Emily Jensen, a ceramics teacher at Waynesburg University, shows off a wall filled with calendars from the collection of Greene County artist Colleen Nelson.
For 44 years, Colleen Nelson has been documenting life in Greene County through art and writing, admittedly with a little help from her friends.
Nelson’s exhibit, “Greene County, Through the Artist’s Eyes,” will be on display in the Waynesburg University Benedum Gallery from Feb. 5 through March 1. An opening reception is scheduled for 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Monday.
“The show is a retrospective of this 44-year-old project that I have been working on, the Greene County calendar,” Nelson said. “It basically documented living in Greene County and what I’ve seen, what I’ve done, people I’ve met, stuff I felt was artistic. People are going to see time from 1979 to 2024.”
The first of the calendars was published in 1979, featuring local scenery and residents. Judith Fitch opened a shop in Rogersville where she wanted to sell a product that would show off Greene County. She reached out to a couple of artistically inclined residents, Nelson and Wendy Saul. The two came up with the idea of a calendar.
“We thought it would be nice to have a Christmas present to give people to show them why we like living here,” Nelson said. “They’re so useful and it’s something everybody wants. We felt we could put our art on it and send it to all of our friends, maybe sell some. It came out really nice. It was a really fun experience.”
Each year, a calendar representing some of the essence of Greene County is produced and available in a number of stores. People have come to expect it.
“We’re to the point now where you couldn’t imagine having anything else on the wall of your kitchen except for this calendar,” Nelson said with a chuckle.
In fact, calendars have found their way to past presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and to countries such as England and Russia.
Saul collaborates with Nelson, but the former teacher in the West Greene School District lives in Arizona for six months out of the year. Saul returns home in the summer months to tend to her farm in New Freeport.
The calendars were hand-screened until 1990, when offset printing was used. Eventually, to keep up with the times, the calendars were computer-generated.
“You can see the textural difference on the original prints that are hanging in the show,” Nelson said.
To quote a song made popular by both the Beatles and Joe Cocker, Nelson compiled her artwork and writings with a little help from her friends.
“Everything I do is kind of a collaborative effort,” Nelson said. “The stuff that’s in my calendars are either my friends or people who become my friends. Everybody kind of helps.”
Nelson, of Holbrook, has had previous exhibits, but this marks the first retrospective of 44 years of Greene County art to be displayed.
A freelance writer for local publications including the Observer-Reporter and Herald-Standard, Nelson will be displaying some of her written work as well. Among them are stories about saving trees of historical importance in the county, which she made into a poster.
“My art and my stories seem to go together,” she said. “I’ll go and get a wonderful story, I get some awesome shots and I decide one of them will look great in the calendar. The theme of this is how the art and the writing educates the community and shows you the finer things we have here.”
She’s also soliciting photos from calendar owners for the show and recently received one from Greene County native David Rohanna in Mongolia.
Coming up with different photos for each year’s calendar can pose challenges.
“We wondered what we would do if we ran out of covered bridges to shoot,” Nelson recalled. “One year we decided what if we climb halfway up the hill and see if we could get the roof in (of a bridge). It became an awesome picture. When you put some kind of limitation on yourself, it makes you grow, you push a little harder.”
