FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 12, 2005
Contact: Shirley Melikian Armbruster
(559) 278-5292 or (559) 593-1815 

Graduate Art Student’s Design Selected
For Jane Addams Statue in Peace Garden 

Claudia Nolan, a painter, sculptor, computer artist and graduate student at California State University, Fresno, has been selected to create a statue of 20^th century social reformer and peace advocate Jane Addams for the campus Peace Garden.

In early 20th century costume, Fresno State professors Elizabeth Swearingen, left, and Ellen Gruenbaum, join Dr. Welty and artist Claudia Nolan, right, with rendering of Jane Addams statue.

Nolan’s design was selected from several submitted to a committee composed of campus and community representatives. The Addams statue is the first Peace Garden memorial depicting of a woman of peace, and the first designed and sculpted by a woman, and the first designed and produced by a Fresno State student.

The statue of Addams should be completed and ready for installation in spring 2006. The likeness will join those of Mahatma Gandhi (installed in 1990), Cesar Chavez (1996) and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1999).

The bronze sculpture will depict Addams lifting aloft a small, immigrant child who is holding a globe.

The life-sized sculpture will have an overall height of 10 feet, 3 inches from the bottom of the base to the top of the globe. The base will be black granite with laser-etched marquees. The silicon bronze figures of Addams and the child will be patinaed. The final decisions about the patina coloration will be made in the fall at the foundry in Arizona where the statue will be cast. The glass globe that the child is holding will be cast or hand-blown and etched with coloration compatible with the patina chosen.

Artist Claudia Nolan, left, is congratulated by Dr. Jane Middleton, chair of the Department of Social Work Education at Fresno State.

Peace Garden Committee chair Dr. Jeannine Raymond praised Nolan’s design for the     new statue.an>

“Claudia Nolan has captured the firm resolve of a woman determined to make a positive difference in the world in her representation of Jane Addams – a woman with a vision that extended beyond political boundaries,” said Raymond.

            Nolan started her career as a painter and began regularly selling her work in 1965. Her facility for portraits led to positions with Phoenix Archive, Sierra On-Line’s ImagiNation Network and AOL.  After a career of more than 30 years in commercial and computer art, Nolan retired and returned to school and earned her bachelor’s degree in art in 2003 at Fresno State. She is now a graduate student in sculpture.

Nolan said she loves the tactility and salience of sculpture, reminding her that life is more rooted in the Earth than in cyberspace. She also is pleased to be involved in the statue of Addams..

“Jane Addams is a heroic figure in American history – championing peace and social justice. She will be among her peers – the other honorees in the Peace Garden – whose courage, nobility of purpose and persistence in bringing their ideas to us by the example of their lives has also made them heroes,” said Nolan.

“I’m excited about this project. As a visual artist, I am aware that our individual and cultural identities are impacted, if not formed, by what we see,” she said. “Although we say that men and women are equal, there is a contradiction implicit in the fact that the number of men and women honored by commemorative public art works is as grossly disproportionate as it still is in this country.

“When we commemorate a woman like Jane Addams, it is not just the individual we are honoring – we are also giving visual proof, especially to our young men and women, that women’s contributions to the history, culture and well-being of our country and the world are indeed equally valued,” said Nolan.

As a student, Nolan has been the recipient of several scholarships, including the Adolph Odorfer Art Grant and the Swan Alumni Trust Scholarship, both this academic year, the Ina Greg Thomas Memorial – Arts award in 2003-04 and the Dean’s Scholarship Award in 2003.

In 2003, she was commissioned by the U.S. Army to produce “General Frederick Carlton Weyand,” a commemorative bronze bas-relief of the former Army Chief of Staff.

Jane Addams was the first American and second woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She was a co-founder in 1889 of the social settlement Hull House in Chicago, where she lived and worked until her death in 1935.

In the early years of the 20^th

She maintained her pacifist stance after the United States entered the war in 1917, working through the Women’s Peace Party, which became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919. She was the league’s first president..

As a result of her work, Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Addams visited Fresno and Hanford in 1918 to address the annual meeting of the San Joaquin District Federation of Women’s Clubs. A report in the March 20, 1918, Fresno Morning Republican newspaper said Addams, “head resident” of Hull House, “... directed the activities of this wonderful institution, and by her methods has influenced the social service work of our country more, perhaps, than any other single individual.”

The three existing statues were financed through private giving, as will the Addams creation. Dr. Sharon Brown-Welty, an education professor and chair of the fund-raising committee for Addams statue, said $100,000 in donations are being sought for the project.    The largest single donation to date was made by the students of Fresno State when Associated Students made a contribution of $ 23,000 earlier this year. Other donations to date have been made by the President and Dr. Sharon Welty, Provost Jeri Echeverria, numerous faculty in Social Work, Education, Women’s Studies and other departments, as well as members of the community. The Fresno Chapter of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom is donating $1,600 to the project.

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