Nancy Hines, one of Lone Star College-CyFair’s adjunct art instructors, is “overwhelmed with excitement” at the thought of her artwork being launched in the Nova Collection lunar time capsule this January.
Dr. Samuel Peralta, whose writing was part of a previous Writers on the Moon project, chose Hines’ oil on canvas piece titled “All These Years” for his Lunar Codex project. Hines’ artwork is one of 23 pieces chosen for his project, which will be the first to include the works of women artists and will be the most expansive, international, diverse collection of contemporary arts and culture launched to the moon in 50 years.
“I absolutely never even contemplated my work going into space … I am incredibly honored to be among the first women to have art in space,” said Hines, whose personal goal was to be shown internationally. “The thought of someone in the rather distant future finding the capsule and seeing what was happening way back when is both surreal and hopeful. I hope they are excited and amazed to have found something like this, and hope they love what they see!”
In other exciting news this year, Hines reached her personal goal with this oil painting’s Honorable Mention and inclusion in the 15th International Art Renewal Center (ARC) Salon Exhibition, which showed this summer at Sotheby's in New York and is now in Barcelona through December.
It was at the ARC Salon Exhibition where Dr. Peralta first saw Hines’ artwork and decided to include it in the lunar time capsule. Moreover, Hines has not only been a regular contributor to LSC-CyFair’s Bosque Gallery faculty art shows as an adjunct instructor since 2015, she even had a solo exhibition “Portraits Within Portraits” on display in January 2019.
“I had one wall filled with the classic instruction examples of my own journey as a student and had the other wall filled with my series of portraits in which my subject (the person I'm painting) first creates a self-portrait in the form of a headdress,” said Hines, who will transition to teaching a Drawing 2 Special Topics course in Portraiture next semester. “They then wear the headdress, and I paint them wearing their own self-portrait - thus the title of the show.”
This artist has found no medium of art that she does not enjoy. More recently she has become almost exclusively a painter with a goal of making pictures she says are true, with a bit of an unexpected, surprising aspect to the work.
“I want my viewers to have an emotional reaction of some sort - this absolutely changes with the intent and subject matter,” she said. “Of course, I want them to linger and ponder as well.”
As an art teacher at LSC-CyFair and Bridgeland High School, she hopes her students have fun while learning about accuracy and specific skills with different media so their toolbox to create with is fuller. She’s most proud when her students leave with more confidence in their ability than when they began her course.
“What I find the absolute most rewarding is when the students sigh or groan when class time is over because they want to stay,” she said.
Registration for the winter mini-mester, which starts Dec. 20, and the spring semester, which starts Jan. 18, is currently under way. For information, go to LoneStar.edu/regcyfair.