James Herrmann grew up on a farm not far from where he lives now in Hamilton, Ohio. As a child he spent hours exploring the surrounding hills and streams.
He remembers one particular bank, where he’d find ancient fossils embedded in the limestone and shale layers.
“I loved dinosaurs, things like some kids do,” he said. “But I never grew out of it like some kids do. I still like it.”
Herrmann said that as a kid, for his birthday every year he always wanted to go to the museum.
“So I went to the Cincinnati Museum Center, and always had kind of a love in my heart for the museum and the exhibits down there, and the dinosaurs, and all the fossils,” he said.
Now, some of Herrmann’s work will be on display at a new Cincinnati Museum Center exhibit that transports visitors 450 million years back in time.
The exhibit “Ancient Worlds Hiding in Plain Sight” opens Sept. 29 and will feature the museum’s world-class fossil collection, in addition to eight new bronze pieces made by Herrmann. The sculptures allow visitors to see, and touch, the past.
His work at the Cincinnati Museum Center is designed to be touched by visitors. In fact, Herrmann prefers that people have hands-on experiences with his recreations, something that harkens back to both his childhood and his previous role as an educator teaching junior and high school science.
When Herrmann first started to make bronze sculptures of fossils and other prehistoric recreations, he would go down to the natural history museum in Cincinnati and ask the paleontologists for guidance to make sure the figures were scientifically accurate.
“They really were very supportive,” he recalled. “And one time I took some pieces down there to show them and they said, ‘We’re planning on redoing our dinosaur exhibit, would you be interested in doing some pieces for us in bronze?’”
Herrmann jumped at the opportunity.
“One, it was right up my alley. It was doing something I loved doing,” he said, “but I was also doing it for an institution that I have loved and appreciated since I was a little kid. So it gave me the opportunity to do work that is going to be on display for other little kids in an institution that I loved so much as a child myself.”
Herrmann is mostly a self-taught artist, but artistic talent does run in the family. His great-grandfather was also a self taught artist. In the living room above his home studio, a couple oil paintings hang on the wall. The colorful landscapes depict realistic scenes featuring the life of early European settlers who came to this area of southwestern Ohio.
“He passed away in the late 1940’s. He was very creative. I’ve got wood carvings of his, I have oil paintings,” Herrmann said, looking around at his great-grandfather's paintings. “And, I never met him, but I feel like I kind of know the man because of what he left behind.”
Like his grandfather, Herrmann’s work represents the Ohio landscape. Except instead of depicting the literal view from outside of his window, Herrmann has peeled back the layers of soil covering the forests and fields to delve below the surface to Ohio’s past, using his background in geology to guide his artwork.
On one of the tables in his studio is a sculpture of a strange looking fish.
“This is the clay original of the sculpture that I did for the Cincinnati Museum Center,” Herrmann said, turning it over. “It’s called Tiktaalik. It was living in a time when the first amphibians were making their presence known on land. And this shared characteristics of fish and amphibians, so it’s widely held up as an example of a transitional species.”
Of the 18 bronze pieces at the Cincinnati museum, not all are sculptures. Some are bronze casts of fossils from the museum's collection like a tyrannosaurus rex tooth.
“So I did bronze teeth, and jaws, and vertebrae, and footprints,” Herrmann said.
The bronze castings of fossils are used for interactive displays in the museum that visitors can touch.
“One job they had me do for them was make a bronze touchable model of Mammoth Cave,” he explained. “ And it’s a little hard to describe, but have you ever seen where they pour molten metal into an anthill, or resin, and then they wash away the dirt and they have this branching set of passageways? Well, they wanted me to do something like that for Mammoth Cave.”
While some people might use their retirement to play golf and kick back, Herrmann’s used his to create a whole new second act.
“I love doing what I do. I mean I couldn’t be happier doing it. It’s just a blast,” he said.
