Third Annual Arts Festival - Diversity of Talented Artists

Cranford J Coulter The Amazing. Printed on the back of his above card:  Artist, author, cook, servant of the poor, shameless agitator. 267-497-0268. He came with his wife BethAnn. View website here.

Help yourself to one of our prizes.

As we partied, here's what was happening elsewhere.


Go, Mary, go!  And she did!

Mike Pierce - center - of Levittown is the keeper of his grandfather's Purple Heart. He served on D-Day in Normandy.

Apologies for getting these out of order. As I said before, my computer is on the fritz. 

Worst of all, many photos are on their sides and won't budge. 

Claudia McGill brought in a new colorful painting she's working on, helped by her able assistant, husband Bob. 

 

Claudia selects colors she likes and they lead the way toward the final acrylic painting. This is on its side. Claudia and I met 20 years ago when she was showing her work in Hatboro, PA. She had a covered-over booth, as did many others, but I really "took" to her artwork.

I have more of Claudia's work than any other artist, with one exception. 

  We better keep it to ourselves about the Picasso's.

Claudia brought in a kiln-baked tile, in addition to this kiln-baked tower, on its side. Incredible detail work. 

Linda from our Saturday Writing Group "The Hive" read several poems including To Mother and Ode to Donna. We all wore name tags a la a New Directions Meeting.

She also wrote a poem for the late Kym Cohen, from our Writer's Group, a poem that showed Kym's great sense of humor when facing the demon "cancer."  

Mother sits next to her and is not exactly grimacing.

Donna Krause looked terrific and is quite comfortable lying on the floor. She read poems depicting the horrors of bipolar disorder.

Not everyone has such a tough time, but meds don't work well for her.

Donna's brother, Bob, accompanied her. He's giving writing a try, since his sister does so well. Are you a sharp dresser, Bob, like your sister?

David Kime brought two masks he made at Reach-Out Foundation in Bucks County. He invented a special mask-making process. He enjoyed discussing it with Claudia and Amber. 

Hard to see, but his mask, which he did wear on Halloween, has tiny dice, someone gave him, as well as small playing cards stuck on top. I thought it was great that he incorporated them into his work, rathan tossing em out.

Bob and Claudia are quite interested. He uses pipe cleaners to stretch things out. I use them to clean my meerschaum pipe. Cough cough.

More detail work on Rapunzel's Tower.

Amber Van Cleef, who works at our library, is a printmaker. She graduated from Tyler School of Art when it was in Elkins Park.

The other visual artists - David and Claudia - were fascinated by Amber's printmaking. She and Claudia each had the same teacher Pat Lema.

Amber's work is called "collography," When I worked at Art Matters I wrote about a couple of printmakers, one being the late Sam Maitin. 

When I goggled Pat Lema this came up.

In my bed, I have a 'clicker' that shuts off my reading lamp so I don't have to move. Usually the book I'm reading falls on my face.

Tonight I'm gonna finish Harmony, a very strange book.

Rem Murphy, sole proprietor of the Roslyn Post Office, read a chapter of his novel that might be called amusing, risque, and terribly imaginative.

What a mind he has.

When he left, he said, "See you at the BeaHive."  We meet at Beatriz's condo.

Here's Amber with her lovely prints, no two are the same. You need to apply a lot of pressure to the print in order for it to come out.

She loves abstracts. Little soup bowls are on the left.

Cranford. HE is a work of art.

Again, check his website and you'll see all the work he brought us plus more.

As a prison chaplain, he helped so many people.

How many people take an active role in helping The Homeless?

Cranford is one of em!

Cranford knows many people who have taken their own lives. Perhaps this schizophrenic fellow did. The bright-colored disorganized background indicates the man's thought pattern.

His face does depict a very frightened man.

More Cranford. Nicely balanced wild blue poppies. Once I had gorgeous swaying red poppies in my front garden.

My gardener cut them down, thinking they were weeds. That was the end of Rick my gardener.

You can see avocados w/pits on Cran's homemade shirt.

When Cran showed this painting to his therapist, she began to cry. It looks just like her grandmother.

Cran went to Bible School with the gentlemen in the suit, on the second to the left. He could not deal with his homosexuality and killed himself.

Funny, b/c on the jazz station I'm listening to right now, they're talking about the late Billy Strayhorn, composer of A Lush Life and many more, who was not afraid of being known as a gay man.

Context and culture are everything.

Cranford's Daylilies doing a little dance together.

Here's my daylilies

My friend Yin Liu stopped over earlier. Her husband died a year ago. One of his many landscapes hangs in my living room.

Yin always brings me food. She brought a wonderful pickled salad with carrots, onions, and cabbage, using white vinegar, sugar, and ginger.

Ed Lakata always concludes the program with his guitar playing. He played Season of the Witch and something else by Donovan.

Born in 1946, Donovan is getting an award you can see on his website.

How bout Bob Dylan becoming a Nobel Laureate. He's got a new song out that's quite good. Thing is, you wanna do your artistry your entire lifespan. 

Hi BethAnn, Cranford's wife.

Randy Kane brought his laptop and Donna of the Giant set it up on a projector.

He likes taking pix of monarchs, which reminds me that I'm watching The Crown on Netflix about the early years of Queen Elizabeth and her marriage to Prince Philip.

She has no concept of staying home to care for her children. Nanny does it all.

Covered bridge with nice reflection.

Randy, do you know the work of Carl Yeager on Facebook? Check him out.

Very hard to make out. Randy loves filming motion.... esp. moving trains. He uses a tripod and PhotoShop and takes many shots at different speeds of moving trains.

Waterfalls and spinning eddy in Watkins Glen State Park.

Deer framed in this covered bridge. It's either in Lancaster County or Bucks.

Okay, here's Claudia. And husband Bob.

She passed out business cards that read Claudia McGill, Human Being.

Oh, look! Claudia  makes her own postcards.




I also make my own and put on a postcard stamp.

  I'd just been to a DC Museum and got this free brochure and turned it into a postcard for Scott.

Why don't you just drop it off, he sez. He lives right next door. He does not know the joy of getting real mail. 

Amber's gonna turn her prints into postcards as well.

And Cranford also has them.

Great minds think alike.

We also had an assortment of goodies, including pumpkin spice coffee, organic yellow grapes and mandarin oranges.

Claudia and I discussed how sweet those things now tasted. She and Bob had averted diabetes, but not me. My insulin-dependent is a result of my kidney antirejection meds.

I was absolutely ecstatic that everyone had such a great time... and that includes me. I read one poem called Playing Tennis While the Autumn Leaves Fall. Wrote it last night and tweaked it a bit.



My friend Alex Zachariah, who works at Graterford Prison. Wonder if Cranford knows him.