Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Wil & Maura Bosbyshell

 

Dear Friends and Family:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Wil & Maura Bosbyshell.

Here are highlights of 2025. We travelled to France where Maura had an artist residency in Provence. She developed a French inspired wallpaper and fabric series at Mason de Beaumont. We also visited Nice, Marseilles, Orange and St. Raphael.

We attended a double Bosbyshell baby shower in Fort Worth Texas, pictured: Ron, Yolanda, Andee, Ben Rule, Zach, Chelsea and baby Finley. Not pictured is Sophie who arrived after the event.

Fort Worth is full of art as well as Bosbyshells! We are total museum nerds and visited four amazing art museums and the John Wayne Musuem. My sister Frances and her husband Al joined us on this trip.

It was a joy to visit with newlyweds Ember and Allen Bosbyshell in Athens, Atlanta, and Tybee Island Georgia.

Wil’s Climate Conversation Tree drawings traveled to St. Bonaventure College in New York. The solo exhibition was wonderful, especially due to the help of my good friends Robin and Ray Valeri!  

May joy, family, and friends fill your heart this Christmas!

Your Friends, Wil and Maura 

 

Maura in Nice Old Town

Maura and Wil in Marseille

Wil and Maura at Atlantic Beach

Ember and Allen Bosbyshell celebrate their 1^st wedding anniversary

Maura’s wallpaper pattern: Arch Toile inspired by the 

roman ruins in Nice France

One of Wil’s Climate Conversation drawings

Dual Open Studios

Wil & Maura Bosbyshell

Hart-Witzen Gallery & Studios, 2422 N Tryon St, Charlotte, NC 28206

Saturday, October 25, 6 to 9 PM

Maura and Wil to introduce their French inspired art!


NODA AREA..

FREE PARKING!!.. Park behind the gallery, on the street or across from Bojangles.

Wil to have a box of free art!! It won’t last long.
Come in the afternoon for a less busy studio…


It’s our studio so we will have multiple series on display, plus our process work and inspiration.


Wil’s drawing and painting series: Climate Conversation Trees, Hiking, Midnight Suns, and Hike France!  

 

Maura’s textile series of wallpaper and fabric: French Inspired and Seaside.

Patio Shadow, St. Raphael, watercolor, 8 x 10, $190 (SOLD)

Beaumont Door 1, color pencil, 7 x 5, $90

Lucky French door, color pencil, 5 x 7, $90

French forest, Graphite, 5 x 7, $90

Les Baux Peak,  color pencil, 5 x 7, $90

Climate Conversation Tree 20, Graphite, $8,000

Delphine, wallpaper

Fishes, wallpaper

Flumes, wallpaper

Aqua Door, St. Raphael,  5 x 7, watercolor, $190 (SOLD)

Abby Door, Watercolor, 8 x 10, $490

Hike Sketch, watercolor, 5 x 7, $90

Three Leaves, wallpaper

Pots Geo, Fabic

Scollops in Shell, wallpaper & fabric

Conches, fabris & wallpaper

Midnight Sun XX, Silk Sceen, $340 (SOLD)

Swallows, wallpaper & fabric

Hike Sketch, Silk Screen, $340

Beaumont de Pertuis I, Graphite, $190

Beaumont de Pertuis II,  color pencil, $190

Les Baux Ville, Graphite, $190

City on the Hill, Color Pencil, $190 (SOLD)

Abby Door and Window,  watercolor, $590 (SOLD)

Matisse Ruin, Graphite, 5 x 7, $90

Sold, Mont. St. Michel Dusk, watercolor, 5 x 7, $190 (SOLD)

Mont. St. Michel Sunset, watercolor,  5 x 7, $190

As the Climate Warms, the trees are talking. One Charlotte artist is listening

As the Climate Warms, the trees are talking. One Charlotte artist is listening 

WFAE | By Zachary Turner 

 Published March 12, 2025 at 2:53 PM EDT

Zachary Turner / WFAE

Charlotte artist Wil Bosbyshell stands in front of the tulip poplar he drew.

Wil Bosbyshell leaned against a cherry tree in his backyard. One hand held a sheet of paper in place while the other shaded. He is a professional artist who has been working in Charlotte for 30 years, capturing the images he sees on his hikes.

But, more recently, he’s gotten really into trees.

“So, I’m just rubbing the pencil sideways with a long point,” Bosbyshell said. The pencil scratched along the paper. “And I’m just gradually trying to rub it on the paper without poking the tree through the paper … which happens quite easily.”

 

Zachary Turner / WFAE



This drawing of a tree by Charlotte artist Wil Bosbyshell stands six feet tall.

A ghostly image appeared, almost like an ultrasound. He started drawing trees because of their complexity; the impressions often revealed features Bosbyshell didn’t see before. In one drawing, cross-hatched cuts marked the tree. They looked like scratches, and Bosbyshell assumed they were until an entomologist saw his drawing.

“He said this is bugs eating — a certain type of beetle eating into the bark where there’s a little break,” he said.

The process always begins outside with the rhythmic rubbing, then he takes the shading inside to refine. It might take a long afternoon or several months to complete. Inside his home, he showed off a drawing that stood taller than the average person.

“This one was … quite a challenge to rub on the tree because trees have branches that come out this way, and I didn’t want to poke a hole in the paper,” Bosbyshell said.



Drawing for the climate

Bark beetles and cattywampus limbs aren’t the only features Bosbyshell noticed during his drawing. Trees also record their interactions with humans. He pointed to a piece that his wife, Maura, had turned into a pillow.

“So, the tree is alive, and then, all of a sudden, it starts to die, and the bark gets eaten off by that acid rain up in the Smokey Mountains,” Bosbyshell said.

The trunk retained its bark, but the limbs had started to shed and die off. He said he wanted his trees to draw attention to climate change, and while climate change may not cause acid rain, they are related. Refining oil and burning fossil fuels like coal or natural gas releases sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Acid rain occurs when those gases mix with water in the

atmosphere.

 

 Zachary Turner / WFAE


Trees are also part of the solution. These silent sentinels absorb carbon dioxide and trap it. When they fall and decompose, that carbon returns to the earth, but the system only works when those trees are allowed to decompose naturally.

Millions of trees fell in western North Carolina during Helene, making catastrophic wildfires more likely. The cycle feeds into itself: Bad floods topple trees that burn before they can decompose. That releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leading to worse floods that topple more trees.

“I really am moved by trying to get people to take the climate a little bit more seriously,” Bosbyshell said. “I was hoping this would be the way to sneak climate into people’s lives because everyone likes trees.”

He started asking people to write down their favorite tree memory at his installations. He received responses like “cloud watching with my dad under a tree” or the time someone proposed under a tree. The cloud-watching memory was one of his favorites.

Bosbyshell will display his work as part of Charlotte Earth Day. The event will feature performances, presentations and art installations for all ages. Charlotte Earth Day founder Hardin Minor said this year's theme is Creative Earth.

“Look at the seasons. Look at spring blooming now,” Minor said. “Nature is the ultimate artist.”

The exhibits will include Bosbyshell’s Memory Tree project. Minor recalled sharing his tree memory — the time his brother Peter climbed a tree in his backyard when they were growing up. His father was just gone to call the fire department to get Peter down when he fell from the tree and “landed on this patch of moss, and he bounced!”

“All of a sudden, I’m writing this information on this card, and I’m weeping and remembering that Peter (his brother) survived,” Minor said.

For Bosbyshell, that emotional reaction is kind of the point.

“It’s just so personal,” Bosbyshell said. “We all have trees in our yard, in our neighborhood, by our school.”

Link: WFAE