NONA HERSHEY's work is included in numerous public collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Library of Congress, DC; Fogg Museum; Yale University Art Gallery; Minnesota Museum of Art; Crakow National Museum; and the Calcografia Nazionale, Rome. She has participated in over 150 Print Biennials and Group Exhibitions internationally. Numerous solo exhibitions include those at Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY; Dolan/Maxwell Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Galleria Il Ponte, Rome, Italy, Miller Block Gallery and Soprafina Gallery, Boston. She has had residency grants at the Asillah Forum Foundation, Morocco; the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ireland; the MacDowell Colony, NH, the Ucross Foundation, WY, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The Vermont Studio Center. She taught at Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy for 12 years and at Temple University's Tokyo program for one year. Since September 1993, Ms. Hershey has been Professor and Coordinator of the Printmaking Department at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. She was a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Grant in 2004 and a Somerville Arts Council Grant in 2008.

As an avid follower of current news, the discrepancy between what is presented as truth and what is actually happening to our environment-and to humanity- plays an active role in Nona Hershey's thinking about her subject: the sky. Religion, science, and art have persistently attempted to determine the specific origin and character of forces larger than our selves. Throughout history clouds have represented uncertainty, the wrath of gods, the beneficent containers of rain, the boundary between this world and the mystery beyond. Clouds have caused- and witnessed- instability and power within and beyond their control. As the sky shifts, so does our imagination, our hope- or our lack of it.

Hershey's drawing tools are cotton wads imbued with differing amounts of graphite powder, which she rubs on to paper slowly. The softness and translucency of the medium lends itself well to subtle tonal shifts. Touch is paramount. This gradual, incremental process is an ongoing dialogue as tones become clouds, animated by the character of their edges. The results suggest air, light and movement.

Diagrammatic lines are at times embedded behind the clouds to suggest wind patterns. Sometimes marks sit on the surface of the drawings and refer to weather mapping and our need to name and measure. They also speak to the dichotomous aspect of illusion: the mapping reiterates the static "veracity" of the picture plane yet enhances the impression of ever-shifting clouds behind the pictorial frame. In her most recent work, surface markings represent what Hershey imagines as the invisible electronic pollution that surrounds us: paroxysms of technological clutter and noise we emit into our environment.