The new multimedia art exhibit “Small Worlds” at the Nurture Nature Center has big observations about art and the world.
“We have this wonderful pool of artists that we intersect with, and I thought it would be nice to challenge them,” said Keri Maxfield, the art director of the Nurture Nature Center. “To look at something and notice something that usually goes unnoticed in the regular pressures of your day, to take time to slow down.”
“Small Worlds” features art that “celebrates life and diversity in small spaces,” according to the exhibit description. It features 67 total works from over 30 artists, including paintings, sculpture, photography, pottery, poetry and mixed media works, among others.
Maxfield highlighted the exhibit as a “combination of visual and literary art.”
“Really it’s exciting, a lot of fun,” Maxfield said. “We had at least a dozen artists who have never shown before.”
For mixed media artist Carol Kroll, “Small Worlds” was one of her first experiences displaying her art in Pennsylvania after a recent move.
“I’m inspired by fractal patterns found in nature,” Kroll said. “To me, it says that we’re all connected, from the micro to the macro.”
Her mixed-media piece “Ocean Dreams” was inspired by the patterns of nature. The piece, carved from a gourd, centers a nautilus shell among abstract patterns inspired by ocean waves.
Kroll described nature’s “inherent versatility, its fragility and resilience.”
Poet Abigail Michelini had three poems on display at the exhibit, two of which included stories about her children.
“I think as adults, it’s easy to move through life and sort of whiz by these amazing things that are happening,” Michelini said. “Children are the ones who will really often pay attention and listen. They have the time because they don’t have pushing expectations yet, of ‘I have to get from here to here.’”
“My children call me into those moments of paying attention to the tiny details,” she continued.
Artist Summer Patricella, who had a work of four three-dimensional tiles on display, was similarly inspired by her children. The tiles feature patterns inspired by her son’s love of insects and her love of native gardening.
“My older son has autism, and he’s mostly non-verbal,” Patricella said. “He’s now 12, but throughout his life, he has very much so taught me how to slow down and be more observant, especially in nature.”
“Small wonders was definitely something that connected with me because of what he has taught me and what he has brought into my life,” Patricella said of the exhibit theme.
Artist Maryann Riker had ten watercolor paintings featured from her “Pollinators” collection, portraying vital pollinators including bees, bugs, birds and even a fruit bat. The works are, in Riker’s words, “smaller-than-life,” measuring only one square inch each.
“These are little things that are so important to our world,” Riker said. “If we didn’t have them, it wouldn’t exist.”
Riker took up watercolor painting during the pandemic when the school district she worked for closed down. Her love of painting nature came from her other pandemic hobby, gardening.
“That really taught me and inspired me to create these little objects. It was a real learning experience, and it gave me so much more of an appreciation for the environment,” Riker said about gardening.
For Maxfield and the Nurture Nature Center, that’s what the “Small Worlds” exhibit is all about.
“Really we do a lot of outreach here, trying to get people to really observe and connect with the natural world,” Maxfield said.
The exhibit opened to the public in a reception on Jan. 17 and will run through March 28.
