O N A WARM SPRING MORNING AT NIGHT HERON PARK, THE TABLES UNDER THE PAVILION WERE ALIVE WITH BRUSHES, PENCILS, AND WATERCOLOR BLOCKS.
Children bent over sheets of paper, tracing the ridged outlines of oyster shells and filling them with soft washes of color. Beside them, parents leaned in to help hold palettes or study the shells more closely. Laughter mingled with the rustle of paper. Outside the pavilion, the park buzzed with bird calls and the scent of salt on the breeze.
This Earth Day workshop was part of the Kiawah Conservancy’ s Junior Explorers program, designed to foster curiosity and care for the natural world among the Sea Island’ s youngest residents and visitors. The day’ s art lesson featured what might have seemed an unlikely muse, the oyster, but which proved perfectly suited to a lesson combining art and ecology.
Before the first pencil lines were drawn, the Junior Explorers gathered around Sean Cannon, the Conservancy’ s Restoration and Enhancement Specialist. Sean explained the concept of oysters as“ ecosystem engineers,” describing that by their very nature, oysters create habitat and nourish other life. The young artists also learned the role oysters play as natural water filters, preventers of shoreline erosion, and all-around mighty contributors to the health of the Sea Island’ s waterways.
Guiding the workshop was prolific watercolor artist and longtime Kiawah vacationer Abby Nurre. Abby has been coming to Kiawah since childhood and has spent the last decade blending her twin passions for painting and ecology. With a master of arts in biology and a career in watercolor illustration, she brings both scientific insight and artistic sensibility to her work.
For Abby, oysters were the ideal subject: relevant to the restoration projects the Conservancy had underway, organic shapes that were fairly easy to draw— important since the Junior Explorers ranged from ages seven to fourteen, and easily found.
Abby outlined a simple, seven-step process. First, examine the shells. Notice their edges and layers. Then, sketch outlines with watercolor
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