By NATHAN CARRICK
For the Daily News
Lebanon Daily News
Lebanon Daily News

For Lebanon resident Yasmin Brown, the featured artist at Sunday’s ninth annual Garden Party and Art Auction to benefit Lebanon Family Health Services, art is about crossing her fingers and hoping for the best.

A set of her dichroic (pronounced die-crow-ic) glass jewelry will be the signature piece at the fund-raiser, which once again will be held at local businessman Kaj Skov’s stately Lebanon home, Brasenhill, on Walnut Street. The set will include pendants, earrings and two types of bracelets.

“It’s a little like Christmas,” Brown said. “When I open the kiln I never quite know what I’m going to get.”

Dichroic glass was developed by NASA for use in its satellite mirrors, Brown explained. It’s made by bonding microlayers of metal oxides to glass, then firing the glass in a kiln. When it emerges, the oxides have melted to create unique designs that reflect light and create brilliant color optics. Every piece is one of a kind.

Vicki DeLoatch, director of development for LFHS, expects a similar level of uniqueness and distinction among the 40 other artists participating in the fund-raiser. A jurying process is used to ensure quality, she said, and also to attract buyers. However since most of the artists who apply are established or recommended, they don’t typically reject anyone, DeLoatch added.

In fact, the Garden Party has built such a fine reputation many artists come back year after year.

Among them is Ted Liles of Lebanon. This will be his fourth year participating in the event, and now that he’s on the LFHS board of directors, his enthusiasm is continuing to grow.

“This is a great fund-raiser for LFHS,” Liles said. “I’m definitely coming back next year.”

Liles will have four paintings up for auction at Brasenhill this year. His favorite is a pencil drawing of jazz legend Wynton Marsalis called “Blusin’ the Jazz,” valued at $150. His other works range from $100 to $400, he said.

Another returning artist is Hannah Matarazzi of Lebanon.

“I’ve been here since the beginning,” she said. This year she’s entered “Rebirth,” an 18-inch refurbished square of stained glass, into the auction.

“I received some stained glass windows that were more than 100 years old from a friend,” Matarazzi said. “They had 100 years of dirt on them and we don’t really know where they came from.”

She disassembled and cleaned each window, piece by piece, she explained. Then she took a small area of one window, relined the edges and framed it, thus creating “Rebirth.”

“They just don’t make colors the way they used to,” she said. “Rebirth” is valued at $350.

According to Matarazzi, she enjoys coming to the auction each year.

“The location is beautiful,” she said. “The host is a very generous man for

opening his house to the public like this. The Garden Party is a very appealing and pleasant way to spend a Sunday.”

Many of the artists are locally based, DeLoatch said, which makes the event a truly local affair. And for every piece sold at auction, 50 percent of the proceeds go to LFHS, she noted. Some artists even donate 100 percent.

“The need for the services we provide to the Lebanon community continues to grow. As this grows, the funds needed to provide services grows,” DeLoatch said. “We are fortunate to have tremendous support from the community.”

The Garden Party and Art Auction is LFHS’s second largest annual fund-raiser, just behind the Travel and Leisure Auction in the fall, DeLoatch added.

She hopes to sell 125 to 150 tickets to the Garden Party this year. At $35 per ticket, that would contribute about one-fifth of the $25,000 DeLoatch is aiming to raise.

Altogether, she said, fund raising contributes about 10 percent of LFHS’s $850,000 annual budget. The agency serves uninsured and underinsured women, infants and children, providing reproductive health, nutrition and education services.

For many of the artists, they’re satisfied to be part of a good cause.

“I’m a stay-at-home mom with three kids,” Brown said. “For me, art has to fit around my schedule. LFHS is a wonderful organization so I’m thrilled I can help them out.”

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Lebanon Family Health Services’ ninth annual Garden Party and Art Auction, featuring regional foods and wines, classical music and all original art works, will be held Sunday, June 10, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Brasenhill, 104 E. Walnut St., Lebanon. The live auction begins at 2:30 p.m. For tickets or more information, call 273-6741. Tickets will also be available at the door.

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Nathan Carrick, a senior at Kutztown University, is completing an internship at the Lebanon Daily News.

One-of-a-kind jewelry, housewares by Spirit Dancer

Return to Full Page in "Valley Profiles 2007"

By John Latimer
Staff Writer
Lebanon Daily News

Three city businesses are partnering with two local art groups to bring some culture and vitality to the downtown on the first Friday night of each month.

Tomorrow will be the start of what organizers hope will be many First Friday Lebanon Art Walks, in which downtown visitors can stroll along the sidewalks from 5 to 8 p.m. and drop into locations where art will be displayed and sold.

Paintings, photographs and other art forms, along with food and drink, will be found in a roughly four-block area between the 700 block of Willow Street and the 900 block of Cumberland Street at the Lebanon Art Center, Higher Grounds coffee house, Cafe Beracah, and Lebanon Picture Frame & Fine Arts. Maps for the unguided tour will be available at all of the locations.

The event is being sponsored by the Lebanon Valley Council on the Arts and the Lebanon Art Factory, a collection of young artists organized by printmaker and painter Dan Buffenmeyer.

The art walk was primarily Buffenmeyer's idea, according to Debbie Bertolet, the art council's new president.

"Dan came to me with the idea a couple of months ago, and we've been working on it every Saturday since," she said. "We have a little tagline: Put on your shoes, come downtown and walk around."

After being away for many years, Buffenmeyer moved back to Lebanon last year. A graduate of Cedar Crest High School with a degree in printmaking from Temple University's Tyler School of Art, the 36-year-old Good Samaritan Hospital emergency-room technician noticed a lack of art in the city and wanted to do something about it.

He began by approaching the management of Cafe Beracah for permission to display original artwork at the gathering spot for teens and young adults in the first block of North Ninth Street. Buffenmeyer had been to First Friday events in other cities and thought one would work well here.

"Typically, new art gets its unveiling on the first Friday of each month," he said. "It's when people take to the streets and go gallery-hopping in the expectation they will see new works."

When Bertolet saw what was happening at Cafe Beracah, she contacted Buffenmeyer, and they hatched the art-walk idea. Several downtown business were approached, and three agreed to sponsor the evening.

Yesterday, Buffenmeyer was busy in the cafe, hanging about 70 pieces that were created by a dozen burgeoning artists who are part of the Lebanon Art Factory.

Buffenmeyer described the factory as a community of artists, not an actual place.

"The Art Factory can actually migrate to any space, ... and (Cafe Beracah) has been kind enough to allow us to use their wall space" he said. "We are sort of underground. We fish for local artists who might not be well-known."

Around the corner, at the Lebanon Arts Center in the 700 block of Willow Street, more-accomplished artists will have their works displayed tomorrow night, Bertolet said. It is the opening of a new exhibit called "Scenes from Lebanon" that will feature artistic conceptions of the Lebanon Valley created by council members.

Not far away, in the first block of South Eighth Street, owner Bob Heilman will open the doors at Lebanon Picture Frame & Fine Arts, located on the second floor of the newly refurbished Lebanon Farmers Market. In addition to Heilman's oil paintings, the pottery of Jeff White and the jewelry of Yasmin Brown will be featured, Bertolet said.

Just a short stroll away, at 925 Cumberland St., Higher Grounds owner Tony Beck will pour coffee while guests view the equally stimulating photography of N.R. Stichler.

Beck said he was thrilled to have his friend's work on display and the promise that First Friday art walks hold for pumping more life into Lebanon.

"I'm very excited," he said. "I'm hoping that others will see the benefits that having more culture downtown can bring."

First Fridays may take a break when the weather gets colder, Bertolet said. But she promised they will make a strong return in the spring.

"We want to give people a taste of what this is like and in the spring do a major presentation and hopefully have more businesses involved," she said.

(c) 2007 The Daily News. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Media NewsGroup, Inc. by NewsBank, Inc.

By Howard Kolus
Staff Writer
Lebanon Daily News

Elizabeth Stutzman faces a dilemma brought on by her success.

The Mt. Gretna watercolorist wonders whether her talent, which she began to develop about a decade ago, has evolved into more than a fulfilling hobby.

“Is it a hobby or a job?” the 60ish mother of two grown children asked herself recently.

While contemplating the future of her art, Stutzman may find direction in the reaction of visitors to her secluded studio Saturday and Sunday during the ninth annual Art Studio Tour.

The free event, sponsored by 26 artists and artisans in Annville, Palmyra, Middletown, Schaefferstown, Mt. Gretna, Hershey, Hummelstown and Elizabethtown and also supported by Lebanon Valley College, gives the public an opportunity to watch these creative individuals at work in their studios and perhaps even purchase some of their pieces.

Stutzman has been a participating artist in the tour for several years, she said, and even went on it as a spectator. Today she contemplates how the demand for her work has grown as her talent
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developed.

“I began (painting) very slowly about eight years ago and in the last four or five years have been doing more work,” she said. “It just kind of gets hold of you somehow.”

Stutzman, who applies experimental as well as traditional watercolor techniques as she creates florals, still lifes and landscapes, explained that her work includes some abstract paintings as well as inks and acrylics. And recently “more and more nature” scenes.

“I’m looking out my window right now and seeing all kinds of things” to capture on canvas, the enthusiastic Stutzman said during a recent telephone interview.

“I was a biology teacher so naturally I paint nature,” she continued, explaining that she taught for several years in the Derry Township school system until raising a family took priority.

Although she had always been involved in crafts, painting was something new.

“Somewhere in my 50s I decided to try something different,” the easygoing Stutzman explained, noting how she learned her art from books, videos and watercolor workshops.

Now she completes a piece in about a month and enjoys the company of other artists as a member of the Lebanon Valley Council on the Arts and similar organizations.

“I no longer try to paint everything,” Stutzman reflected. “I paint what really interests me now. ... The best thing (about painting) is meeting new artists, a nice bunch of people.”

The reflection leads to further insight.

If art is to become a vocation, she said, then “you’re more aware of deadlines, you think of the end product more. It’s no longer the fun of just doing it and finding a home for it somewhere.”

Her art, Stutzman decided, has “become a hobby that’s paying for itself, or close to it. I think that’s where I am at this point.” The price of her works ranges from $50 to $600.

Yasmin B. Brown, whose dichroic fused-glass jewelry will be on display at the Hershey Public Library during the tour along with the work of three other artists, also has questions about her art.

A watercolorist who has successfully, although perhaps only temporarily, turned to another form of expression, she admitted to “enjoying the ride” with her gift for creating appealing glass jewelry.

“I’m just going to see where it goes,” 44-year-old Lebanon resident said.

Although she has always enjoyed drawing, even in high school, the former mortgage securities firm executive decided to raise a family when moving to the Lebanon area from Baltimore. About nine years ago she began painting after taking an art class.

“In many ways I’ve sort of come full circle because as a kid one of my dreams was to go to art school,” she explained.

A mother of three, Brown reflected that her art has enabled her “to be creative and be with my family. ... I’ve achieved this balance in my life.”

Although others recognized her talent as a painter — she has been commissioned to do portraits and enjoys “pouring watercolor on canvas and seeing what comes out” — she now concentrates exclusively on her latest creative venture.

Brown fashions original designs in a process that includes firing pieces twice in a kiln to produce earrings, bracelets, rings, cuff links and pendants. She explained that dichroic glass is especially colorful because it’s treated with light-reflecting metallic oxide.

“It’s a wonderful new media to work in,” Brown said. “I kind of feel like a kid in a candy store with so much to do and so much to learn.”

Brown’s infatuation with the medium came after she purchased a fused-glass pendant while on vacation several years ago.

“I fell in love with it,” she recalled. “It’s really highly reflective. The colors change. It almost has a mother-of-pearl feel to it.”

That led to a class in fused-glass jewelry making about three years ago and what turned out to be a new career. Today her jewelry sells from $15 to $50 and is stocked by about 20 retailers, mostly on the East Coast but also at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. A portion of each sale is donated to the Sexual Assault Resource and Counseling Center of Lebanon County (SARCC), Brown said.

“Watercolors, for the most part, have been set aside,” she admitted. “That truly is a love of mine. It really is a joy for me to paint. But right now people like the jewelry and it’s been going well.”

In contrast, David Kneller, a Schaefferstown woodworker, also a tour participant, is quite sure where he’s going with his collection of custom-made pens, wine stoppers, wooden bowls, custom-designed Christmas ornaments and other items. Kneller’s work also involves laser engraving.

“I pretty much make my living on this right now,” the 30-year-old former architectural designer said. His approximately 1,000-square-foot workshop, outfitted with professional tools, including a pair of lathes, three band saws, a table saw and other woodworking equipment, bears him out.

“I have about every single piece of equipment I could use,” Kneller said.

Born and raised in Bradford County, Kneller moved to Lebanon County, where his wife was raised, three years ago.

“I make a little bit of everything,” he continued, “including a lot of corporate orders,” such as pens and other items for Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. Although once a part-time occupation, Kneller gave the business his full attention last year with positive results.

“My dad was a woodworker and I learned from him,” he said. The ambitious Kneller designs the various products himself, utilizing more than 100 species of exotic woods, such as snake wood from Suriname, ebony and pink ivory from Africa, red mallee from Australia, and garapa from Brazil.

He prefers them to native woods because of “the way they look.”

“Snake wood looks like snakeskin,” for example, he explained. “Each has its own characteristics. Snake wood is the heaviest wood in the world (and Suriname) is the only place it’s grown.”

Kneller has perfected his own custom finishes for the wood-encased pens, their boxes and wine stoppers.

“It took years,” he said. “I’ve gone through numerous processes to get where I am.”

Not all artists have achieved Kneller’s level of success, however, and the tour will spotlight many who are still unknown, according to Lydia Dierwechter, a Newmanstown craftswoman who makes purses from recycled wool garments and has helped organize the event.

“For artists, it’s a great way to receive exposure,” she said. “And its great for visitors to see artists in the surroundings that inspire them, which is not always possible at shows.”

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The ninth annual Art Studio Tour, involving 26 artists in Lebanon, Dauphin and Lancaster counties, will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. A map of the studio locations is available online at http://www.art-studio-tour.com and at the Allen Theatre, 36 E. Main St., Annville; Lebanon Valley College’s Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery, Route 934 and Church Street, Annville; Hershey Public Library, 701 Cocoa Ave.; Timbers Restaurant, 350 Timber Road, Mt. Gretna; and Lebanon Picture Frame and Fine Art at the Lebanon Farmer’s Market, 35 S. Eighth St., Lebanon, among other locations. Call 533-2615 for more information.