A new, creative way to see Shenandoah

Residency program allows artists to create portrayals of national park’s landscape

“It’s like so much in life — you have to be adaptable to your environment and be a willing participant in it, because you can’t really control it.”

July 2019 Artist in Residence Lisa Lebofsky

When contemporary landscape painter Susan Danko was preparing for her August “Artist in Residence” stint at Shenandoah National Park, she came up with a plan for how she’d create art there.

The Ohio native — one of five artists who will get stipends and lodging to create art in the park this year — dug deep into a giant database filled with all things Shenandoah. She was struck by the struggles the park is having with invasive species and endangered plants.

“I thought it would be nice to see things rare and beautiful, fragile and important, so I decided before I got to Shenandoah to include those plants in some of the art I create,” said Danko, a full-time artist from Cleveland.

But when she got to the park, Danko said she was “blown away by the sunsets, the mountains in the distance and so much more. It’s good to start with a focus, but I also allowed myself to make art from things discovered along the way each day in this very special place.”

She wasn’t alone in changing her plan on the fly. Other artists in residence in Shenandoah did the same during their three-week stints in the program supported by the Shenandoah National Park Trust.

July 2019 Artist in Residence Lisa Lebofsky of New York City, described by the park as a “nomadic plein air painter,” said she arrived seeking out invasive species as a focus, as well.

“But as a plein air painter, I have to be completely open to the unexpected as I’m out in nature painting,” she said. “I can get rained on, and I actually like that, as the falling rain can give nature a hand in my work. It’s like so much in life — you have to be adaptable to your environment and be a willing participant in it, because you can’t really control it.”

I visited the park a few weeks back to talk with Danko and Jessica Kusky, a Shenandoah staffer who oversees the artist residency program. Kusky said there are two main reasons for the programs at Shenandoah and other national parks.

“For one, it carries on the tradition of art in the park, something that was critical to the establishment of national parks,” she said. “Look at some of the big Western landscapes, which were photographed and painted long before they became national parks. It was in part because those photographs were making their way back East that people actually became interested in protecting these wild places.”

Secondly, she noted, the artists provide people with new ways to connect with the parks.

“And that applies both to those who’ve never set foot in the park and those who’ve been coming here their whole lives,” said Kusky. “An artist’s view can provide both with a different perspective, a new way to see and experience Shenandoah.”

Danko said she’s always loved beautiful and haunting images, but more recently has been working to make statements with her art about how nature and the creatures in it are changing along with the environment. While staying in a park-provided cabin at the Skyland resort at Shenandoah, she tried to strike a balance between painting and getting out to experience the beauty of the park.

She sketched, photographed and made notes about images that struck her, and took pains to include sensitive and rare plants such as mountain sandwort, Appalachian club moss and threetoothed cinquefoil into some of the acrylic paintings she created.

While the artists in residence at Shenandoah are required to share their art through programs for visitors, that’s been difficult to do in a year with a pandemic. Danko did a small, private program for Shenandoah Trust, and other artists this year have done Facebook live programs or shared work online.

Jennifer Manzella, a printmaker who did her artistic residency in July, said she was keen to find images that spoke to the history of displacement at the park, which transformed landscapes there from farms and dwellings back to wilderness.

“I would hike 5 to 10 miles a day looking for signs of that,” she said. “The one that really sticks with me is a spot I found off the Pocosin Trail, with ruins of a cemetery buried in brambles along with an old Model T, with the fenders and axle visible. I saw that and said, ‘Yes, that will be a print.’ ”