Hart Family - Ourfolk

Jann attended the one-room school building through
6th grade, went to Mt. Pleasant junior high and high school, and graduated in 1959. She attended the University
of Colorado, Boulder, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1963.

Jann met Gene A. Pollard in San Francisco,
CA, in 1969 and they married in 1970. Their daughters are Brittany Suzanne 1973 and Natalie Jill 1976. In 2002,
Brittany married Gabriel Gustavo Lopez 1975 and they have children, Madalynn Natalia 2011 and Jackson Young
2013 (Lopez).

Jann s chosen career was always to be an artist, but she also needed a commercial back-up, so she
became a restaurant and residential interior designer. During that time, she continued painting, entering exhibitions,
and was accepted into a gallery in 1986. When she moved to Charlotte, NC, in 2008 for semi-retirement, her work
was represented in three galleries in Burlingame, Napa, and Carmel, CA, and she was teaching painting workshops
internationally.

Her artwork can be seen at
www.jannpollard.com.

Jann inherited an interest in genealogy from her
mother and has compiled and written several self-published family history books.

Gene and Jann currently live in
Charlotte, NC.

Posted Jul 5, 2017 at 10:02 AM

MONMOUTH Jann Lawrence Pollard, a professional watercolor artist from North Carolina, has been awarded first place in the National Heritage Art contest, sponsored by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, for a painting and an essay that describe her childhood memories of the family farm in southeast Warren County, Illinois.

Pollard is the great, great granddaughter of John Young, who settled in Warren County in 1836. He bought the property for $1.25 an acre, and in 1885 he built the family home featured in Pollard s painting.

Our family retains the original sheepskin deed to the farm, signed by President James Monroe. One of our patriots married my great grandfather, John F. Young, and they raised their six children in this house.

Pollard will be recognized for her first place painting in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2017, at the Continental Congress of the NSDAR. Over 3,000 people will attend and will get to see her painting, This Old House.

Pollard heard of the contest through her DAR chapter and decided to enter. The theme this year was Moving Family Traditions Forward, which initially I found to be a very difficult theme. But once I settled on the old house, everything easily fell into place, she said.

In her watercolor paintings, images of places often hold memories of experiences and feelings that she wants to share with her viewers. This old farmhouse is one that brings to mind some of my earliest recollections of family gatherings.

Pollard spent many summers and weekends at the farm with her grandparents, Mary (Young) and Don Lawrence. She took many photos and painted plein-air as well.

In her essay about the painting, she wrote, When I see a photo of the farm or visit it, the memories of those family gatherings and holidays come to mind with all of us crowding around one long table filled with a bounty of food.

She also remembers, My children learning to drive in the cornfield; my older sister and I staying overnight with Grandma and Grandpa and being afraid of the too-steep stairs with creaky noises; investigating the attic and making a fashion show of the many creations from Grandma s dress up trunk; the grandchildren being allowed to spend an entire, unsupervised afternoon playing in the mud of the creek near the house; my mother teaching everyone about the bugs and flowers; playing hide and seek in the cornfields; and my father taking everyone on a hay ride.

She has made gicl e prints of the painting for her brothers and sisters so they could share in the memories the old house has. Rob Lawrence, her brother, farmed the acres for several years before he retired.

The porch of the house, as shown in the painting, is in many photos from our family gatherings, Pollard recalls. In the front yard was a double four-person swing where the grandchildren loved to play. The swing has been painstakingly restored and moved to my brother s farm nearby.

Whenever I visited the farm, I always enjoyed painting the house in plein-air and taking many reference photos of it in the various seasons. I can remember the cool of the screened in side porch during humid dog-days of summer with the rustling of leaves in the stand of maples my grandpa had planted to provide shade for the house, the banging of the screen door, and the smell of fresh well-water on rocks at the hand pump just outside that porch.

The farm became an Illinois Centennial Farm in 1996 and then the first Sesquicentennial Farm in Warren County in 2002.

Each entry in the contest must be sponsored by a DAR chapter. Pollard s local chapter in North Carolina sponsored her, but she has close ties to the local Roseville Chief Shaubena Chapter also. One of Pollard s cousins, Lorna Adkisson, is a member of the local chapter and also has ties toThis Old House. Her grandmother grew up in that house.

Nancy Huston, a member of the Chief Shaubena chapter said, The NSDAR is a service organization that supports education, community service, history, and patriotism. It took a wide variety of talents and interests to build our country, and we continue to encourage and support its growth.

This Old House is now over 131 years old and, unfortunately, it must come down because it is beyond restoration. However, there is still something peaceful and serene about the old house surrounded by trees and cornfields and the creek that gurgles through the property.

Jann is a Signature Member of the National Watercolor Society, Southern Watercolor Society and California Watercolor Society. She has a B.F.A. degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as having studied under numerous, well known artists. Her work was accepted into the American Impressionist Society s juried exhibition and Southern Watercolor Society, winning the Winsor Newton Merchandise Award in 2016. In 2017, she won First Prize in watercolor in the National Heritage Contest for the Daughters of the American Revolution, awarded at their Continental Congress in Washington, DC.

Pollard is co-author with Jerry Little of the book, Creative Computer Tools for Artists, Watson Guptill Publications and her work was featured in an article in International Artist magazine, At the time, using the computer as a new tool to design compositions was new to the artist; the invention of the camera for the Impressionist was a similar era. Today, most artists are using the computer in some mode or other to aid their creative process. Her work was featured in Watercolor magazine in 2012. She was the cover artist for the lauded Karen Brown travel books series for more than 15 years, painting cover images yearly for the 17 books.

Pollard completed several paintings for Princess Cruises and Duke University Cancer Center purchased 5 of her paintings for their new cancer building. Jann was a popular plein-air teacher in workshops in Europe, Mexico and the United States and has recently retired from teaching to allow more time for painting. Her extensive, more than 1600 works are in private and corporate collections, internationally. Jann and her husband, Gene, reside in Charlotte, North Carolina. https://www.jannpollard.com/biography