Adorning the Gallery
by Jill Duff-Hoppes
Nina Chatham has been irresistibly drawn to art museums and galleries since childhood and has long dreamed of having a gallery of her own. For now, she has found the next best thing – as the gallerist for a stylish, modern venue that celebrates art and champions the environment.
The 60-year-old Maitland resident runs Gallery CERO, a fine art showroom tucked away at Wekiva Island – an environmentally friendly recreation attraction in Longwood on the banks of the Wekiva River. Nina was tapped for the gallerist job by her friends Bill and Mary Sue Weinaug, who own Wekiva Island and the gallery space, the latter of which opened in July.
“Going to galleries was always super fun for me as a kid,” says Nina, a retired psychologist and an artist, herself. “I love being surrounded by art. I just got really lucky with this.”
As a gallerist, Nina is tasked with curating the artwork for display, working with artists, promoting shows, and hanging exhibits. At Gallery CERO, the shows shine a creative spotlight on nature through the beauty of art.
Nina enjoys creating a cohesive show out of what can seem like artistic chaos, especially when multiple artists with diverse styles are featured in one exhibit. A key component is knowing how to arrange the work so the exhibit is balanced and visually appealing to gallery visitors and potential art buyers.
“Hanging the shows is actually always a puzzle – it’s kind of an interesting challenge, a little bit like [the video game] Tetris,” Nina says with a laugh. “It’s fun to create order from all of it.”Nina, who grew up in Miami, comes from an art-oriented family. She has treasured memories of visiting museums in Boston whenever she and her mom went to see family there. And Nina’s older brother, Mark Issenberg, is a master potter with a mountaintop studio in Georgia. However, Mark also worked as a firefighter to pay the bills, a reality that gave Nina pause when choosing her college major and career path.
So, instead of art, Nina went another route that seemed more practical at the time. She earned an undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Florida and a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology at Springfield College in Massachusetts. Nina then worked as a research psychologist for nearly 20 years, primarily in the defense industry.
Even so, art remained part of Nina’s world and came back to the forefront more than a decade ago during a crossroads in her life. When she was newly divorced and an empty nester, she took a collage class and began doing more artwork on her own.
“Creating art really made me happy,” says Nina, a mixed-media artist who specializes in collage. “I was quite bereft, but I would come out with this joyful artwork, which was interesting. The process of making art was the thing that brought me joy, and I was so engaged.”
A longtime member of Congregation of Reform Judaism, Nina has taught collage classes there and at her home. She has also exhibited her work at festivals in Lake Mary, Maitland, and Winter Park but is more comfortable trumpeting the artwork of others – a skill that serves her well as a gallerist.
For a couple of years, Nina also chaired the annual Wekiva Paint Out, a popular plein air painting event hosted by Wekiva Island. The invitational, weeklong event draws top-tier artists from Central Florida and around the country. This year’s event ends on March 5 with proceeds benefiting the nonprofit organizations Keep Seminole Beautiful and Wekiva Wilderness Trust.
Nina notes that Gallery CERO (which stands for Conservation, Efficiency, Renewables, and Offsets) isn’t just a place to showcase pretty art. Rather, the gallery is an extension of Wekiva Island’s overall mission of environmental sustainability. She and the Weinaugs hope the beautiful art on the walls will serve as one more way to encourage people to preserve and protect our natural resources.
Upcoming exhibits at Gallery CERO will feature artwork curated from this year’s Wekiva Paint Out and themed shows focusing on birds and florals. For the bird-themed exhibit, part of the proceeds will benefit the nonprofit Audubon Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland.
“The purpose of the gallery is to bring people closer to nature and have them connect to it,” Nina says. “Ultimately, the whole point really is to educate people about saving the environment.”