The Adams County Arts Council will celebrate the opening art exhibition of Nanette Hatzes with a First Friday reception on Friday, May 7, 5:00-7:30 p.m. at the ACAC’s Arts Education Center, 125 S. Washington Street, Gettysburg. The reception is free and open to the public. Temperature check and mask wearing are required. The show will remain up through May 28.
Dr. Nanette Hatzes was born April 27, 1952 and passed away on Oct. 2, 2020. Nanette was a beloved artistic creative powerhouse with an artistic career that spanned 40 years. She was known by many locally as the mother of “The Goddess Project,” “The Art Attack,” and “Project Burundi.” Her most recently finished book, a memoir of her life through her years of journaling and doodling, was just published and is available through the silent auction.
Her retrospective show features 106 works of art including pen and ink drawings created in the 1970’s, mixed media, oil pastels, oil on canvas, goddess 1 and 2 portraits, and photography. Her work is emotional, colorful, and highly personal. She loved to journal, and several of her works featured in the exhibition combines the written word with her painted and drawn images. She was a prolific and inventive multimedia artist who enjoyed sharing her rich and varied experiences throughout her life.
The Adams County Arts Council is raising $15,000 to establish the Nan Hatzes Art Education Grant with the mission of contributing to our arts-rich community by awarding funds to secondary students who want to continue their art education. A silent auction, live auction, and sale of her artwork in person and on bidding owl is planned.
For more information about the Retrospective Show, the silent auction, and the educational grant, as well as other upcoming Arts Council exhibitions, or art classes at the Arts Council’s Arts Education Center, visit www.adamsarts.org or call (717) 334-5006.
“Beloved creative artistic powerhouse” are such apt descriptors for Nan. She was also a gifted and inspirational educator, counselor and scholar, a generous spirit who’s warmth and talent for friendship and hospitality affected so many of us. She could be both free-spirited, quirky and tremendously productive and disciplined as well as quietly spiritual. I love Nan and miss her.
I look forward to this retrospective; 106 pieces represent a small portion of her greatly varied body of work that ranged from the ludicrous to the outrageous to the sublime.