Smell of Plumeria with Red Dirt

These kids have grown. The Waialua Sugar Mill is now an industrial park.  I took hundreds of black and white slides in a photography class that I took with Gaye Chan at the University of Hawaii while a grad student.

Keiki, Mt. Kaala & Clouds
©2012NanciHersh

 Here is one of many shots I took of my neighborhood kids, lined up with the majestic Waiane Mountain Range and  clouds in the distance in this double exposure print.  I can smell the plumeria... and the red dirt.

Kennett High School Art Festival

Last week I had a lot of fun participating in the Kennett High School Art Festival. Artists from the community were invited to demonstrate their craft and exhibit their work along with student work. I brought in copies of our Butterfly Kisses Book, as well as prints from the book, mixed media works on paper and paintings from my Koi Pond Series. 

A table of Butterfly Kisses books with
Kaleidoscope of Color
Acrylic on canvas on th easels behind

This event was on the heels of the Kennett Middle School Career Day with at least another two concerts in the district, a Choral at the High School and Band and Orchestral at the Middle School in between. It reminds me how fortunate we are to have our children in a school district that values and (still) supports the arts.  (and yes, they do also have a strong athletics program.)

We also put a large roll of paper and had conte and pastels available for students to draw on all day.  It was a big hit.... as were the ice pops for sale form La Michoacana- a favorite local homemade ice cream store in Kennett Square.  (coconut is my all time favorite!)

Local artist Charles Lewis sharing prints of his
scratchboard art with KHS students 

Watercolorist Annie Strack painted all day 

to the awe and appreciation of students and community

A day of Art

Beyond Teaching to the Test

Display of some of my work in at the art room of Mary Ann Uhle at

Kennett Middle School for Career Day.

Just noticed that the student works behind my table are of Butterflies, and Rabbits.
Serendipity at its best!

 

Last week I was at Kennett Middle School for Career Day.  I brought samples of my studio work including my children's book Butterfly Kisses and Wishes on Wings- When someone you love has cancer... a hopeful, helpful book for kids, shared my website and blogs with the students. We also did a quick and easy printmaking project- creating personal stamps, using foam shapes with adhesive backing, small pieces of cardboard cut in 2" squares for the stamp backing and water soluable markers to "ink" them up.

Using water soluable markers to "ink" up their
personal stamps

I learned that last week was also Teaching Artist Appreciation Week.  As a teaching artist, I have worked with Arts Horizons, Young Audiences of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania,  and the DCCA Contemporary Connections program, and numerous other organizations to bring art to our schools with projects that integrate their art practice with school curriculum.

Sample print made from a personal stamp

It is a great way to enhance, engage and expand the classroom- and get beyond teaching to the test!

Studio Cup

Potter Alex Beam-Ward is this week's guest blogger for the Artist as Collector Series'

"Studio Cup"
©2012BoBedilion

This has been my studio cup for many years, and one of my most cherished cups in my collection.  It is by Bo Bedilion, a potter and professor at Columbia College. Bo is also a mentor and dear friend of mine. It was a gift from the artist. 

I have always admired Bo’s deliberate use of archetypical forms and outdated glazes. He uses this as a means to ground his work in the past, but he is able to find new life within his self-imposed restrictions. 


In a conversation I once had with Bo in his studio,  he likened his work to “Putting new red laces on a pair of old work boots.”  


I have always thought this was a lovely analogy for his work.  

Alex Beam-Ward lives and works in Chester County, PA. His work recently caught my eye at a Farmer's Market in Kennett Square. No red laces. White is the new red here.

Carport Party

I didn't hang out with my neighbor, Mr. Hardin much. His chickens and roosters - and scary dogs were in his leased land, right in front of my house. Lots of noise, racket, even yelling. I think, he scared me too. One day though I walked to my mailbox at the end of my little road, and there he was, in his carport playing music with his friend, and - babysitting (!)

Ukele
©2012NanciHersh

I hung out with them for a while, took some photos, did a drawing, which became a lithograph, later.

All part of my Ranch Camp Series.  

Carport Party
©2012NanciHersh

After this, he would at least smile and nod to me.

Adventure and Daring Found in Print

NYC artist, Chris Twomey is this week's guest blogger for the Artist as Collector Series.

Moving/Still #8
Inkjet printed on archival paper
11" x 8.5"
©2012ElizabethRiley

Elizabeth Riley’s multimedia work has always been, for me, adventurous and daring. She puts together disparate elements from architecture, the urban environment and abstract forms, occasionally throwing into the mix, figures and objects.  It is free-wheeling, with a fractured sense of space, time, and reality.  

The digital collage I now have in my collection was derived and shown at her recent installation exhibited at Storefront Bushwick in Brooklyn, NYC.  The physical installation, “Tabletop Cityscape” was created using inkjet-printed video stills, embedded video and found wood. One video was intimately embedded in a 6" hole and while another projected a video of the Green Chair 2, conveying both private and public modes of experiencing a city.  It was so active and full of life.

My print, made from video stills and ipad photos, is called “Moving/Still #8.  It is from a series of 12 digital prints. Each are inkjet printed on archival paper, 11 x 8.5” in an edition 200.They are quite inexpensive. I loved mine because of the colors, references to origami and that weird hairy plant in the lower left.  The quality is wonderful. See more of her work or get a print for your own collection at www.elizabethrileyprojects.com


Chris Twomey is a multi- media artist, filmaker, curator and writer. (and a mother... so to Chris, and all you other hard working, hard loving momma's out there- Have a Happy and Beautiful Mother's Day!)

To see more of Chris' work or to contact her:

Studio phone & fax: 212-505-0586

Chris Twomey Website

www.christwomeyparallax.com New Monograph

Broadthinking Website

Friday, May 11, 2012 @ Artists Talk on Art

 Westwood Gallery, 568 Broadway at Prince Street, NYC
Fridays, at 7:00 PM, with doors opening at 6:00 PM.  $7.00 admit

http://www.atoa.org/Spring2012/May.htm

Upcoming Solo Exhibition: Chris Twomey - STOLEN GOODS

JUNE 7, opening 6-8pm – June 31, 2012

MUSECPMI 

580 Eight Avenue, 7^th Floor, @ 38^th Street NYC

http://www.musecpmi.org/

What Do You See?

This week from Ranch Camp Revisited: Mr. Santiago's horse Kaala and friend...

Kaala and Wild Boar
Double exposure from
a black and white slide
©2012NanciHersh 

“It's not what you look at that    matters, it's what you see. ”

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862); naturalist, author, philosopher

Weathering the Storm

Watercolor marine artist, Annie Strack is this week's guest blogger.


This particular painting in my collection is one that carries a high value to me. It came to me in the fall of 2005, about a month or two after Hurricane Katrina. 

©2012Delaina LeBlanc

Many of my artist friends lived in St Bernard Parish, and the storm scattered everyone far and wide. I was able to contact a few of them after the storm, and we made arrangements to meet up in order to try to re-band our little artist guild. Unlike my friends in St Bernard, I didn't lose my home and everything in it. High winds and flying debris had tore the roof off my house and crushed my car, but I was spared from the worst of the disaster. I gathered up whatever extra art supplies I had in my studio and boxed them up so I could take them to the meeting and share them with my friends. Another artist friend, Delaina LeBlanc, heard what I was going to do, and she brought several boxes of her own art supplies for me to add to the pot. Among her items was this lovely painting. She was hoping that one of the artists might re-use the canvas by painting over it. She didn't even know any of these people, and she had her own storm losses to to deal with, but she wanted to help in any way that she could. I asked her if it was alright if I kept this painting for myself, because I felt it was too beautiful to be painted over. She pointed out that it was just an quick study from her younger days and not really a finished piece of art, but she gave it to me anyway. That's the true value in this painting -- friendship.

Annie Strack is an award winning classically trained marine artist who teaches, writes, and curates  when she is not painting- or checking out the art scene in her fairly recent home of Chester County, PA. 

Maybe It is the Flux

Funny how we can find the threads that connect our work over the years.

Sifting through Life Drawing #09/11
11.25" x 17"
Stabilo aquarelle on paper with gesso
©2012NanciHersh

Looking through my Ranch Camp Series from 20 years ago of Waialua, Hawaii to the Sifting through Life Nets I am working on, I see that it may be the shadows, fluidity, movement - or just trying to capture what really is only a fleeting moment in time.

Maybe it's the flux that I find so interesting.

Note to my blog buddies and anyone else for that matter:  After our Skype talk yesterday about how we lable or talk about our work and the context it frames for others, I am trying on different titles for the nets that I have been making. Sifting through Life Nets- whaddya think? A little long? 


I feel like the search for Cinderella and the perfect fit.  HEY that brings me to find another thread and a not so different title for a series that I have.  Walks thru Life: Shoe Portraits

It's all about the journey... and finding the grace along the way.

Ranch Camp Girl in Light

This was one of a few images that I took of Mr. Santiago's granddaughter. I think her name was Crystal. 

She lived behind me and when I saw her I would run and get my camera.  She had a striking face... I can only imagine what she looks like now, 20 years later.

Girl in the Light
©2012NanciHersh
Ranch Camp Series

You can't see her face in this shot, but I loved the light coming through and behind her.  This is a double exposure from a black and white slide I took for my Ranch Camp Series.  I did a large drawing of this image with charoal and also a lithograph that was purchased by curator James Jensen for The Contemporary Museum collection just before I left Hawaii.   TCM has now merged with The Honolu Academy of Arts- looking forward to see what's new and what hasn't changed much when we go visit next month!