Artist of the Month

By Mariah Lucas For more than a decade, Matt and Tyler Greer’s music has echoed from the bars of downtown State College, where they perform as the Corner Brothers. Toting an acoustic guitar and an electronic drum pad, the brothers play popular cover songs at the outdoor stage of their favorite venue, Café 210 West,…

What do you get when you mix influences of college art classes, a long-ago job on a local farm, and a love for the Peruvian art of mate burilado? For Stephanie Gush, this mix turns into carving and painting gourds. Gush transforms local hard-shell gourds into painted and carved birdhouses and painted ornaments. She sells…

Author Julia Whicker of State College never dreamed she would start a handcrafted paper flowers business. Although her parents and sister are artists, she viewed her youthful artistic efforts as “kids’ stuff” and left that behind to pursue a career in writing literary fiction. “It’s the hardest thing you can do,” Whicker says of writing…

Once upon a February evening, seven storytellers took the stage in front of an audience of about seventy people and shared heartfelt stories about how they learned “Love Lives On” after loss.  These were not professional public speakers. They were simply community members with a story to tell, and for most of them, this was…

Photographer Kevin D. Reilly pulled into the Fraser Street garage on an overcast and at times rainy fall afternoon. He looked up at the sky and questioned if it would clear. He hoped the weather forecast would be accurate and he wouldn’t lose the perfect lighting. The clouds parted and as the sun came out,…

If you think you know face painting, think again. Local artist Emily Cooper’s new and growing business, Let’s Face It with Emily, is about far more than just a simple heart or a rainbow on one cheek. Cooper, with her clear talents and long-time penchant for painting, transforms face painting into a true art, creating…

Artist Jim Jackson takes his creative inspiration from nature and other cultures, especially the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. A native of Wellsboro, Jackson taught elementary art at Blackhawk School District near Pittsburgh for fourteen years before moving to Bellefonte and marrying his wife, Peggy, a math teacher. He retired after seventeen years of…

By Jess Wellar As an avid viewer of the popular glass-blowing competition TV series Blown Away, I jumped at the chance to interview our artist of the month, Jim Byrnes, a local glass blower from Howard. But Byrnes good-naturedly set me straight before we got too far along in our interview. “That Netflix show is…

Mary Kay Laplante creates icons in the studio of her State College home using materials and techniques that date back to the medieval era of Eastern Orthodox religious tradition. “When I first began learning about icons, I saw them as stiff-looking and, in some cases, out of proportion,” says Laplante, who is Roman Catholic. “I…

Bellefonte’s Jim Colbert is a man who wears many hats. He is an instructor, a poet, a visual artist, and a singer/songwriter. He’s got a lot of irons in the fire, so to speak. “I do,” Colbert says with a laugh. This month, his visual art will be on display at the Bellefonte Art Museum.…