"Farm to Table" by Peg Panasiti

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Peg Panasiti

Painting for pleasure! My goal is to take everyday objects and change the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Painting with watercolor has been my passion for the past thirty years. For subject matter I prefer still life, because they are readily available. My palette is set up with many hues of the primary colors – red, yellow & blue. Watching the exciting way the paints behaves on assorted watercolor papers is very exhilarating. I always have fun painting and creating art is always on my schedule.

I have taken watercolor, acrylic, and oil painting classes, but watercolor is my first love. It really doesn’t matter to me which medium I use, just as long as I can paint or draw. I am a very spontaneous person, so the set up and cleanup for watercolor suits my style. To encourage my passion for watercolor I teach and conduct workshops for various art organizations.

I am currently exhibiting my art at Latrobe Art Center, Greensburg Art Center, and Bellefonte Art Museum. Juried national shows include Pennsylvania Watercolor Society International Exhibition, Pittsburgh’s Aqueous Open and Baltimore Watercolor Society’s Mid Atlantic Regional. I am a signature member of the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society. To show my work, I participate as a booth exhibitor at several art festivals including the prestigious Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival in Cary, NC, Blair County Arts Festival at Altoona Campus of Penn State, and Hartslog Day Heritage Festival in Alexandria, PA. For the first time this year I will be a booth exhibitor in October at Fort Ligonier Days, Ligonier, PA.

Private collectors of her work include Bill & Shirley Hoyne of Altoona, Arnold & Kit Palmer, St. Vincent College, Joe & Virginia Greubel of Valley Dairy, former President Bill Clinton, and Rizzo Family of Rizzo’s Malabar Inn.

Peg's Website

Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays: 12:00 to 4:30 p.m. OR By Appointment

"The Face of Nicaragua" Photography Exhibit by Ron Matason

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Ron Matason -State College, PA

Photography has been a major part of my life since childhood. After high school I worked in a photo studio at an advertising agency and then learned motion picture photography courtesy of the US Army in 1967. After graduating from Penn State in 1975, I started PhotoTec, a commercial photography business. In 1982 I joined the College of Agriculture at Penn State and worked with photography, video, and visual communications until retirement in 2011.

This exhibit “The Face of Nicaragua” was photographed over a fourteen-day period in May, 1988. I visited in the cities of Managua, Boaco, San Raphael del Sur and the Bluefields. The Sandanista Revolution was all but over and the counterinsurgency by the US backed “Contra rebels” was in its final days. Incursions of Contra forces based in Honduras were still happening but, for the most part, peace talks were succeeding and the people were working to get normalcy back into their lives.

During my travel, I was fortunate to have fallen in with many people of good will. I was able to meet with educators, disabled veterans, families, medical professionals, “Sandalista” ex-patriots from the USA, and even a poet. I met the poor in the barrios surrounding my Hospedaje and met the traveling US politicians on junket and staying in the Managua Intercontinental Hotel. I met children who were forced to serve in the Contra army and were then facing conscription into the Sandanista Army. I experienced wonderful friendship and hospitality in the Bluefields, that fragile coastal town that was to be all but destroyed by a hurricane just a few months later.

Overall, I was humbled by the friendship of the people. Everyone I met, wanted peace. Some were already benefiting from increasingly better health care and improving educational opportunities. But there were still very young children missing school to sell homemade candy on the streets. Most of the non-political class people just barely eked out survival. Many received food assistance in the form of a family ration of a kilo of rice and a half liter of cooking oil each month. And yet they were able to smile and offer a portion of what little they had if someone needed it. The young men I met wanted nothing more than the opportunity to work and earn a living and to avoid military service.

These photographs were made with black and white and color negative film and color transparency film and were copied to digital files for editing and printing. When I look at these photographs today I have to wonder… What are they doing now, twenty-eight years later?
What has become of them?

Photography Gallery - 2nd Floor

Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays: 12:00 to 4:30 p.m. OR By Appointment

Dinor Bleu: The Vanishing American Diner

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Dinor Bleu: The Vanishing American Diner
Photographs by Chuck Fong

January 3 - March 27, 2016
Dinor Bleu explores the uniquely American tradition of diner eateries through photographs, historical information and nonfictional narratives. The classic diner was usually operated by a sole proprietor who served basic, home cooked food for good value. This once popular mainstay of American culture is rapidly disappearing from our landscape. The diner’s role in American culture is brought alive in this exhibit featuring almost 40 images. The photographs evoke the gritty Depression era “greasy spoons” to the illuminated sleek shiny rockets of the late 1950s. Diners were invented at the dawn of the industrial age to serve meals to factory workers on the late shift. The black and white photographs in this exhibit
of diner cooks, waitresses, and clients show the twilight to midnight starkness of this era.

“Countless calories, thousands of miles and six years in the making.” - Chuck Fong

January 22, Friday Night at the Museum, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
“Let’s Go to the Hop!” Join friends at the museum for an informal dance with Rock & Roll music, swirling skirts and lettermen jackets

February 5, Friday, 8:00 pm “blue plate special-diner poems”

February 7 - 1st Sunday, 12:00 - 4:30 p.m. opening several new shows and featuring Dinor Bleu

February 19th, Friday Night at the Museum, 6:00 - 8:00 pm**
“Let’s Go to the Hop!” Another chance to dance your heart away at the museum

All free and open to the public!

Read more about Chuck's show:
Daily Mail

Houston Chronicle

Centre County Gazette

Weekender - Centre Daily Times

State College Magazine

Supported by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency, through the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts (PPA), its regional arts funding partnership.

Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 12:00 - 4:30 pm OR By Appointment