STATEMENT

The New England Chapter of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators was founded in 1999 to encourage and support Scientific Illustrators through networking, technique workshops and public education.
The New England Chapter holds three General / Planning Meetings a year in January, May and September as well as monthly sketching field trips, demos, workshops, portfolio sharing
or lectures.
Members, their guests or anyone interested in Scientific Illustration is welcome to participate.

A Year in Review

Beginning with our September 2004 meeting, Gretchen Halpert gave an inspiring presentation of her trip to Malaysia and Thailand with Ron Faris and GNSI member Paul Mirocha. Gretchen's presentation featured slides of the midnight honey harvest in Malaysia with the renowned 82 year old honey hunter Pak-teh.

October brought the members to Cape Cod where Louise Russell hosted a field sketching outing at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster, MA. The museum's trails through beech woods, a salt marsh and along the shoreline gave members many diverse opportunities for sketching.

November 20th was the opening of the NE chapter's "From Observation to Illustration" annual members exhibit held at the Denison Pequotsepos Nature center in Mystic, CT. The juried exhibit featured 25 pieces from 14 members and the opening included watercolor, pen & ink and illustrating with a microscope demonstrations by Frances Topping, Gretchen Halpert and Tom Colantonio.

In December, Amy Wright's 20 minute member demo on basic procedures involved in handling insect specimens for scientific illustration turned into a fantastic four hour workshop! Amy's hands on demonstration covered insect anatomy, proper handling of specimens and illustrating through a microscope.

2005

The January General Meeting was followed by a Business Forum with MJ Brush and Jennifer Fairman including a price guessing segment to help establish guidelines in pricing within our field.

February 2005 brought us to our 5th Annual Members Exhibit at the Museum of Natural History at Roger William's Park in Providence, RI. From a record number of entries the jury selected 60 works by 25 artists! The exhibit ran from February 13th through April 24th with hundreds of viewers enjoying the many outstanding and diverse works of our members.

In March members and friends visited the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale in New Haven CT to view the "Invasive Plants of Connecticut" show.

In April, with funding help from the GNSI Educational Committee, we were able to offer a "Color Mixing" workshop featuring Susan T. Fisher. (During the workshop students were asking about guild membership; educational outreach does work!) Susan brought us through color mixing exercises using the Michael Wilcox system, composition and shadowed form analysis.

May brought us to our General meeting, followed by an etching demo by MJ Brush. MJ's demonstration covered the planning stages of the image, preparing a copper plate, picking the solvent, etching the plate, printing and hand coloring. Etching methods, paper, ink and the proper chemicals were discussed and all participants got to etch and print their own plates.

Junes Field Sketching brought us to the Roger William's Park Zoo, hosted by Erica Beade. The award winning zoo provided many opportunities to sketch interesting and exotic animals.

In July, Kathy Kelly gave a workshop previewing her Gouache Demo scheduled for the GNSI National Conference in Bar Harbor, Maine in August. Kathy's expertise in gouache as a medium was evident in the many beautiful works she shared. Her experimentation and practice has made her a valuable resource on the technique.