Aug 19, 2005 7 min read

In addition to more than 50 artists and crafters displaying and selling their creations along Main Street from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 11, Uniontown’s second Arts in the City festival will feature demonstrations by eight of the area’s most gifted artisans and host an expanded Children’s Zone. The Demonstration Tent, located at Main and Pittsburgh streets, will reflect the diversity of crafts available at this festival through a series of one-hour lessons conducted by invited specialists in each area.

The tent opens at 11 a.m. with coppersmith James Campbell, followed at noon by blacksmith Mike Avera.

Tom Douglass will demonstrate the art of carving at 1 p.m. Then at 2 p.m., Bob Dulik will show how to cut, foil and solder a 14-by-18-inch hanging panel using a beveled-glass cluster and colored glass.

At 3 p.m., Marianne Filiaggi and Susan Brimo Cox team up for a bead-making exhibition. Judy Hopson illustrates the art of handcrafted pottery at 4 p.m., and at 5 p.m., the final demonstrator, Joe Borotsky, will show how he creates traditional pysanky-method decorated eggs.

The Children’s Zone, located at Main Steet and Beeson Boulevard and sponsored by ABC School House, provides a hands-on experience for young children attending the festival.

Children’s Zone activities, geared toward pre-school to upper elementary-aged children, will include the perennial favorite Spin Art, two different approaches to printmaking, colored and decorated hats and this year’s special cookie decorating event sponsored by Eat ‘N Park Restaurant.

Beverly Demotte and Marianne Filiaggi, who worked together for the first Arts in the City event, return this year determined to make this Children’s Zone even better than before.

Demotte, a Uniontown Area High School art teacher, along with volunteers from local high schools and colleges, supervises the activity center.

Filiaggi, an Albert Gallatin art teacher who has a jewelry tent of her own to maintain in addition to her hour at the demonstration tent on festival day, assisted in the extensive pre-planning phase for the children’s activities.

“Last year the Children’s Zone remained the busiest area of the festival all day long,” Demotte said. “Physically exhausting but mentally refreshing, the day’s non-stop blur of creative activity speaks volumes about the value of creating meaningful art projects for our students.”

But, because such creative energy demands supervision, Demotte noted the importance of parents staying with their children.

“We are not trained drop-off day care providers,” Demotte said. “Our attention must remain focused on the arts and crafts activities so that all of the children enjoy an experience that maintains and increases their enthusiasm for creative visual arts.”

Aspiring artists and crafters of all ages should find a wide range of activities to increase their enthusiasm for creativity at the Demonstration Tent.

Beginning at 11 a.m., Jim Campbell, a central figure at Touchstone Center for Crafts where he has served for 25 years as volunteer manager, plans to celebrate his 90th birthday on Sept. 11 by showing festival folk the art of hammering copper.

“I’ll make copper weathervanes,” Campbell said. “I call them ‘Twisters.'”

With a straight face, he explained how they work, “On a really warm day, they’re hot. On a rainy day, they’re wet, and on a windy day, they twist.”

Mike Avera, a man with a quick smile and a healthy sense of humor, whose blacksmithing demonstration focuses on “small stuff, like candle holders, letter openers, nails, lies,” has built his reputation as a blacksmith making vintage-style rifles, pistols, knives and other small weapons prized by re-enactors. He also shoots his weapons in competition. Avera points to Campbell with pride and says, “I’m a product of Touchstone. It was Jim who got me started.”

Tom Douglass, whose reputation carving unique objects out of wood earned him a commission to make a special Christmas ornament for the Clinton White House, will share his skills with festival visitors during his 1 until 2 p.m. slot at the Demonstration Tent. Douglass tells how he taught himself to carve with a utility knife and a chisel.

“It’s not really ‘chip carving’ as many people call it. It’s just something I like to do.” Some of his extremely popular spoon racks, spice cabinets, wall boxes and shelves will be on display at his festival tent. “I don’t know if I’ll sell any,” Douglass said, “but I’ll have things there to look at.”

In addition to his 2 p.m. stained-glass demonstration, Bob Dulik, who began working with glass about 25 years ago after a visit to the Yough Glass factory and some lessons on cutting from his father, will display hanging panels and windows, glass baskets, kaleidoscopes and a few pieces of fused-glass jewelry at his sales tent again this year.

“I do stained glass in the copper foil method and also in the leaded-glass method,” Dulik said. “This past year I bought a kiln and I’m starting to fuse, slump and bend glass. I should also have some pieces of this ready in time for the festival.”

Brimo-Cox and Filiaggi’s demonstration begins at 3 p.m. They make glass beads for their jewelry.

“We don’t blow glass,” Brimo-Cox said. “We make the beads by hand.”

She also works with copper enameling to produce beads and other enameled pieces. Some of these items, along with Filiaggi’s, will be available all afternoon in a display tent shared by the two artists.

Filiaggi recalls how her classes teaching glass bead making at Touchstone Center developed rapidly.

“People come to Touchstone from all over the country to take classes in a wide range of crafts,” she said. “Interest in glass bead making has really grown in just a few years.”

Judy Hopson began her pottery career creating highly distinctive hand-built pots, a style she will demonstrate at 4 p.m., but her “hands-on pottery parties,” which began when she brought a wheel to last year’s Arts in the City festival created such a stir, that much of this past year has been spent with “pottery parties” ranging from church socials and private birthday gatherings to festivals and art as therapy events.

For more information, contact Judy Vrabel at 724-430-2909 or by e-mail at udbda@lcsys.net.

“I just did a show in July at the ‘Everyone’s an Artist’ studio in Lawrenceville for the Allegheny East Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center,” Hopson said. She gives each person a ball of clay, shows them how to work it, and then guides their hands as they throw a pot on her wheel. “They really enjoy themselves,” she added. “Everybody laughs a lot and has fun.”

Pysanky, the Eastern European tradition of egg decorating, has remained a popular folk art in southwestern Pennsylvania since large numbers of workers and their families came here to start a new life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Joe Borotsky not only brings examples of a wide variety of pysanky art from multi-colored chicken eggs to beautifully crafted mono-chromatic goose eggs for display and sale this year, but he also will close out the demonstrations from 5 to 6 p.m. when he shows his festival audience some of the techniques involved in this Old World tradition.

For more information about the arts and crafts available, the afternoon filled with entertainment as varied as the display tents, the popular festival food and ethnic dishes at Uniontown’s second Arts in the City festival, contact Judy Vrabel at 724-430-2909 or by e-mail at begin udbda@lcsys.net udbda@lcsys.net end

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