Portrait of Artist and Volunteer Pamela Cohen
Pamela Cohen is a valued and trusted friend of the Kiawah Conservancy
whose knowledge, words and images on behalf of the natural world are greatly
appreciated. Pamela, a Kiawah Conservancy Trustee, has volunteered her
work, time and talents in a variety of our publications and programs.
Close your eyes and picture a young girl, age seven or so, darting through
the woods with her dark brown hair flying and her big brown eyes searching for
butterflies or spiders or tree frogs. Or perhaps she is whiling away a long, summer afternoon,
pushing buttons and looking through the lens of her father’s big box film camera or losing herself
for hours as her fingers fly over the keys of a piano. Maybe she is helping her Italian grandfather
gather rainwater from a catch basin to sprinkle on a beautiful perennial garden.
Now picture that same little girl decades later. She is still traipsing through the woods
or the wetlands or the sand dunes, still intent on finding something special to capture with a
camera, but this time it is an awe-inspiring camera with a lens as long as her arm. She still loses
herself for long parts of any given day bowed over her piano. And she still delights in tending
her garden. If the picture in your mind is especially vivid, perhaps it is because you have already
met Pamela Cohen—artist, biologist, lecturer, teacher, mother, guide, award winner and an
extraordinarily generous person.
Pam’s roots are in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, but they extend much
farther back to Italy, where both of her grandfathers were born. Her interest in photography
was ignited when she experimented with that big box camera of her father’s, which inspired her
to take pictures of her own children. Soon she was snapping pictures of other people’s children,
too—and then, literally, everything under the sun. She returns to eastern Ohio each summer to
tend her beautiful garden, but her heart and passion have inspired her to make her true home on
Kiawah Island. Observing, preserving, protecting and documenting its wildlife and its beauty
have become a ruling passion in her life.
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