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Cornwall Consolidated School seventh graders Skylar Brown, Izabella Coppola, Halley Villa, Willow Berry, Claire Barbosa, Willa Lesch, Vivianne DiRocco and Franco Aburto presented a group research project on the life of Naomi Freeman Wednesday, April 23. In attendance were U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., John Mills, president of Alex Breanne Corporation, Cornwall First Selectman Gordon Ridgway, Cornwall Selectman Jennifer Markow and CCS social studies teacher Will Vincent.
Photo by Riley Klein
To memorialize Freeman, the seventh graders petitioned the town selectmen to rename Great Hollow Road where the Freemans once lived. New street signs for Naomi Freeman Historic Road were created with some help from the town highway department.
“No one in this community, or the state for that matter, will ever forget that this happened here,” said Hayes.
Cornwall Highway Department helped the students create new signs to install on Great Hollow Road.Photo by Riley Klein
Per Cornwall Historical Society records, Freeman’s story began in 1794 when she was born in Vermont. John Sedgwick and his wife Abigail, of Cornwall, adopted her in 1801: an act that protected her from slavery, which was still legal in Connecticut at the time.
Sedgwick included Naomi in his will and she received a dowry after his death in 1820.
Naomi later married Obadiah “Obed” Freeman, a man who had been enslaved in Cornwall. She purchased an acre in Cornwall, becoming the town’s first African American woman to own land, and the two settled on Great Hollow Road in 1828.
Nearly 200 years later, the street itself bears her name.
“We are really proud of the work we’ve done and that Naomi Freeman will continue to be an impactful presence in our town,” said CCS student Vivianne DiRocco.
DiRocco and her classmates Skylar Brown, Izabella Coppola, Halley Villa, Willa Lesch, Willow Berry, and Claire Barbosa discovered Freeman’s story earlier this year while conducting research into important women in Cornwall’s history. The full project will be presented at Troutbeck Symposium May 1.
“One of the archaeologists who excavated the Freemans’ home told us about a gap in Connecticut’s history concerning the everyday life for free African Americans. We hope that we filled that gap a little bit,” said Lesch.
There are no known photographs or portraits of Freeman. The students utilized artificial intelligence to create images of what she might have looked like during her life in Cornwall.
The students created artwork to show what Naomi Freeman, her husband Obed and daughter Sarah might have looked like living in Cornwall.Photo by Riley Klein
“What an incredible example of what happens when young people are given the tools, the encouragement and the space to lead,” said CCS Principal Leanne Maguire. “Thank you for showing us what is possible when curiosity meets courage.”
John Mills, president of the Alex Breanne Corporation in West Hartford, was consulted by the students to help unearth census data and track down living descendants of Freeman. His company researches formerly enslaved people and brings their stories to light.
Mills said he was surprised to see the extensive research that was conducted by the students by the time he was contacted. His company sometimes helps render images for individuals lost to history, but the students had even taken that on themselves.
“I’m incredibly impressed with what you’ve done here,” said Mills to the students. “Now you’re a part of the celebration and civic engagement.”
“Night Drive” by Ken Krug
Provided
What unifies the work is perhaps not subject but feeling. Krug is most interested in capturing a sensation. “For me, painting is sharing my experience of looking at things,” he said. “It’s like telling someone a story.” He doesn’t expect viewers to see what he sees. “I just want them to feel something,” he said. “Whatever it is. That’s the emotional truth.”
“City Steam”by Ken KrugProvided
Krug was that kid drawing with chalk on the sidewalk until the light faded. “I remember being disappointed because nobody had cameras in those days, so whatever I was doing was gone the next day,” he said. That compulsion to capture impermanence may have stuck. Krug doesn’t romanticize process or product. He paints quickly, often reworks pieces, and is not especially precious. “I used to do very detailed paintings,” he said. “Now I want something simpler. I don’t want to spend a lot of time because it starts to lose some of that spontaneity.”
Yet his work has endured in some surprising places. His paintings appear in the film, “You Can Count on Me,” starring Laura Linney, and he illustrated Michelle Obama’s “White House Garden,” a job that came via proposal and then, months later, a call saying the White House had chosen him. Krug has written and illustrated his own books including “No, Silly!” which landed on Bank Street College’s Best Books of 2016 list, and has designed textiles for companies you’ve probably bought from without knowing.“That’s the thing I do love about commercial work, and I always tell my students this — you know, many of the textile designs or illustrations I’m doing are not for products I like, not for something I would really want in my house. But I love the problem solving.”
“Lilacs in a Green Jar” by Ken KrugProvided
But it’s painting — the part of his practice with no client, no invoice, and no guaranteed outcome — that keeps pulling him back. “When I’m painting, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I can fail, and it doesn’t matter. That’s what I like about it.” Failure, for Krug, is part of the process. Many works in the show began as something else but ended up being scraped away, flipped upside down, reimagined. “One of my favorite pieces in this show came out of a failed painting,” he said. “I turned it upside down and thought, ‘Oh, that’s the interesting part.’” Painting for Krug is a constant companion — daily, unceremonious, a little compulsive. “I even find myself if I’m outside, like, I’m drawing with my hand even though there’s no paper or anything there.”
“I do a lot of painting of all sorts, all the time,” said Krug, which sounds like false modesty but isn’t. In fact, Krug is already thinking of what’s next, of how the road he ran on this morning in Cornwall could be painted better now that he’s looked at it again. “Now I know what I want to do,” he mused. “Whenever I’m ready to show the work,” he said, “is when I’m kind of ready to do the next thing.”
