Natural Observation: The Art of Seeing
Youth Workshops | Available
Get ready to take your art practice outside the classroom and into the world. In this workshop, we’ll head outdoors to explore, observe, and sketch the natural details that usually go unnoticed: textures, shapes, colors, and all the tiny bits of “everyday magic” that make up the environment around us. After gathering these outdoor studies, we’ll come back to the studio and use them as inspiration to create an original artwork that mixes imagination with observation. You’ll combine different natural elements in unexpected ways, transforming what you see into something completely your own. This workshop is all about sharpening how you see: training your eye, boosting your visual awareness, and strengthening skills you can use in any medium, whether you’re into drawing, painting, photography, or mixed media. My goal is to help you slow down, pay attention, and connect more deeply with the world around you. By the end, you will walk away not just with a finished piece, but with a new mindset about observation, creativity, and what “representational art” can be.
Jewel Hovland
Jewel Hovland (b.1999) is a multidisciplinary artist with focus in ephemeral sculpture, drawing, painting, and assemblage. She is an alumni of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts high school program and has recently earned her BFA from Florida State University.
Her focus on the aesthetic motifs of natural materials and their cohesion is informed by the science of observation as a means of experimentation. Often embodied by circle motifs and repetition, Hovland utilizes organic materials and synthetic detritus to encapsulate how vision informs interaction with the environment. Through a conversation between sight and the inner mind, her work interrelates human consciousness with parallel systems in nature.
Hovland has exhibited her work in galleries and museums across the state of Florida, most notably the Baker Museum, Naples (2016); The Von Liebig Art Center (2017); the Marco Island Center for the Arts (2017); SOHO Gallery, Tallahassee (2020); and solo-exhibitions at 621 Gallery (2022) and the Phyllis Straus Gallery, Tallahassee (2021). She is a double recipient of the Ann Kird Award.