BOOK
BENCHES
Community Bench: Philipsburg Area – Wildlife
Artist: Elody Gyekis and Community
Location: Windy Hill Village Retirement Community, 100 Dogwood Drive, Philipsburg PA 16832
The community benches are based on themes generated at the community meetings that were not covered by other artists. In every meeting in each part of Centre County, the big game animals were discussed, most especially during the Philipsburg meeting. Whether seeing these majestic wild animals that we are fortunate to still have in our forests brings us the thrill of the hunt or simply the thrill of communing in nature with our fellow creatures, we all share a love of these animals. This bench features white tailed deer, roughed grouse, wild turkey, cottontail rabbit, mallard duck, black bear, and coyote.
Windy Hill Retirement Community residents, staff and community members came together to paint this bench. Windy Hill Retirement Community hosted the event in their community room.
“Of all of the Public Art Projects I have helped bring to fruition, this has been the most expansive in reach and most logistically complex. It has been a real pleasure working with my incredible partner in the project, Ann Walker, all of the artists who created proposals and painted benches, all of the community members who leant their hearts and minds to the idea building process and all of the community members who showed up and helped to paint the community benches. (Ann Walker asked me to help direct the project!)”
About the Artist:
Elody Gyekis and Community Elody Gyekis earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Ceramics from Penn State and currently is based in Centre County where she is a resident artist at the Green Drake Gallery and Arts Center in Millheim, PA when she is not travelling and living in other parts of the world. In addition to her fine art work, she has been a community arts organizer and muralist for many public arts projects across Pennsylvania and beyond and is currently the Artistic Director of the Book Benches of Centre County project. Elody lives and works in Spring Mills/Millheim.