Nanci Hersh
Nanci Hersh’s life is her canvas. Whether she is in the studio or classroom, on the yoga mat or in the water, she is passionate about making the most of every day and forming meaningful connections within her community. Her two dimensional work as well as her sculptures and installations are examinations and celebrations of life at its best – and most challenging. It is how she make sense of the world to create peace and healing.
Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States including Eons Beyond the Rib, at Seraphin Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, Navigation Puzzle, at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Paper Work, at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie and The Demoiselles Revisited at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, NYC, along with solo exhibitions in PA, NJ, DE, and Hawaii. Nanci has received numerous honors including three purchase awards from the State Foundation of Culture and the Arts, Hawaii and two Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grants. Her work is included in the Public Collections of Johnson & Johnson, Herspace Breast Imaging, Leland Portland Cement, and OSI Pharmaceuticals to name a few.
She lives in beautiful Chester County, PA with her husband, two teenage sons, dogs, and her backyard koi fish pond.
Awarded Grants
2016
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Nanci Hersh organized a series of collaborative workshops with YoungMoms, a non-profit providing support services to pregnant and parenting young mothers in Chester County, PA. Together, participants of YoungMoms and volunteer mentors created unique binders for the young women to have as a parenting and community resource. The Young Moms Survival Guide incorporates artwork created in their weekly workshops and information gained from the group's monthly dinner and workshops. The workshops included life skills training, community resources, and parent/child activities including art, early education, and cooking.
Partner
2013
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Nanci’s project consists of a series of collaborative sculpture workshops with YoungMoms Community, a diverse group of teen mothers in Kennett Square. Together participants will learn about notable women throughout history who have overcome personal challenges to make a positive impact on the lives of others, as well as their own. Working in small groups, these young women will partner with mentors currently involved with the group to build armatures from wire and develop these forms, using papier-mâché and collage materials, into a unique portrait of their subject.
Partner
2010
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Nanci will create a collaborative printmaking workshop series with teen mothers from Kennett Square culminating in an exhibition for the First Friday Art Stroll in Kennett Square. Having worked with young mothers in the capacity of teaching, mentoring, and collaborating on murals with them, she intends to empower and encourage these teens and young women by offering them the possibilities that self-expression and connection to others through art has to offer. Using recycled children’s clothing as the print matrix to be inked up and then printed onto paper, these collographic plates and the prints pulled from them, will serve as a vehicle for sharing stories about experiences of responsibility, lost youth, and motherhood. Most importantly, she sees this project as an opportunity to bring together teenage mothers to learn printmaking and to share their stories, to expand how they see themselves individually and collectively as mothers.
