7 minute read
Drawing Strength
Ulia Gosart, M.L.S. ’05, brings the stories of Ukraine’s youngest artists to the world — one drawing at a time.
By Natalie Missakian
Artwork Cherkasy Universal Regional Library
THE DRAWINGS PACK AN EMOTIONAL PUNCH. A ponytailed preteen stands in front of a burning school, clutching a stuffed animal as bombs rain down and a tank rolls up behind her. A girl covers her ears as the screams of an air raid siren drill into her skull. A teddy bear lies toppled on its side, its edges soaked in blood.
“The tears come when I don’t expect them,” says Ulia Gosart, M.L.S. ‘05, speaking at Children Draw War, Not Flowers, a traveling exhibit held at Southern Connecticut State University’s Hilton C. Buley Library last fall.
Gosart, an assistant professor of library science at San José State University, is intimately acquainted with the artwork. She curated the exhibit, which is now touring the United States. But each viewing moves her deeply —– all the more so because the artists are children from her native Ukraine, some as young as 4. Her goal: to help people understand the human toll of the war in Ukraine through the eyes of these young residents.
Many of the drawings portray scenes of loss and violence, but others carry messages of resilience. Ukrainian flags stand tall amid the ruin. Children hold hands beneath a yellow-and-blue-striped umbrella, symbolizing the protection of the Ukrainian armed forces. Sunflowers, doves, and storks suggest hope, peace, and rebirth.
The traveling exhibit draws from a collection of more than 450 pieces created by children aged 4 to 18. Each was inspired by a contest Gosart and her colleagues sponsored with the public library in Cherkasy — the central Ukraine town where Gosart was born and raised. Many of the young artists relocated there to escape the fighting, Gosart explains; the contest was designed to provide a creative outlet to help them cope with trauma and grief.
“To me, this [collection] is wonderful because each child had their own way of telling their story and being heard,” says Gosart. “It’s not necessarily just about horror and destruction. There is a lot of camaraderie, a lot of love, a lot of care, a lot of hope — a lot of resistance.”
For Gosart and her family, Ukraine had long been a place of refuge. Her mother and uncle were born in a Siberian prison camp. Her grandfather — a Ukrainian journalist — was imprisoned there as a political detainee under Stalin’s regime, and her grandmother was assigned to serve as a prison doctor. Eventually, her mother and grandmother found safety in Ukraine.
“I didn’t know any of our family’s history until the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed,” Gosart says. “That’s when my mom finally felt safe enough to tell me the story.”
Her desire to research her family’s past led her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in librarianship at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts in 1990. She enrolled during a time of political upheaval and joined student activists supporting Ukraine’s emerging independence.
Gosart moved to Shelton, Conn., in 1996, where she worked in a donut shop and then as a nanny and house cleaner. She married and started a family, settling in Guilford, Conn., but always dreamed of studying in the U.S. In 2002, she enrolled in Southern’s Master of Library and Information Science Program, an experience she describes as both challenging and transformative.
“When the professor would ask a question, I couldn’t answer at first,” she remembers. “I was so terrified about my English.”
She went on to receive “incredibly wonderful training” at Southern, building a foundation for a rewarding career as a library scholar.
Now living in Los Angeles, she earned her doctorate in library studies in 2013 from UCLA, where she also taught in the graduate school of education and information studies.
Gosart joined the faculty at San José State University (SJSU) in 2022 — the same year Russia launched its military attack, which she describes as “one of the worst days of my life.” She immediately began reaching out to friends and colleagues in Ukraine, some of whom she hadn’t spoken to in years. “It was very difficult,” she says.
She realized her feelings would “completely destroy” her unless she found a constructive outlet. Naturally, she turned to libraries. During the war, libraries have become 24-hour community hubs, explains Gosart, noting the Ukrainian phrase used to describe them translates to “points of invincibility” — places where people can charge their phones, find shelter, and access reliable information.
Her efforts were also inspired by a children’s book drive she led decades earlier while at Southern; her goal then was to reestablish libraries destroyed by the Kosovo War in the former Yugoslavia. She remembers loading her then young sons into her SUV and driving “from one public library to another,” collecting discarded books and sending them abroad. (Today those sons are 28 and 26 — one a professional ultimate Frisbee player with the Los Angeles Aviators, the other a doctoral candidate in physics at the University of Pennsylvania.)
Gosart’s work with the Cherkasy Regional Library began with a request for a scanner to digitize Ukrainian cultural materials. She and her colleagues at SJSU raised money to send the scanner and funded art therapy sessions for displaced children at libraries throughout the region — leading to the contest that inspired the exhibit. They later worked with an international volunteer effort called Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online to scan the artwork and provide additional digitization equipment.
Since its debut at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Children Draw War, Not Flowers has made stops at SJSU, the University of Connecticut, Fairfield University, the University of South Florida, Tufts, Southern, and other colleges across the country. It is slated to visit George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in 2026.
For the future, Gosart hopes to publish a book of the art and accompanying poetry. Proceeds would benefit Ukrainian cultural and humanitarian efforts. She also continues to support Ukrainian libraries. Working with the American Library Association, she has solicited funds and book donations to open six Little Free Libraries for children and is collaborating with students and the Ukrainian Library Association to document destroyed libraries.
“Some people tell me there is fatigue about the Ukrainian war,” she says. “They say, ‘How long are you going to do this?’ I feel like I’m enlisted. I’m going to be with these kids and my colleagues in Ukraine until the end.”
VIEW MORE ART: gallery.sucho.org/exhibits/show/cherkasy-childrens-drawings
MORE ON ILS: inside.SouthernCT.edu/information-and-library-science
