and embroiderer of traditional Hmong textiles and needlework of all kinds: paj ndau, skirts sewn entirely by hand, reverse appliqué, cross stitch, hats, making the entire costume in the different Hmong styles. Like many older Hmong women over 40, their mothers taught them traditional textile skills around the age of 14, in their Hmong villages in northern Laos. First they learned how to make the cross-stitched collars for the back of the shirt, then they learned the rest of the outfit, with the embroidered apron last. They also learned the paj ndau-story cloths from mothers and female family members. She and other Hmong women make whatever clothing people in need, especially for the New Year celebration in November.


Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for all these artists.


Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
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