Art in the Library

Artist Statement

The artist, Najiyyah A. Clark, was born on January 9th, 1996 in New Jersey. Raised in the small suburban town of Maplewood, NJ, she was extremely busy with extracurricular activities, including Girl Scouts, sports, community service, and camps. After discovering the sport of fencing, she was even busier. She attended public school in Maplewood, including Columbia High School where she participated on the varsity women’s foil fencing team, eventually serving as the team’s captain. She had the privilege of being coached by the olympic saber fencer, Ibtihaj Muhammad, winning 2 state team championships in 2012 and 2014. Najiyyah’s fencing career continued at The Pennsylvania State University, where she competed for five years and served as the team captain. In addition to fencing, she was active in student organizations, such as the mentor-mentee program, BluePrint and the National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE), where she served for two years on the executive board as communications chair and president. She did all of this while successfully earning dual degrees in mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering. Upon graduating from Penn State in 2019, she was accepted into Lockheed Martin’s Engineering Leadership Development Program (ELDP) which relocated her to Manassas, VA for one year, before she moved to Orlando, FL, in 2020 to pursue other opportunities within the company. After moving to Florida, Najiyyah started graduate school and earned a master’s degree in Systems engineering from Cornell University in 2022.
Despite juggling fencing and demanding educational and professional goals, Najiyyah always made time for art. She has fond childhood memories of Saturday mornings creating masterpieces from leftover boxes she found around the house. She drew and painted whenever she had free time. As an adult, she wanted to be more intentional about her art. She enrolled in Crealde School of Art and learned more about the fundamentals. While maneuvering through recent life challenges, she relied heavily on her art as a source of strength, confidence, healing, and joy. In her own words, the artist shared, “It was challenging for me to process my emotions and verbalize them to others, so I started to draw them instead. When my words failed, my art spoke for me. As I poured more of my feelings into my creations, I began to remember why I loved art so much. I had so much fun drawing and painting, and my creativity flourished as I slowly opened myself up to people again. The new friends I met inspired me, and the connections I nurtured with my current friends and family supported me, helping me rediscover parts of myself that I thought were lost. Art is how I speak and connect. It brings me immense joy and is my spark. I’m so happy to share a little bit of that with you all through this exhibit!”