Chattanooga's Dew Artist: Hollie Berry Crafts Giant Animal Portraits from Morning Dew
Next time you're strolling across the Walnut Street Bridge, glance down at Coolidge Park. On ideal early mornings, you might catch Chattanooga's resident dew artist, Hollie Berry, in action. She creates breathtaking art using nothing but dew.
"I was walking across the bridge one morning and saw tire tracks from a maintenance vehicle," she recalls. "I thought how cool it would be if they'd driven in a pattern. I knew they wouldn't, but I thought, 'Well, I can!'"
Soon, she was hopping, tamping, and shuffling through the grass to form her first dew portrait: a massive blue whale. Since her debut in March, she's crafted an alphabet of animals from anteater to zebra. Each is larger than a house, referenced only from a sketchbook.
Hollie has refined her process, now using a paint roller. Creations take about an hour. Some mornings, the dew vanishes before she reaches the bridge—ironically, as she's not a morning person. She's photographed her ephemeral works and self-published the children's book D is for Dewdle, released last week and available on Amazon.
"It's one of the purest forms of art—made purely for joy," she says.
Dewdling schedules are unpredictable; even ideally, she works just two days weekly due to rain, clouds, or dry conditions. Dew is indeed a finicky medium.
As a classically trained artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Texas at Austin, Hollie shrugs off questions about her large-scale precision. She paints oils, sketches, and handcrafts leather-bound books sold at River Street Makery.
Her day job is accounting from home, allowing pre-work dewdles as a "creative warm-up." She and husband Rudy Elizondo live in a condo above Stone Cup, with Coolidge Park as her vast backyard canvas.
Their January move to Chattanooga—top choice for mountains and Rudy's engineering job—feels fated. In under a year, Hollie is etching her name in the local art scene.
View more of Hollie Berry's work at https://www.art-instincts.com.
