Arts Festival
By LAURA SHEMICK
M So /
Collegian Staff Writer
"Stones shimmer, sparkle and capture
Me deep vibrant green of summer grass.
The gold shines, the tiger's eye winks
and the jade evokes visions of Oriental
luxury.
It's a jeweler's stand across from
Carnegie Building. The man and woman
who run it are Stanley and Barbara
Wolk.
In the back of .the stand, Barbara
deftly twists 12-karat gold wire into a
ring, twists a few loops around the top
and drops the new ring into the display in
front of the stand. Her husband is telling
potential customers about the mineral
malachite.
""Malachite is moving into its place
again in the jewelry scene," he says.
"Most of it's coming from Zaire, but it's
junk."
I.The Wolks sell malachite, opal,
chrysocolla, rhodite and jade, vericite,
tiger's eye, lapis lazuli and picture
stone. They began .the jewelry business
five years ago when they were
rOckhounds with •too many gemstones to
handle.
, "We were rockhounds to begin with,"
days Barbara, "and then we had all this
cut stone we had bought. We'd been
going to a lot of craft fairs, and one day
we decided to do gold jewelry silver
was too popular."
The Wolks work out of Tacoma Park,.
Maryland and have been doing shows for
four years. They visited the Arts
Festival last year and say they enjoy the
,festivals very much.
"Travelling's the best part of this
business," says Barbara. "But the
hardest part is the preparation," adds
her husband.
The two say they pick designs from
design books, then sketch their choices
and ' work from the sketches. It takes
about two or three hours to make a
pendant, Barbara says, but cutting and
' polishing the stones takes longer.
"First, we buy the stones, then we
slice them with a jeweler's saw,"
Barbara says. "We grind them on a
diamond Wheel, then go to a leather
wheel with diamond powder on it to
make it smooth. Stan does about ten at a
time and it takes him a day."
Stan says wire jewelry goes back to
:the Italian Renaissance but Americans
lend to prefer heavy cast jewelry.
The Wolks do a lot of shows in Penn
sylvania and New York, but hope to go
;farther afield.
"I hope we can eventually hit the
whole United States," Barbara says.
The Allen Street enameler says he was
"kind of pushed" into his craft, since his
wife was the one who originally bought
the kiln and the other materials he uses
in enameling.
His wife gave up the art so he had to
use the stuff.
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Putting a broom together, Ralph Gates of Asheville, N. Carolina grins at a
photographer. He has been making brooms foi four years.
Thomas G. Gregory hails from
Danville, Pa. He makes enamel-covered
dishes, ashtrays, beads, pendants and
earrings. He says the craft fascinates
him.
"There are so many ways to put
enamel on copper," he says. "There are
so many different probesses. For beads,
I use a torch; for dishes I use the kiln.
There's stencilling, swirling, tarpuling
and overlays . . . "
He says it's not a hobby, "that comes
out of a kit" but a craft. Enameling isn't
a full-time job for him, either. Church
is of three art
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work 'and other activities also take up his
time, he says.
Gregory says he has no secrets about
his craft.
"I feel if someone wants to get some
information, I should give it to him," he
says. "What do I live for if I don't share
my craft? Giving is living, that's my
motto."
"Maybe I can help someone to be a
better enamelist if I tell how I do
things," he says.
He took a fine mesh sifter and tapped
sts . • •
some powdered enamel (glass) into it.
He took an already enameled dish,
sprayed it with "gum" to make the
enamel stick, and tapped the enamel
from the sifter onto the dish. He sprayed
it again, put it on a three-pronged stand
and pushed it into the little 1,900-degree
kiln on the table beside him.
"It has to stay there for five minutes,"
he says, "because with the wind here,
it's cooler than it is at home."
After five minutes, he pulls it out.
When it cools, it changes color green
to blue, black to a pattern of horsetails
he had painted on earlier with liquid
enamel.
He looks at it with satisfaction and sets
it clown to cool.
"That'll be about $7.50 when I sell it,"
he says. He goes back to another piece,
polishing off the edges before he puts it
on the table to be sold.
What makes a broommaker make
brooms?
"Fun and profit," says Ralph Gates,
the broommaker on the Allen Street
mall.
He says he's been making brooms for
four years. He learned the art from a
man in Tennessee after he quit being a
systems engineer at Cape Kennedy after
the Apollo projects were done.
"People who like to make brooms are
those who like to be their own bosses,
like to work with their hands, and like
the self-satisfaction that comes with it,"
Gates says
He buys the string and corn tassles he
uses to make the brooms but finds the
handles himself in the woods, near his
Asheville, N. Carolina home.
The handles are gnarled, heavy
chunks of wood, twisted by the
honeysuckle which grows around them
in the wild. Some are three feet long and
two inches thick, some are three
quarters of an inch thick and a foot long.
Some are made of hickory, others oak or
other woods.
"Half the fun is looking for the woad,"
Gates says. He goes into the woods in the
winter months and collects 30-40 handles
a day. The wood is hung to dry and
seasoned for three months to a year.
Once the broom tassles, string and
handles are all together, Gates says he
can make six dozen brooms a week. It
takes him about half an hour to make
one, but a novice takes up to two hours.
Gates trains two apprentices a year to
add to the 15 hand broommakers in the
United States at present. Most people
don't use his brooms, Gates says they
hang them up as decorations.
"I'll tell you how I know that," he
says. "I put a little card in each broom
that says I'll replace the broom straw if
it wears out because it's the handle
they're paying for, not the straw. But not
one person has asked me to replace the
straw yet, and that's how I know that
they're not being used."
Tom McKinney, who says his work is "too often" compared to Norman
Rockwell's, relaxes in front of one of his paintings. He is one of about 400
artists with work on display for the 11th Annual Central Pennsylvania Fes
tival of the Arts.
Traveling painter's
work tells stories
By LYNNE MARGOLIS
and DIANA YOUNKEN
Collegian Staff Writers
After only one day, it's clear that
this year's Arts Festival is graced by
a quality and sophistication un
matched in previous years.
A prime example is the work of one
artist, Tom McKinney of Hatboro,
Pa., near Philadelphia. He was asked
to return to State College after a
successful exhibit in the HUB last
March.
McKinney's portraits, mostly of
black persons, have been compared
"too often" to those of illustrator
Norman Rockwell, he said, and it's
true their styles are similar. In a
more important sense, however,
McKinney treats his subjects with the
same low-key reality that has made
Rockwell's portraits of American life
famous. '
Most of his ideas are inspired
during his travels, McKinney said.
Candid photographs of the people he
observes later serve as subjects for
his portraits. Through his medium,
opaque watercolor, he adapts these
ideas into a composition which tells a
story, he said.
McKinney said he limits himself to
three outdoor shows a year because
he prefers private showings and
gallery exhibits. "Traveling is fun but
it gets to be kind of a drag after a
The Daily Collegian Friday, July 15;1977
while." It has, however, earned him
recognition, he said.
In fact, his work may soon become
internationally known. McKinney has
been commissioned to design and
illustrate a poster of the Beatles,
which, if accepted, will soon be
distributed worldwide.
He also has • been
Columbia Records to
illustrations.
His work is widely recognized
throughout Philadelphia, where he
maintains a studio. Although most of
his portraits seem rather expensive,
his customers have never questioned
the price of his works, McKinney
said.
Impressions
He cites the steady increase of his
sales over the four years as proof. "I
wouldn't have those prices on there if
I couldn't sell them," he claimed.
A disciplined artist, McKinney
begins work about 7 a.m. every day
and doesn't stop painting until 8 or 9
p.m. He usually completes at least
one painting each day, he said, even
though most of his deadlines are self
imposed.
McKinney, 37, worked as an
illustrator for General Motors and
Boeing Airlines until 1968, when he
decided to free-lance for a living.
asked by
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