The Mango Vol 1 Issue 6

Kismet Creations Inspirational wildlife artist targets a tropical market

Text by Nancy S. Moseley Photos courtesy of Nancy Blauers

Not every artist gets the request to make her subjects look drunk ... and thinks it might possibly be a good thing. “They liked me because they knew I could draw macaws. But then they asked: ‘Can you have them holding amargarita glass?’ and ‘Can youmake them look a little drunk?’ and I said ‘You betcha!’” Nancy Blauers laughs. “They” being Margaritaville Merchandising, the company behind the utopian artistry encircling Jimmy Buffett. Blauers grew up on the Connecticut shore, sailing the Long Island Sound and dreaming of a future of maritime pursuits. She remembers first hearing “Margaritaville” when she was lounging on a beach when she was 10 or 11 years old. At 13, she first visited Florida and felt an immediate visceral connection. “I had always dreamed of the tropics. It was that amazing place to be where everything would be

peaceful, and everything would be beautiful. That was my fantasy place,” Blauers comments. In 1986 she graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration, though not your presumed two- dimensional type. Blauers had decided to explore sculpture as a form of illustration in an attempt to stand out above the rest. She taught herself how to intricately carve in wood because it was the cheapest medium for a pocket-conscious college student. “For my parents, it was the stuff of nightmares,” she relates. “They’d hear power tools going at all hours, and I’d come up from the basement covered in sawdust.” Her favorite piece, in an impressively amassed portfolio, is still a wood carving called “Egyptian Fruit Bats” that she did in college. “It launched me on the

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2021