We host a series of brief lectures by York, PA's makers and doers, who talk about their craft. Our speakers come from varied backgrounds, but they all work systematically and intentionally to create visceral experiences.
PechaKucha Night York utilizes the 20x20 PechaKucha presentation format: 20 slides that automatically advance every 20 seconds. Learn more at PechaKucha.org.
Featured Speakers AT November 7, 2019 PK NIght Event
Our thirteenth event featured seven presenters talking about their respective crafts.
Anthony Billet
A Digital Canvas: Borne Out of Love for Architecture and the Arts
Anthony was once told by his high school guidance counselor not to attend college because he wouldn’t make it past the first semester. Anthony will discuss his journey from daily detention to working with the largest architectural firms, real estate developers, and product brands in the world. He will dive into his lifetime love of design, art, and how they came together to cultivate abSketches.
A graduate of East Stroudsburg University, Anthony Billet is the Owner and Design Director of abSketches, a visual marketing company based in York, PA. Since abSketches inception in 2009, Anthony and the team at abSketches has been producing 3D renderings, animations, lifestyle films, virtual reality applications, and much more for clients all over the world. Working on projects globally such as The Kingdom Tower and Prince Sultan Cultural Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to local projects such as the Yorktowne Hotel and Keystone Kidspace.
Jeffrey Bitzer
Life in the Pits…Notes from the Bottom End
Lawyer by day, bass player by night. After 70 shows, a look behind the scenes at our community theater orchestra pits.
Attorney Bitzer has practiced law in York County for 37 years. For most of those years he has also been a juvenile court hearing officer, reviewing cases involving dependent children. Jeffrey is a former broadcast journalist and retired tenured professor of communications law. He holds a BS from University of Maryland and a JD from Dickinson School of Law. Psychologist Joan Bitzer is his wife. They live on a farm in Mount Wolf. Music is his passion.
Rynn Caputo
The Unintended Consequences of Staying True to Your Craft
“Let’s just make mozzarella and sell it at the local farmer’s market!” So often we start our journey with the simplest of ideas and motivations. Starting a business to follow your passion while crafting an artisan product seems straightforward enough. Rynn will focus on what it takes to stay true to your craft even through the roadblocks that threaten to veer you off course. Making those unexpected “right-hand turns” can produce exciting results and enrich your journey in ways you never intended or imagined.
Rynn Caputo is Owner & CEO of Caputo Brothers Creamery in Spring Grove, PA. After attending culinary school in Calabria, Italy, Rynn and her husband David spent several months traveling throughout each region of Italy from a food and wine perspective. But it wasn’t until they returned to the U.S. that their dream of creating artisan, Italian-style cheeses was born in 2011. Rynn has led the company’s rapid growth from a small creamery in their home to a state-of-the art facility with nationwide distribution. Besides cheese production, Caputo Brothers Creamery also operates a retail store, restaurant space, and leads multiple culinary tours to Italy each year. With a goal to revolutionize the mozzarella industry, Rynn continues to educate consumers and share her knowledge of and passion for traditional, cultured Italian cheese. She is a champion for animal welfare and a better living wage for local farmers during this time of crisis for our Pennsylvania dairies.
Lexus Gore
Self-discovery through Experimentation in Art
Art has allowed Lexus Gore to talk about and further question the things that society as a whole has accepted as a rule that is in conflict with what people want. With her art, she is able to explore sexuality, self expression, and different cultures. She is able to get involved with different communities and build bridges and give others new looks on life. The transition from a student artist to a professional is a difficult one, but can be rewarding.
Lexus Gore born and raised in Philadelphia. Many would say her upbringing is fascinating due to her many different experiences, starting from childhood and continuing until tomorrow. Lexus is a graduate of York College of Pennsylvania, followed by being the 7th York College Appell fellow. While her art medium tends to change, she is best known for her oil paintings. She tries to question social norms in a subtle way that tends to shatter people’s perspectives slowly but definitely.
Layla Pomper
Process Design: Intention & Technology to Make Work More Human
Growing up in a family of small business owners, Layla came of age believing that entrepreneurship was a genetic disease filled with chronic stress, fatigue, and anxiety. To no one’s surprise, Layla caught the entrepreneurship bug at age 22. Her mission was simple: combine her love of design, technology, and education to cure the “symptoms” of small business that she’d feared all her life.
Layla Pomper is the Owner and Technology Trainer at ProcessDriven.co, where she helps small business owners take the busywork out of business. Her mission is to improve human experience and efficiency in business by documenting workflows and outsourcing people’s least-favorite tasks - like stressing, remembering, and reminding - to technology. By sneakily helping those who are “terrible at technology” to master time-saving tools, Layla helps ensure that the old-school businesses we love stay competitive (and sane) in the modern economy.
Molly York
Furniture and Forensics
It’s amazing what happens at the intersection of one woman’s passion for art and science. The product of that intersectionality is Molly’s Follies Home Furnishings Boutique, which started as a mode of stress relief for a science major crossed with an artistic desire to give old, abandoned furniture a new life.
Molly York graduated from Penn State University in 2016 with a B.S. in Biological Anthropology and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Forensic Medicine at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. During her junior/senior year at PSU, she founded Molly’s Follies Home Furnishings Boutique, which has grown into a successful small business with customers across the country (and Japan), and a brick and mortar location in downtown York at 56 South Duke Street.
Krystal Younglove
York’s Circus Sweetheart
The show behind the curtain. A glimpse into the hours put into a single performance.
Krystal began performing early in life, attending Bullard TALENT School for the Performing Arts, where she was surrounded by stage training, fine arts, choir, dancers, and stage crafting every day. Later she delved into flow arts and fire manipulation, which lead to circus arts and side show performance - becoming the Indestructible Lady. After relocating to the East Coast, she picked up stilt walking to allow her to interact more closely with her audiences. Her metamorphosis continued as she became airborne in aerial arts, flying high above the crowds. Today, the skills she's learned and developed being an independent artist have allowed her to produce and develop her own variety show, The Strangelove Vaudeville.
FEATURED PRESENTERS AT OUR EVENT ON November 7, 2019. LEFT TO RIGHT: Rynn Caputo, Lexus Gore, Molly York, Krystal Younglove, Anthony Billet, Layla Pomper, Jeffrey Bitzer.
Maddie Crocenzi
