My work begins with presence. I am interested in how experiences settle into the body and surface through material. Working across painting, sculpture, and installation, I build in layers, allowing repetition, accumulation, and interruption to guide the process.
Water has always been my center. Growing up near the Jersey Shore, living and surfing in Hawaiʻi for many years, and now sitting beside our backyard pond, water is where I return to myself. It is where I meditate, practice yoga, and paint. Where I hike along White Clay Creek and watch life shift above and below the surface. Water taught me early what I now understand as the essential condition of being: everything is constantly in flux.
This is also how I understand the body. Experience doesn't pass through us cleanly — it settles, accumulates, resurfaces. Memory is physical: what can be held, altered, or released. Materials carry their own histories, and I work with them in ways that allow both structure and unpredictability to exist at once. I am drawn to moments of change, rupture, and renewal — where what was fixed breaks open and what is new begins.
What emerges is not a fixed narrative but a space for reflection, where the personal becomes shared. The body is my landscape, marked by time, experience, and everything it has carried.
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.
1994
University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI
MFA
1991
Study Abroad, Washington University, Santa Reparata Graphic Art Center, Florence, Italy
1981
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
BFA
2017
Artist-in-Residence, New Castle County Correctional Center. Worked with residents, staff and community to create 16’ mural in facility
2016, 2013, 2010
Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant
2015
Commission, Created painting for the Wilmington Flower Market, Wilmington, DE
2010
Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Project Stream Grant
2006
Illustrated, co-created and published award winning children’s book, Butterfly Kisses and Wishes on Wings: when someone you love has cancer... a hopeful, helpful book for kids
2008
Best Practices Award for residency with David K. Brearley High School, Kenilworth, NJ
2003
Best Practices Award for residency with H.W. Mountz School, Spring Lake, NJ
NJ State Governor’s Leader in Arts Education Award
2006-2007
Adjunct Professor, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ
2003-2004
Adjunct Professor, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ
1993-1994
Adjunct Professor, Chaminade University, Honolulu, HI
2017-2022
Executive Director, Delaware Institute for the Arts in Education (DiAE), Wilmington, DE
2016-2017
Interim Executive Director, Delaware Institute for the Arts in Education (DiAE), Wilmington, DE
2014
Instructor, Center for the Creative Arts, Yorklyn, DE
2013-2023
Teaching Artist, Delaware Institute for the Arts in Education, Wilmington, DE
Juror, Regional Annual Arts Exhibition, Center for the Creative Arts, Yorklyn, DE
2012-2017
Guide, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE
2011-2015
Instructor, Delaware College of Art & Design, Wilmington, DE
2009-2010
Teaching Artist for Contemporary Connections Program, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE
2009
Keynote Speaker "Cancer thru an Artist’s Eye," Riddle Memorial Hospital, Media, PA
2006, 2008
Panelist, New Jersey State Council on the Arts for Artist in Education and Arts and Humanities Grants
2006, 2005, 1999
Visiting Artist: Printmaking, paper making, book arts, drawing, La Pietra, Hawaii School for Girls, Honolulu, HI
2005, 2004
Co-Curator, Art of Survival, Herspace, Long Branch, NJ
2001-Present
Teaching Artist, Young Audiences of NJ and Eastern PA
2004
Teaching Artist with Community Connections, A partnership between Monmouth County Arts Council and Young Audiences of NJ, Mural project
1993-2003
Adjunct Professor, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ
1996-1997
Administrator, Brodsky Center (formerly Rutgers Center for Innovative Print & Paper)
1984-1995
Manager, Pegge Hopper Gallery, Honolulu, HI
2026
A Glimpse Elsewhere, The National Apartments, Philadelphia, PA
2022
Unmasked: Portraits from the Zoom Room, Nilson Gallery, Monmouth Museum, NJ
2021
Unmasked: Portraits from the Zoom Room, The Mill Space, DE
Staying Together (with Carol Saft), miniMAC, PA
Beyond & Always, Cosmopolitan Club, Philadelphia, PA
2020
Nanci Hersh, Before and Always, Cosmopolitan Club, Philadelphia, PA
2018
Nanci Hersh at The Mill, The Mill Space, Wilmington, DE
2015
Up for Air, Blue Streak Gallery, Wilmington, DE
2014
Nanci Hersh, Mala Galleria, Kennett Square, PA
Catch & Release, Project Space Gallery, Wilmington, DE
2013
Catching Up, two person exhibition, Transformations Gallery, Metuchen, NJ
2011
Walks thru Life: Shoe Portraits, Paper Market, Kennett Square, PA
2010
Slowing Down to Catch Up, Fashion Center 38th St. Window, New York, NY
2007
Nanci Hersh: The Making of a Book, Middletown Township Public Library, Middletown, NJ
2005
Life is but a Dream, Gallery on Grant, Deal, NJ
1995
Ranch Camp Series, The Pegge Hopper Gallery, Honolulu, HI
1989
Streetwise, Gallery at Hawaii Loa College, Kaneohe, HI
2025
Scrutiny Mutiny, The Hook Experiment, PA
Unveiled Threads, ArtWRKD, PA
3 [three], Nails in the Wall Gallery, NJ
2023
Taking a Line for a Walk, InLiquid, Philadelphia, PA
Chapel of Tears, Chris White Gallery, DE
The Many Faces of Peto, John F. Peto Studio Museum, NJ
2020
Farthest from the Ordinary, Riverfront 20/20, Delaware Contemporary, DE
Curator: Kristen Hileman
2019
Pure Drawing, Gallery 37, DE
Art & Soul, Delaware Contemporary, DE
2018
Chester County Studio Tour
Evening of the Arts, Historic Kennett Square
Curator: John Baker
Mixed Media, Blue Streak Gallery, Wilmington, DE
Curator: Ellen Bartholomaus
Black & White, Gallery 37, Milford, DE
2014
Navigation Puzzle, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE
Juror: Bridgette Mayer
Mala Galleria, Kennett Square, PA
Beyond the Thread, Revisited, Gibby Center for the Arts, Middletown, DE
2013
Eons Beyond the Rib, Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Paper Work, The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie, Trenton, NJ
Curators: Elise Mannella and Gabriel Romeu
Five in Fiber, Gallery 37, Milford, DE
Curators: Marcia Reed and Deborah Johnson
2012
Small Format Group Exhibition, Alfa Art Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ
Curator: Galina Kourteva
United We Stand: Fall Art Salon, Alfa Art Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ
Curators: Galina Kourteva and Vesslin Kourtev
2011
Willow on State, Kennett Square, PA Curators: Sandy Mayer and Hillary Sculthorpe
The Herspace Collection: Art & the Breast Cancer Journey, Gallery on Grant, Deal, NJ Curators: Dr. Beth Deutch and Toby Shylit Mack
2010
For Love Not Money: A Global Mail Collaboration, Tallinn Print Triennial, Estonia
Curators: Eileen Foti and Eve Kask
2009
transFORMation, Bucks County Community College Artmobile
Curator: Rebecca Kelly
2008
Summer Exhibition, Gallery on Grant, Deal, NJ
Curators: Arlene Mollow and Clare Boren
2007
The Demoiselles Revisited, Francis M.Naumann Fine Art, New York, NY
Curator: Francis M.Naumann
I Will Survive, AtlantiCare Women’s Health & Wellness Center, NJ
Curator: Dorrie Papademetriou, Exhibitions Manager, Noyes Museum, Smithville, NJ
Print and Papermaking Possibilities: Traditional Methods and Recent Innovations, The Visceglia Gallery, Caldwell College, Caldwell, NJ
Curator: Kendall Baker
2006
Home Grown, Arts Guild of Rahway, NJ
Curator: Eileen Foti
Recuerde*Remember: An Altar Show, The Pegge Hopper Gallery, Honolulu, HI
Visual Poetry, Stedman Gallery, Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, Camden, NJ
Two Plus One, Mitchell Sanborn Gallery, Keyport, NJ
Diving Into Digital, Bergen Museum, Paramus, NJ
Curator: Natalia Kolodzei
Breast Cancer: An Artist’s View, Gallery 1978, Springfield, NJ
Curator: Clara Manheim
As She Sees It; 8 Artists, Pierro Gallery of South Orange, Baird Center, NJ
Curator: Susan Napack
2004-2005
Art of Survival, Herspace, West Long Branch, NJ
Loss (and Found), Installation, Count Basie Theatre Window, Red Bank, NJ
Small Impressions, Printmaking Council of NJ
2004 Small Works Invitational, Prince Street Gallery, New York, New York.
Iron Works, Anne Reid Gallery, Princeton Day School, Princeton, NJ. Curated by John Goodyear.
National Printmaking 2003, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ
2002
Working in New Jersey: Prints and Multiples by Fifteen New Jersey Artists, The Chubb Atrium Gallery, Warren, NJ
Curator: Donna Gustafson
46th Annual National Juried Print Exhibition, Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ
2001
New Members Show, City Without Walls, Newark, NJ
Curator: Stephen Sennott, Director
Northeast Prints 2001, Ben Shahn Galleries, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ
Humanity, Printmaking Council of New Jersey, Somerset, NJ
1999
Recent Works: Brown, De La Garza, Hersh, Laredo Community College Teaching Gallery, Laredo, TX
Contemporary Collaborations: The Artist and the Master Printer, Sheehan Gallery, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA Curator: E.Foti
Heart of the Matter, The Pegge Hopper Gallery, Honolulu, HI
Curators: A.K. Blackburn and Karen Hong
Night, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, New South Wales, Australia
Hands Across the Water: Heads Across the Sky Hawaii/ Australia, Leeward Community College Foyer Gallery, Honolulu, HI
1997
Powerful Images, Krasdale Gallery, New York, NY
Curator: S. Balka
Uncommon Threads, Sleeth Gallery, West Virginia Wesleyan College, Buckhannon, WV
Curator: Eileen Foti
