This past April I had the GREAT PRIVILEGE of being the host at NAEA's (National Art Education Association) National Convention for keynote speaker Naomi Natalie of One Million Bones and Sabrina Beckwith of the Bezos Foundation. I have to thank my friend and colleague, Nancy Walkup, for that opportunity because it was truly an honor to meet these ladies and spend quality time with them at the convention which included helping them with a two hour hands on workshop, taking them to the airport, out to dinner, and so on. I'd been hearing about the One Million Bones project from Nancy for a few months, but learned so much more about it. I'm so in awe of Naomi Natalie and the One Million Bones Project. This young woman and artist decided that she needed to make a difference in the atrocities being committed in parts of the world after she visited one of these regions in Africa. The One Million Bones installation included laying over one million bones on the National Mall in Washington D.C. on June 8th. School students, community groups, and people all over the world made the clay and paper mache bones, a giant feat of gathering them occurred, and then an even larger feat of laying them on the National Mall happened on June 8th. Naomi is a shining example of a young person who saw something terrible happening in our world and not walking away from it....she did something about it. The seed that was planted will last for a long time and extends to the far corners of the earth. Places like the Sudan, Congo, Syria, Somalia, and Burma are places where the women, children, and men that live there just don't get the peace that many of us get to have in our day...and our nights. The One Million Bones installation specifically called attention to the genocide happening in our world. If it weren't for my knee surgery needing to be the day school got out for me, I would have been there. But, it warmed my heart to watch a young woman that I respect and admire so much do something BIG, BIG, BIG, BIG to try to make a difference. God bless Naomi Natale!
