By
Nanci Hersh
Piece description from the artist
This work immerses the viewer in the hidden world beneath the water's surface, capturing the sensation of inhabiting a koi pond rather than merely observing one. The composition evokes the fluid, dreamlike perception of a creature moving through layered depths — where light fractures, organic forms blur and intertwine, and the boundary between living body and surrounding environment dissolves. Branching, nervous lines weave through billowing masses of color, suggesting both the delicate root systems of aquatic plants and the electric energy of life coursing through water. At the heart of the piece, a luminous warmth radiates outward, evoking sunlight filtering down through the surface, while cooler, shadowed passages draw the eye inward, creating a sense of endless depth. The title invites the viewer not to watch a koi, but to briefly be one — surrendering to a world defined by sensation, instinct, and fluid becoming.
Nanci Hersh is a mixed-media artist working across painting, sculpture, and installation. Her practice explores how personal experience intersects with collective memory, and how moments of change, rupture, and renewal take form through material, process, and repetition. Through layered surfaces and tactile constructions, her work traces a process of discovery and transformation, where meaning accumulates through making and unexpected connections.
Hersh has exhibited nationally at venues including the Delaware Contemporary, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art in New York, the Museum of Encaustic Art in Santa Fe, and the Monmouth Museum in New Jersey. She is the recipient of three Purchase Awards from the Hawai'i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and three Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grants. Her work is held in public and corporate collections including Johnson and Johnson and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
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