Arts & Music
Vesta Art and Craft Show & Sale The goddess Vesta was known in ancient Rome as the goddess of the hearth, home, and family. In these times, and on this side of the pond, Vesta is better known as a group of women artists who hail from or have ties to Wellsboro and the surrounding regions. And every year since 1984 (the same year the town’s Dickens of a Christmas celebration began), they have been hosting an art show, with an expansive array of talents on display. It all started when Ruth Anne Miller (a fiber artist and owner of Miller’s Store in Blackwell, then an art teacher), read in the newspaper about Wellsboro’s first bed and breakfast, the Jesse Robinson Manor, which local musician/music teacher Pat Davis, with her daughters Kathleen and Maxine, had just opened in the huge old brick Victorian at 141 Main Street. “What a great place to hold an art show!” Ruth Anne and her women artist friends thought. The Davis girls agreed, and the art troupe set up their art and their crafts in the grand rooms and wide, sweeping hallways. Pat chuckles, “There was a lot of pottery and clothing, and the girls and I would sneak into the rooms at night and try things on and then put them back [on display]!” The newspapers picked up the story and asked the lady artists the name of their group. “A name?” Ruth Anne laughs, “Uh…we were just “A Group of Women Artists Exhibiting Together.” But they leafed through the dictionary looking for goddesses that had something to do with women, and Vesta was born. It is not, as is sometimes published, VESTA, as it is not an acronym of any kind. Ruth Anne speculates that this typographical haunting may have been a mix-up with VISTA volunteers. Several years at the bed and breakfast, where the public was thrilled to not only see the disparate art talents on display but the fabulous old Victorian as well, were followed by different locations like church basements, until Vesta finally settled into the home they have enjoyed every year for decades, the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center at 134 Main Street (www.gmeinerartscenter.com; (570) 724-1917). This year the Vesta Art and Craft Show & Sale—Art for the Hearth & Home—opens, as usual, on the first night of Dickens (December 1 this year) from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Vesta artists will be available for a meet and greet on December 2 (with food—“We have always thrown our own party,” says Ruth Anne). The highlight of this social mixer—aside from the chance to collect some fabulous art—is the chance to meet with the artists and talk about their age-old crafts. Many of the women are or were art teachers, so their ability to share how they create forges new relationships and interests in beginning and professional art collectors and artists alike. The show runs through January 29.
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