Chapter or Circle Name: New England Society of Botanical Artists
Contact Person: Jackie Rockel, Membership
Membership: (Numbers of members, membership gains or losses)
• Current membership: 248
• This is a net gain of 6 members from the end of 2024
• 65 % of our members are from the six New England states
• 35 % live throughout the rest of the country and the world
Membership Meetings:
NESBA held full membership events on Zoom - A full Board and Membership meeting was held on October 24, 2024. Board member changes were announced in the meeting and subsequently in a blog post available to all. The agenda was focused on NESBA operations: membership, finances, programming and on other initiatives undertaken by members of the Board. The business meeting was followed by an interactive Q & A discussion, and a preview of events scheduled for late 2024 and early 2025. The meeting was recorded and the video posted on the member section of the NESBA website.
The quarterly Board meetings are also held on Zoom and are open to all members. Board meeting minutes are posted in the member section of the NESBA website.
Communication (how do you communicate with your members):
NESBA communicates with members regularly using two vehicles. The first is through our 10x/year newsletter which includes a calendar of upcoming events, links to more information about these events, a column called Member News and information for finding educational resources through ASBA. Members are also notified of important NESBA deadlines or event reminders via ad hoc emails. Links to ASBA events and exhibiting opportunities are included in every newsletter and statistics show that these links are always accessed by our members. Our communication is accomplished using Constant Contact.
Secondly, the NESBA website, contains a robust event calendar, recorded Beyond the Brush sessions, our popular blog posts, registration pages for workshops and exhibitions, and organizational information such as Bylaws and Board minutes.
Board of Directors:
Sarah Roche - Founding Director
Lynn Shepherd - Treasurer
Jackie Rockel - Membership
Elizabeth Rush - Member at Large
Suzanne Thorin - Member at Large, served until April
Gail Pearlstein - Member at Large
Carole Magner – Secretary, voted in April, 2025
Catherine Bryant – Member at Large, voted in April, 2025
Mary Shapiro – Member at Large, voted in July, 2025
Projects, Programs and Events:
Beyond the Brush:
NESBA’s most highly rated and requested program offering, Beyond the Brush, is a series of one-hour sessions featuring an artist, technique, or other topics of interest to our membership. In the past year, we have offered four artist sessions and an additional session with information about the exhibit process at the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill. We have chosen to feature NESBA members whenever possible. Artist presenters as follows:
• Alice Rosa, My Journey with the SBA
• Carol Woodin, A Closer Look at Techniques for Vellum
• Mary Crabtree, RHS from Concept to Exhibition: Milkweed
• Rebecca Davies, SBA Fellow: techniques in Watercolor, Graphite, and Gouache
[Insert shot of Carol Wooden presentation]
161 NESBA members attended the Zoom Beyond the Brush sessions and another 172 viewed the videos for a total of 333 member views. Two Beyond the Brush sessions are already scheduled for fall 2025 and more sessions are being planned.
Workshops:
An in-person workshop was held with Carol Woodin in November 2024. Carol shared her experience working with watercolor on vellum. Carol also took the class for a private guided tour of the Rory McEwan exhibit.
A virtual workshop is scheduled for this fall with Margaret Best.
Retreat:
NESBA had its second annual weekend retreat in Harwich, MA, at 204 Sisson. Ellen Duarte led members in color matching exercises and experimenting in pattern and border layout. Betsy Rogers-Knox gave a workshop entitled ‘Watercolor Beach Composite’ focusing on watercolor textural techniques. Diane Piktialis was honored for her tremendous contribution to NESBA. Diane was on the Board from 2016 to 2024 serving several terms as president. A link to the full write-up can be found in the blog section.
The Third Annual Retreat is already scheduled for March 2026.
[Photo of Retreat]
Exhibitions:
Spring Awakenings was held in conjunction with the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, MA. The exhibit ran from April – June 2025. Thirty-four (34) NESBA members exhibited 34 botanical art works depicting Spring flowers. Media used in the works included copper etching, gouache, silver point, colored pencil, and watercolor paintings. The Exhibit returned to the newly refurbished Milton Gallery where 9 paintings were sold.
[Photo of Spring Awakenings]
World of Flowers is the upcoming show to be held in September at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for their second annual fall Flower Show.
These exhibits help NESBA fulfill its mission to promote public appreciation of the art and science of botanical art and illustration and educate individuals and organizations. Tower Hill created a mounted text with each painting describing the plant and its place in the New England environment. Mass Horticultural Society will create labeling for the art showing the world origin of plant species that are depicted to complete the World of Flowers theme.
Online exhibitions:
We did not present any virtual shows this year.
Tour of Rory McEwan Exhibit – Dec 11th:
NESBA members were privileged to have a private tour of the Rory McEwen exhibit at the Davis Museum Wellesley College. The tour was led by Ruth Stiff, Curator of International Exhibits Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew UK, who put the exhibit together.
Holiday Festive Foods -Potluck Dec 14th:
This well attended event hosted by Sarah Roche was the group holiday celebration with delicious food.
[Photo of Holiday Party]
Massachusetts Horticultural Society - Festival of Trees:
Members submitted original cards for ornaments and donated art supplies for ‘presents’ under the tree. The tree was donated by a member and a team of members did a beautiful job of decorating the tree. Donations were sufficient to allow NESBA to participate again in 2025.
Blog Posts:
We have a blog team that coordinates and edits submissions to our blog. Below are links to the botanical art specific blogs posted this year.
• Paper Artist, Ann Wood, interview by Elizabeth Rush
• A Weekend of Creativity on Cape Cod by Joan Strauss
• Fibonacci and the Golden Ratio as Applied to Botanical Artwork by Jan Boyd
Board Business:
Capacity
The Board continually considers how much programming we can support as a volunteer Board as well as how to accomplish the work and also maintain the quality of what we offer our members.
This year we added three new members to the Board. This is balanced against the loss of one Board member who was serving until she could be replaced, and loss of an additional member who will be completing her term in October, but will stay on as a volunteer.
Going into our new programming year in September 2025, we will have eight Board members and a number of volunteers in a variety of roles supporting exhibits, workshops, and writing blogs. Given the technical nature of our programming we were happy to add two dedicated volunteers to support technical operations (Zoom and the website). We now have a core group of 5 individuals supporting technical operations: two current Board members, two former Board members, and one volunteer.
Focusing on the future
Volunteer organizations such as ours are always challenged with member participation. We have a membership base highly committed to NESBA and have a number of roles that are planned, specific, time-limited, and fun which we hope will be attractive to members.
On the technical side, we hope to attract two-three additional volunteers this year to train in specific roles on Zoom or the website and to bring back digital exhibitions. Over the past year we have spent time documenting processes, roles and responsibilities so new volunteers can get oriented quickly and feel supported.
On the programming side, there is quite a bit of interest in exhibitions or projects with themes such as invasive plants, non-native plants, which we will be exploring this year. We also rely on a core team of volunteers for transportation of artwork to and from exhibitions. We will be speaking with members about how they can support NESBA in the upcoming Annual Meeting and plan a meet and greet with the technical team. We plan to add a page to our website where volunteer roles are specified, and members can check-off areas of interest.