Works in Progress with YoungMoms

Brooke and Brooke(?)

This week wraps up the art workshops with YoungMoms of Kennett Square, PA funded by a Leeway Foundation ACG 2013. 

YoungMoms and mentors get down and work together on the mixed media
figurative sculptures

 The goal of the project is to work together collaboratively with a variety of materials and media while we learn about women who have overcome challenges and adversity to make a positive impact on the world.

We always start with a great home made meal prepare by wonderful volunteers from the community and then the kids go off to play in another room with the two sitters while we get down to work.

YM Executive Director Linda Mercner, left,
with volunteer extraordinaire
Barbara Proto on right

Our first two sessions together had us creating collage portraits of different women followed by a session making exquisite corpses.  We are now well into creating mixed media sculptures of our own super women.

Using inkjet prints of the YoungMoms faces we used Liquitex gel medium to create image transfers onto Crayola Model Magic- reminding us that we create our own future, and anything is possible.

The Power of Love
by Justine

The images transferred onto the surface with varying degrees in tact, and everyone had a great time working back into the faces with collage and paint.

Bridget... has worked with me before and it is so awesome to see
her come into her own as a woman and a mother

The girls also began to create the armatures for their figures out of boxes, tubes and other recycled materials.

Bethany and Stephanie

The sculptures are a work in progress... just like us! They are going to be on exhibit at the 3rd Annual YoungMoms Brunch on April 26 at the Garage in Kennett Square, PA.

Noticing, aspiring- and affirming

Detail of Installation

(my personal prayers in 3d)

Wire, pulp, encaustic, tea bags, collage

©2013NanciHersh

photo by Amy Tucker Photography

Noticing how the mind wants to judge the work when I go into the studio- and how that can be the kiss of death for the creative process.

that and comparing your art to others.

especially when the intention is to be authentic, a prayer- of thanksgiving, of gratitude, a prayer for loss or sorrow- or love.

so now I am practicing just noticing that- the black cloud in the expansive sky as my friend gib so eloquently put it on the phone today. catching up with him while i was fiddling with some monotypes I have been doing over the past couple of days.  I see them in my mind's eye, but then they go in a different direction and I am ok with that.  it's kind of like not working out for a while. it takes a while. or like my affirmation for tenacity, or seeing the beauty and value in who I am and all that I create.

©2013TonyFeher

It was so wonderful to read the interview with Tony Feher by Saul Ostrow in my first issue of BOMB magazine. Saul admits to Tony that at first he didn't "get" Tony's work and Tony is describing a moment when he decided to give up painting which he was struggling with and he  "realized that 'three dimensions' was where 'he' existed more comfortably....

and here's what truly resonated for me:

"That's the moment when I understand that I have to make art to please myself. ... I let everything else go; I stopped trying to make art and just did what pleased me, what excited me, what took me to some place of consideration where I hadn't been before."  Tony Feher

and then Saul asks Tony about the aspiration for his work- and here's another gem:

For me that's the aspiration for being alive. It's about truth and honesty.

Now that's an affirmation- of life, of art and making stuff. without judgement.  at least not in the studio, once it's out there- all bets are off. but that's another post.

It's Everywhere

Finding inspiration for what I do...

Murmuring & Musings
Wire, pulp, encaustic collage
©2012NanciHersh

everywhere I go.

Balloons in Kennett Square
©2012NanciHersh

Connections, entanglments, - the flotsam and jetsom of our lives- keeps it interesting. always.

Have a great weekend. Kids are on spring break, flowers are blooming... Griffin is looking for his eye drops. Open those windows, bring on the Allegra D!

Dishrag it Ain't!

Nashville artist Kathryn Dettwiller is this week's guest blogger for the Artist as Collector series.

Mixed media

©2012SallyMankus

This piece is a favorite of mine by Sally Mankus of Shalimar, FL.


Sally uses a photographic emulsion on a resin-based medium to create these works. Sometimes she prints on pot lids and on cookie sheets. 


It is positioned on a long wall in our home in Florida, where it is visible from the kitchen/gathering area. Some visitors fail to see the woman’s face at first and they wonder why I have a dishrag pinned up on the living room wall.  Makes me smile.


Kathryn Dettwiller works primarily in encaustic in her paintings and monoprints. She also finds herself going "off the page" to create mixed media assemblages.