Community:

I designed and help build the Erie City Council voting machine in my junior year at Gannon. The design beat out the competing Senior entry in 1973. The voting machine is still used today.

I helped propose and build WERG Gannon Radio. I also served as music director, disc jockey and engineer from 1972 – 1974.

I served as a member of Erie Civic Ballet Board of Directors from 1983 through 1989 and became an executive board member in 1985.

I joined the board of The Erie Summer Festival of the Arts in 1992. There I formed a program called “Computer Tools for Arts and Music” or “CTAM,” to expose/educate the community to the creative power of this wonderful invention. We celebrated 10 years in 2002.

As an outreach program, I formed “Festival of the Arts Computer Time” or “FACT” in 1998, conducted at The Blasco Memorial Library. This is a hands-on environment, where children were exposed to creative software in a fun setting. FACT was been expanded as a result of a grant from the Verizon Foundation.

My latest adventure was “The Art of Photography,” started in 2008. “The Art of Photography” was an exciting new program that celebrated the art form of photography from traditional film through the new and dynamic field of digital cameras and the digital darkroom.

The program consisted of lectures and workshops by top professional photographers from the community, and has been sponsored by the venerable Erie Photography Club, in existence since the 1950’s. High end professionals such as Ellen Anon, Art Becker, Bob Grubbs, Sandy Tanner and Tim Morton have taken part in this free event.

This annual event had outgrown the Blasco Library and as a result the 2011 program was held in the new wing of The Erie Art Museum multipurpose room. What a wonderful facility! We set a record of 82 attendees at one of the workshops.

I stepped down as the Vice President of the festival in 2013 after the 6th Art of Photography.

I have been accepted as a new member of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Artists Association (NPAA) in 2015. The NPAA was founded in 1974 and is a private non-profit visual artists’ organization formed to help define fine art to the viewing general community, to protect the interest of artists, and to provide scholarships to promising student artists. I have been on the board as the exhibitions chairperson and as of February 2022, the president of this professional organization.

NPAA web site:

www.npaaonline.org

I have also been invited to be a charter member of the new organization, Photographic Arts Society of Northwestern Pa. in 2011. I am currently the membership chairperson. The organization is made up of high end photographers from this area. Our first exhibition was be held at the Bayfront Gallery in 2012. I have participated in a number of group exhibitions since it’s inception.

PASNWPA web site:

www.pasnwpa.org