Smith Valley Artist
Donna Nelson                         

“I make art
to show my soul
I am listening.”           
— Pat Wiederspan Jones                              

Contact information: 
775 -781-8352 or [email protected]
           

Donna spent most of her youth and middle adult years on cattle, sheep and alfalfa ranches near Bishop, California, but now makes her home in Wellington, Nevada where she writes and creates art.  In 2009 she sold her two remaining horses, and decided to direct her energies toward writing and journal making, but instead serendipitously did an art project with a friend. In 2017, she co-authored the book Desert Born, finding magic in the ordinary, with Pamella Nesbit, the culmination of a four year art project.  The mosaics, metal sculptures and tin art pieces she designs are created mostly from potsherds and aged tin found on desert land near her home.  “I created from the history of people on the land and from what my environment yielded.” She is passionate about all styles of art, believes art is everywhere, and that making art is a visual narrative, one expression of who she is, mostly intuitive and experimental, and a way to publicly share with other human beings.  Currently she is working on a book of fifty poems in the Japanese genre of haiku, which she hopes to pair with some of her monotype prints. She is inspired as much by other people’s art and stories as she is her own, and believes inspiration can come from anywhere anytime, and that the pursuit of art is a learning process and usually reflects the inner and outer personality and philosophy of each individual.  She is a big believer in Henry Ward Beecher’s famous quote: ‘Every artist dips her brush into her own soul, and paints her own truth into her pictures.”