Spot 8

Anyone who has attended any university anywhere has seen one. It seems as if every building features the prototypical bulletin board layer-caked and overstuffed with flyers for part-time jobs, academic studies, and lectures. For local artist Jennifer Shuey, one of those flyers was a life-changer. Shuey grew up in Hublersburg and graduated from…

Thanks to advances in medicine and changes in lifestyle, many women today are as active in their “senior years” as they were in their younger years. “You’re as young as you feel” is the new mantra. Still, every woman’s body changes with the passing decades — menopause occurs, skin ages and joints start to…

Lila Downs is a global superstar and champion of indigenous cultures, but most people in the State College area probably haven’t heard of her. Central Pennsylvanians not familiar with Downs’ three-octave vocal range and poignant storytelling can get to know her when she makes her Penn State premiere October 17 at Eisenhower Auditorium. One…

Whether coming back permanently or for a weekend, former State College residents must be startled when they discover that, anymore, they don’t know what’s where here. Mercantile pillars remain the same. But what was at one time a full-service downtown hasn’t been that for many years. Now, a doorway ushers you into a different store.…

Montreal, the fertile crescent of contemporary circus, has done it again. Flip FabriQue, the newest gravity-defying sensation from Quebec, will make its Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State premiere this fall in Catch Me!, a celebration of fun and friendship. “The young members of Flip FabriQue claim to be French Canadian,” writes…

Wynton Marsalis knows musical talent when he hears it. After considering the attributes of jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, the trumpeter is convinced of her greatness.   “She has poise, elegance, soul, humor, sensuality, power, virtuosity, range, insight, intelligence, depth, and grace,” Marsalis says of the 27-year-old McLorin Salvant, who has been thrilling…

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in late spring, Tom Tudek Memorial Park in Ferguson Township is humming with activity. The butterfly garden is full of fluttering wings as flowers begin to bloom, shouts of cheering and laughter drift in from the playground and over a children’s soccer game, in the distance, dogs can be heard…

Before there was light beer, there was “small” beer, a colonial staple made from the weaker second or third runnings from a brewer’s mash. Small beer was served as a nutritious, low-alcohol beverage that was consumed by nearly everyone on a daily basis, even children. How times have changed. Light beer, as we…

“I hope that people who view my sculptures will feel some of the wonder and curiosity that I bring to the sculptural process. I want to engage my viewers in a dialog without dominating that conversation,” says Jim Bright, a sculptor from Millheim who has been experimenting with materials and creating sculptures for more than…