The Atis Fanm - Haitian Women Artists

An Update from Ellen LeBow about the Artists of Matènwa,
September 2011:

Hello Friends,

Each time I pick up one of the lovely things the artists make in Matènwa I can't help but remember its long and complicated path from there to here.

Those materials they can't get for themselves we bring over, lugging through airport restrictions, 2 or three plane rides, boat rides and truck rides up bone-rattling terrain, then back through it all again with the finished work, never knowing which leg of the trip will break down.

I started writing this in the car. Seth and I had left a manic Port-au-Prince airport in time to arrive in Miami just as Irene closed airports up and down the coast.

Stranded, when American Airlines told us the next available seats were over a week away so we chose to rent a car and drive from Miami to Boston in 2 1/2 days, stopping only to stock up on fireworks in Georgia and score a grinning baby alligator head for the dashboard to keep our spirits up.

On the ride we pondered the past 10 days we had spent in Matènwa; a too brief visit with several goals.

1 - to bring materials and bring back finished work for RaRa, the artists' retail store in Wellfleet.

2 - to introduce the artists to two visitors who might be able to bring them a significant grant.

3 - to visit Wana's safe house for 10 little girls whose families can't take care of them.

4 - to complete the last leg of our home repair project started after the earthquake.

5- to see our friends and hug and kiss our god children as much as they'd let us.

The artists were fired up to show us their new work, get the new materials and get the long anticipated pay they'd been waiting for.

Our visitors "got" the beauty of the scene and the women. As they interviewed the artists they formed an insightful picture of their lives and hopes.

Arielle Berrick (in the above photo) stayed behind with the center's building repair committee and is already organizing truckloads of sand and bags of cement to get up the mountain.

Wana's (whose photo is at rt) place for girls fared less well. They lost the little house she'd been renting for them to sleep in because she couldn't carry the rent ($25 a month). So she'd moved them all into her own home, half covered by tarps and shared beds against every wall, a few yards from the locked house.

When we visited them (15 girls including 5 of her own) in a rainstorm the water coursed down the rough gullies and all around her crowded home. Wana's mother was in the corrugated tin kitchen frying plantain for the ring of shy little girls standing out of the weather.

Before we left we paid the first 6 months of rent so they could get back into the sturdier building, and 6 months of food, and are looking for donors with vision to keep this gentle and necessary safe house supported with rent, food, tuition and art materials.

Without parental protection these children are particularly at risk to become enforced child servants, physically and sexually abused, and neglected.

In the car to Boston we agreed the artists just get better and better, that the focus and growth of the art center is more rooted than ever, and that we are both haunted by the grim and tragic failure of Port au Prince, a city that, even before the quake, can't rise from its own ashes.

As I've said before, when people ask me, "How's Haiti?" it is a heartfelt question but I might as well ask them, "How's America?"

In order for them to give me an undistorted answer they would have to go right back to the beginning history of our country, our influences both taken and given, our changing political climates, our droughts and floods and wars, our music, art, language, opportunities and fears.

"How's Haiti?" is an overwhelming question that can't in good faith be answered. But we do know how Kalin is, and Andremen and Venez and Josyan and Edens and Ernitte. We know their children, their mates, their friends.

We know they are making work they care about in a place of relative peace and community. We know they hope what they are making matters to people in another country they have never seen except in videos.

Please remember us when you are buying gifts this season. It is the best way to support us. Buying their work is crucial to the artist community's success and survival.

Love and gratitude,
Ellen LeBow