Farmer, Garden Designer, and Natural Artist Joneve Murphy will be 2024 Niblack Visiting Artist

If you would like to attend Ms. Murphy’s presentation (April 23, 10:20-11am) in the Audrey Bruce Currier Library, admission is free, but space is limited, so please RSVP.

As part of our annual Arts Week celebration, our 2024 Helen Cudahy Niblack 1942 visiting artist Joneve Murphy will give a community-wide talk on Tuesday, April 23, from 10:20-11am. A natural artist, Murphy started her career as a farmer in 2003, growing food for wholesale markets, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group, and restaurants in the Boston area. She moved to Vermont in 2006 and worked on several farms growing for markets and restaurants. In 2009, she moved to Virginia, working for a few years in Upperville before starting a farm for a Michelin three-star restaurant in Rappahannock.

In 2014, Murphy took a two-year sabbatical to do a mix of learning and teaching on farms in 18 different countries, growing everything from vegetables and fruit to coffee, coconuts, and more. She worked and lived on more than 200 farms and learned invaluable lessons on growing in various climates and conditions using traditional farming methods and modern techniques.

She has enjoyed building natural structures within the garden for many years — supporting climbing plants while adding art to the garden. In 2021, she started a journey with botanical pigments by installing her first indigo plot and eventually evolved that practice into growing, foraging, and painting with her own botanical inks.

Murphy's talk is open to alumnae, parents, and local community members. Following her presentation, she will hold a workshop for students.

Established in 2007 by Austi Brown 1973 in memory of her mother, the Helen Cudahy Niblack 1942 Arts Lecture Series seeks to bring a variety of fine, literary, performing, and practical artists and designers to Foxcroft to share their work, the nature of the creative process, and the breadth of artistic pursuits with both students and the community. It has sponsored visits by a Broadway actor and director, a champion cowboy poet, hip-hop artists from Senegal and New York, musicians, storytellers, and more. Conservation advocate and wildlife photographer Callie Broaddus was our last lecturer in 2023.