Seeking to balance cultural tradition and economic opportunity, with African Art.
Visit Africa and beyond at Nomad Gallery. Unique jewelry, artifacts, textiles, and the paintings of Leslie Clark based on years of living in Africa and traveling with nomadic populations around the world. The gallery supports artisans and the Nomad Foundation's humanitarian work among nomads in Niger.
More About The Nomad Gallery and Foundation
The Nomad Gallery features traditional arts collected to benefit artisans around the world and to enrich our own. Unique jewelry, artifacts, textiles and the paintings of Leslie Clark based on years of living in Africa and traveling with nomadic populations around the world. The Gallery supports artisans and the Nomad Foundation's humanitarian work among nomads in Niger
The NOMAD Foundation has worked for 20 years in Niger bringing healthcare, education, water, food and work to nomads. The Nomad Foundation's Tamesna Center for nomadic life provides essential services located on the annual migration route so nomads can have education, healthcare and vocational training with out having to move to a city and lose their economic viability as mobile herders.
Leslie Clark, designer of NomadGal Jewelry and founder of the Nomad Foundation, is an artist whose career has always included travel. After obtaining her master of fine arts degree from George Washington University she traveled to France for her first exhibition. Since then she has traveled and painted searching for new perspective and old wisdom.
Her first trip to Niger in 1993, was to look for exotic subject matter. She found that and a lot more. A chance meeting with Wodaabe nomads took her on a path that changed her life. After visiting this nomadic family the second time a year later and seeing the poverty they lived in, she decided to give them a gift of $200. On her return the next year the family explained that with the gift they had purchased a cow and because of that they were able to remain nomadic. The realization that this relatively small sum could transform a family’s life made her realize that she could make a difference.
In 1996 she opened the Nomad Gallery in Ojai, California to show her paintings of Africa along with the work of African artisans. The goal of the gallery is to tell the story of the indigenous people she paints and to help them support themselves selling the things they produce. Her jewelry designs are a way to present the beautiful work of the Tuareg jewelers to a wider audience.
In Ojai California since 1996
Nomad Gallery & Foundation
307 E. Ojai Ave. #103 Ojai, CA 93023
