The exchange seemed simple.
The artwork created by Ukrainian elementary and middle school students would be displayed at the St. Rose School in Newtown, becoming inspiration for those students, who would take their own hand to paper to create art that would eventually be sent back to the eastern European country.
But with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, those plans changed. Now, another set of artwork created by the Newtown students is now headed for Riga, Latvia, according to St. Rose art teacher, Meagan Ferriter.
The connection to Riga — which is the capital city of Latvia, a country that shares a border with Russia — is, in a way, serendipitous. This year at St. Rose, the school welcomed three 8th grade Latvian exchange students who spent a year playing hockey for a Westchester-based team.
“We did a whole unit on Ukrainian folk art, just because I thought it was good for them to just connect with Ukrainian culture and all that, so the three Latvian boys, their Ukrainian art is, actually, going back to their city before they get there,” said Ferriter.
“I think it’s really great for these eastern European countries to see what I like to show, you know, that we as Americans are compassionate, and thoughtful, and intelligent, and creative, and we are not just looking at this war from afar,” she added. “We are trying to process it and, you know, have some kind of dialogue about it.”
The Latvian connection represented in the young hockey players had an effect on Ferriter’s students, but how the Ukrainian students’ art wound up in the local Catholic school, and how the students’ art is now headed for Latvia, extends far beyond the confines of a hockey rink, or a single art class.
Fermata Arts Foundation, the group that organizes the exchange, is run by co-founders, Tatyana Ishutkin and her husband, Nikolay Synkov.
Ishtukin said this week she was born in 1959 in the Soviet Union — but “that is not something to be proud of,” she said, — before explaining how the nonprofit she oversees started with the concept of, “let’s build a roof over the world.”
A snowball of art in post-Soviet Union
In 2009 the group visited Ukraine to establish links with local libraries who then helped find universities and schools to participate in projects focused on the realms of art and architecture, mainly.
One of those visits in Ukraine included a workshop with grade school students that produced the first batch of artwork that would set seed Fermata’s future art exchanges. Then, the trip continued to countries including, Latvia, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
Ishtukin said she brought the art back to the United States, with the collection displayed first at the public library in Farmington before it traveled to additional locations including the public library in Groton and the Cambridge Matignon School outside of Boston, as students added their own work to the growing collection.
Building to 60 pieces, the snowballing art collection went abroad once again to be displayed at the Central Library in Riga, Latvia and, in the care of two Fermata representatives, to countries including Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia.
By 2015, Ishtukin estimated the collection included about 800 pieces of art drawn by young students from the former Soviet countries and the United States, and the contributors’ included cities within the Donetsk region, an area of eastern Ukraine that became occupied by Russian forces in the summer of 2014.
With eyes set on continuing the exchange, Ishtukin explained how she and Synkov used their connections in the country to convince the Ukrainian military to fly artwork into the Russia-occupied territory before returning in 2016 to collect it and the additional works contributed by students there.
A Ukrainian Ministry of Defense press release in March 2016, translated to English and published in the outlet, Bonbass News Today, reported that:
“The 95th separate air-mobile brigade of the Airborne Forces of Ukraine handed over to the children of Slavyansk, Donetsk region, 250 paintings created by young artists from 11 countries.”
“The children’s gifts were placed in the Central Library of Slavyansk. The exhibition of paintings will start on March 22,” the press release added.
Sean Cummings, a board member and founding member for Fermata Arts, worked on the organization’s initial trip to Ukraine and was one of those representatives who volunteered to shepherd the collection throughout the former Soviet Union countries, and he explained how the fledgling organization worked its way to collecting over 800 pieces of artwork from students in those eastern bloc countries and beyond.
Seeking out U.S. embassy missions in the countries they found government officials willing to donate in the name of spreading “arts and culture,” Cummings said. But there were also private companies and local donors who sometimes raised eyebrows at the U.S. State Department.
In Riga, Latvia, Fermata got a grant on the spot from the U.S. Embassy mission there, “because they called ahead and they weren’t giving enough money for arts and culture stuff, so we met with the [mission’s] arts and culture chief and on the spot they gave us a few grand, just for the cost of the trip,” he said.
In another case, the airline Lufthansa donated to their cause to cover their airfare, and in the countries, like Kazakhstan, local donors seemed willing to support the cause but, at the same time, made it harder to become an officially recognized nonprofit in the eyes of the U.S. government.
“There was a long document of concerns that we had to address, especially at that time, which was only really a few years after Sept. 11, 2001,” Cummings said.
“[We were] getting donations from random business people, where it was sometimes hard to determine whether it was shady or not so there was obviously a need to go through this process,” he added.
Fermata’s mission builds ‘HOPE’
Ferriter, the St. Rose art teacher, said she returned the Ukrainian artwork received from Fermata to the organization and the art work from her students is now on its way to Riga, Latvia.
Still, Fermata’s mission will keep its presence in town. Earlier this week, Ishtukin said a collection of art from students in Moldova will be displayed next month at the Cyrenius H. Booth Library in Newtown.
In an emails shared with the News-Times, Kate Sasanoff, an adult-programmer for the library, thanked Ihstukin and her organization for the contribution.
“After the news from Texas yesterday everyone I know here in Newtown & Sandy Hook is feeling sick-to-their-stomachs. This exhibit will give us HOPE,” wrote Sasanoff on the morning of May 25.
Ishtukin is proud to continue the program, but said with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the concept of “let’s build a roof over the world,” is more pressing now, particularly because one of the nonprofit’s board members, a world-renowned architect, Igor Klimov is, “hiding in a small village in central Ukraine because his city is constantly under bombing of Russians.”
Cummings, who has worked with Klimov and his students confirmed Klimov’s location, described the renowned architect as, “more an architectural historian than he is an architect…He is very knowledgeable of eastern ecclesiastical architecture and about traditional Russian, Ukrainian, the Slavic-architectural forms, even if it’s not a church, it’s domestic architecture, too.”
Cummings added: “We are just sort of feeling like, [the U.S. Government] keeps touting how many weapons they are sending to Ukraine, but they could make a little more effort to get people out who could do something here.”
Ishtukin said she was in Washington, D.C. Thursday, hoping to meet with U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., as a way to draw attention to Klimov and other issues affection Ukraine.
“We contacted Sen. Murphy’s and Sen. Blumenthal’s office to see if they can help to bring professor Klimov to the United States,” she said. “It went down to communicating with the case representatives from the Connecticut office and they referred us to immigration lawyers and the immigration lawyers gave me an estimate of $15,000 just to initiate the conversation.”
Blumenthal’s office did not return a request for comment. Staff representing Murphy said he “was unable to accommodate an in-person meeting with the Senator on the days requested.”
A statement provided by Murphy’s staff said the elected official has called for an increase to refuges allowed into the United States and cited his support for “the importance of welcoming refugees,” adding that the most recent $40 billion Ukraine aid package, “which included $350 million in migration and refugee assistance for the U.S. State Department to assist refugees from Ukraine and support to other countries in Eastern Europe.”
