Greensburg museum displays largest collection of regional craftwork

To create beauty in their daily lives, talented Pennsylvanians brushed vivid watercolors on paper, fashioned decorative salt-glazed stoneware, built and painted handmade furniture that served generations of families and stitched silk onto cotton samplers to honor late relatives.
These examples of handmade artistry comprise a new exhibition called "Made in Pennsylvania: A Folk Tradition." The show opens Saturday at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg and runs through Oct. 14.

This showcase of folk art, made up of German documents called fraktur, stoneware, Soap Hollow furniture, samplers and coverlets, is an object lesson in how imagination, patience and attention to detail can transform paper, clay, wood and cloth. Each type of art was curated by experts in the given specialty.

With 389 artifacts, this is the largest and most in-depth exhibition of locally produced folk art in the region in five years. A 2002 show at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center showcased a Smithsonian folk art collection as well as local examples.

"We're dedicated to collecting the art of the region. That's one of our missions," said Judy Linsz Ross, the museum's marketing director. "This is the first time a lot of these objects in this quantity have been brought together that represent Pennsylvania folk art."

At the entryway of the museum's changing gallery, visitors will see an example of each art form. The show in the first gallery begins with painted furniture. The next gallery is fraktur, the documents Germans prepared to record births, baptisms and weddings. The word fraktur means fractured, indicating that each letter is broken and distinct.
source:www.post-gazette.com