Christmas Tree that Celebrates the Arts

Each year there is a Christmas Tree display in the lobby of the Barrow Theater in downtown Franklin, PA. The trees are decorated by various civic organizations, clubs, schools, and individuals in the area. I have had the privilege of setting up and decorating the tree for the Franklin Fine Arts Council. If you look carefully at the photo of the tree, you will see that it is a celebration of all of the arts. There is an old metal clarinet and sheet music to represent musical arts, a number of small paintings and paint brushes to represent visual arts, and a pair of ballet slippers to represent dance and theater arts. The tree topper is a wooden palette with a big bow. Right below the palette is a miniature painting of the Venango County Courthouse tower with fireworks in the night sky to celebrate Franklin's annual light-up night that opens the Christmas season.

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum

Each year the city of Franklin holds a festival called Light-Up Night. It involves the Christmas parade, decorated store windows, lighting the City Christmas tree and fireworks. It is a wonderful night and always very well attended. One of the annual activities associated with Light-Up Night is a Christmas tree display in the Barrow Civic Theater--our downtown jewel, We are very fortunate as a small community to have a theater that is home to an active community theater group and that sponsors performances by traveling groups as well as our community Silver Cornet Band and the community orchestra. So, before Light-Up night various community organizations put up trees in the theater lobby and decorate them. This year, I did the tree for the Franklin Fine Arts Council. Since I just joined the Arts Council, I didn't have a lot of time to plan the tree. I went through my small paintings and decorated the tree with ribbon, paint brushes, and a number of my small works in oil, watercolor, and colored pencil. The tree topper is a clean (fancy that) wooden palette and the small painting featured just below the palette is an oil painting of the County Court House on Light-Up night with fireworks behind it.

A Brag!

I was very pleased and excited today to find out that my portrait of Miss Windy took 3rd Prize in the professional oil/acrylic division at the Oil Heritage Art Show in Oil City, PA. This was especially exciting because it is only 5x7. In recent years only very large pieces have received any sort of awards.

Windy (oil on board, 5x7)

Artist of the Month

I am honored to have been selected to be the Artist of the Month for the month of October by the Transit Fine Art Gallery in Oil City, PA. This gallery offers work by local artists. Each month they present a major exhibit for one artist. One wall of the gallery is given over to displaying the selected artist's work. My exhibit opened today and will run through the end of the month.