CORNWALL — The story of Naomi Cain Freeman will continue to be told for generations to come thanks to the work of Cornwall Consolidated School’s seventh grade girls.
Four of the students, Skylar Brown, Izabella Coppola, Halley Villa and Willa Lesch, attended the Board of Selectmen meeting March 4 with a request to rename a section of Great Hollow Road in honor of the historic figure. This suggestion was inspired by research into significant women in Cornwall’s history.
According to Cornwall Historical Society records, Naomi was born in 1794 and was adopted by Colonel John Sedgwick and his wife Abigail, of Cornwall, in 1801. This act 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 Freeman’s deed for “one acre of land with a dwelling House thereon,” Aug. 27, 1828.Courtesy of the Town of Cornwall
Naomi later married Obadiah “Obed” Freeman, a man who had been enslaved in Cornwall. She purchased an acre of land in Cornwall, becoming the town’s first Black woman to own land, and the two settled on Great Hollow Road in 1828.
Nearly 200 years later, the road itself may commemorate her legacy.
The selectmen were receptive to the students’ suggestion and agreed to help establish a memorial street name.
“We could name a section on an honorary basis in view of this extraordinary effort and extraordinary story,” said First Selectman Gordon Ridgway. “I commend the seventh graders.”
The students hope to achieve their goal within the month of March. An update is expected at the next selectmen’s meeting Tuesday, March 18.
Travel league baseball came to Torrington Thursday, June 26, when the Berkshire Bears Select Team played the Connecticut Moose 18U squad. The Moose won 6-4 in a back-and-forth game. Two players on the Bears play varsity ball at Housatonic Valley Regional High School: shortstop Anthony Foley and first baseman Wes Allyn. Foley went 1-for-3 at bat with an RBI in the game at Fuessenich Park.
Anthony Foley, rising senior at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, went 1-for-3 at bat for the Bears June 26.Photo by Riley Klein
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.
Pearson first encountered the world of alternative publications — magazines filled with experimental writing, artworks in the form of a book, and samizdat literature — as a young writer living in Berlin just before The Wall came down in 1989. Later, in New York City, she spent a great deal of time with artists “who were always making and assembling, whose continuous art-making made the thin membrane between art and life even more porous,” she explained.
Pearson traces the idea of publishing to a 2001 exhibition of artist-poet Joe Brainard. That show led to “The Nancy Book,” Siglio’s debut title in 2008, and she’s never looked back. The book contains over fifty full-page reproductions of Brainard’s dazzlingly accomplished and witty drawings of the cartoon strip character, Nancy. It includes essays and contributions by Robert Creeley, Ann Lauterbach, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, and other poets of great renown, all thrilled to celebrate and remember Brainard (sometimes called “a poet’s artist”) who died of AIDS in 1994. Pearson said, ‘My first project with Brainard was such a good experience, I kept going. “
Since then, Pearson, the sole proprietor of Siglio, has designed, edited, and published over 40 books and other printed editions. Her books are characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of texts and images and collage-like assemblages, as well as for carefully designed and gorgeously printed volumes. Her list includes many “rediscoveries” of unpublished manuscripts and little-known publications. At the same time, she has commissioned new work from an impressive array of artists and writers such as Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle and Cecilia Vicinua among others.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.Richard Kraft
Though most Siglio books feature work by artists and writers from the 1960s to today, one standout— “Tantra Song” (2011) — showcases vibrant 17th-century Indian tantric paintings collected by poet-ethnographer Franck André Jammes, their modernist feel echoing Hilma af Klint or Brice Marden. Siglio also frequently draws on the spirit of the Fluxus movement, reissuing works by figures like John Cage and Ray Johnson with editions that honor their playful, ephemeral, and poetic origins.
Siglio also excels at photo-narratives rooted in highly specific, often eccentric concepts. “Memory” (2020), by avant-garde writer Bernadette Mayer, reproduces her journal and daily rolls of 35mm film from a month in the Berkshires in 1971, capturing the texture of each day. “Call and Response” (2022), created during COVID lockdown by composer and visual artist Christian Marclay, pairs his photographs of London’s quieted streets with musical scores composed in reply by his friend Bruce Beresford—each image in dialogue with sound.
Siglio books are sold through it’s website (sigliopress.com), as well as museum or specialty bookshops. (The Lenox Bookstore represents a number of Siglio books; the newly opened Lakeville Books & Stationery has copies of “Tantra Song.”) In all cases, Pearson strives to make “two or three degrees of connection” with each book buyer, including a “special gift” — often a piece of printed ephemera — with each purchase.
