Artist of the Month

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.…

When the Bellefonte Community Band lifts its instruments on August 13 in Talleyrand Park, it will celebrate four decades of sharing music with listeners throughout the county.  “Talleyrand is our home base, of sorts,” according to Band Director Meg Pedlow Smith. “Concerts always feel special there.” Consisting of eighty-some members, the band formed in 1983,…

By Elonie Ward When six women met on April 20, 1983, they had one thing in mind, and that was to form a National Quilting Association Chapter right here in central Pennsylvania. The founding members were Cindy Houlch, Cindy McNab, Jody Crust, Dorothy Milhelic, Jean Smith, and Gloria Braun, as well as Violet MacMillan, who…

As Judy Hyman tells the story, Gus Tritsch and his mother arrived at the Elk Creek Café in Millheim in 2008 to watch Hyman’s band, The Horse Flies, at soundcheck. Tritsch was four at the time and had recently started taking violin lessons from her. As she would soon learn, Tritsch was not like any…

[To see all the photos mentioned below, pick up a print copy of April Town&Gown or view the complete online edition at townandgown.com.] Go on a walk with photographer Laurie Roffol, and you’ll find yourself making frequent stops. She’s always on the lookout for subject matter that speaks to her. Few others would have noticed…

Essence 2 Ltd. has delighted audiences for 23 years.  “Our focus is on the music from the African and African American choral traditions that includes sacred and secular music,” says the choir’s conductor and founder, Anthony T. Leach, emeritus professor of music at Penn State. “It includes music from various African countries. As far as…

Through The Giving Box, Amanda Werner focuses on the art of creating the perfect gift for each individual. She curates wooden gift boxes full of locally sourced items. She came up with the concept for her Lemont-based business in 2016. It was simple, she says. “It was like a game of Tetris to me,” Werner…

Some may know 81-year-old Jack Eggert from when he played with the Tarnished Six band in the early 1980s—or from later on, when he founded the Dixieland Jazz Band that played local venues for 14 years. Others may know him as having been a producer/director of instructional television at Penn State until 2006, when a…