Husband and spouse Dee and Jerri Haussler need folks to look somewhat nearer.
That may be a purpose of their exhibit “Flowers, Fowl, Fish, Butterflies and Bugs,” which opens to the general public on Friday on the Hastings Museum. The present shall be on show till April 2.
Jerri has greater than 70 photographs on show, depicting flowers, fowl and bugs.
“I love flowers and especially I think it’s fun to see flowers and then see that there’s a bug on them,” she stated on the museum on Tuesday, engaged on the exhibition. “That’s kind of interesting just to look a little closer. That’s what I always say, I’m doing this, so people learn they need to look a little closer at things and see what’s there, that they might be in too much of a hurry to notice otherwise.”
In a number of the footage, Jerri didn’t understand there have been bugs current till she checked out them later.
Entomologist Ron Seymour, a Nebraska Extension educator in Adams County, helped Jerri establish the bugs in her photographs.
“I feed a lot of birds in my backyard, and we live at Lochland, so we have a whole, wide-open space for birds,” she stated. “We get a lot of birds and a lot of variety of birds.”
The Hausslers had the same exhibit on the Minden Opera Home in fall 2021.
Each Jerri and Dee have a pair new items for the Hastings Museum present.
Jerri usually goes on images journeys in a small leisure automobile together with her sister, Jodi Govig.
That included a pair journeys to Fort Kearny final summer time.
“We love to travel and when we’re traveling I take pictures,” Jerri stated.
Dee has eight carvings of fish on show.
He has labored so onerous on his carvings he developed carpal tunnel and needed to have surgical procedure.
One of many fish Dee carved has 12,000 scales.
Jerri is especially impressed together with her husband’s airbrushing skill.
“He is an artist at that,” she stated. “He really does a nice job with that airbrush. He knows how to shade it and do it. He’s gotten better with every fish he’s done.”
Dee, retired govt director for the Hastings Financial Growth Corp., received into carving the previous couple of years.
He spends extra time with every subsequent piece, now taking upward of 100 hours to finish one.
His carvings are so sensible he’s had mates suppose they’re actual, taxidermic fish based mostly on photographs.
He added a brook trout and a walleye for the Hastings Museum present.
The exhibition additionally creates a hall that leads into the museum’s everlasting Nature Nook exhibit.
Curtis Gosser, the museum’s curator of the reveals, stated “Flowers, Fowl, Fish, Butterflies and Bugs” matches completely inside the museum’s mission as a museum of pure and cultural historical past.
He likes the present’s purpose of getting the viewer to look extra intently.
“We know that’s really important because people don’t pay attention and we need people to pay attention to our local ecosystems,” he stated.
Lots of the flower species Jerri photographed are native. Many of the bugs are native as nicely.
“Which are critical to supporting any life on the Great Plains,” he stated.
Gosser stated “Flowers, Fowl, Fish, Butterflies and Bugs” additionally ties into “Wings Over Water,” a large-format movie narrated by Michael Keaton that follows the Sandhill crane, the yellow warbler and the mallard duck.
“Wings Over Water” opens at Hastings Museum with a premiere on Feb. 2. Doorways open 5:15 p.m.
Earlier than the movie, Invoice Taddicken, director of the Iain Nicolson Audubon Middle close to Lowell, will share his insights on wildlife administration.
“While we don’t always pair a movie and exhibit, it’s really nice when you can have these two things that fit seamlessly together,” Gosser stated.
