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 9, 2022 PK NIght Event
Our seventeenth event featured six presenters talking about their respective crafts. The event was hosted at Buchart Horn.
Joan Bitzer
Starting and Planning: Backyard Carnivals to Psychology Practices and More
At an early age, Joan was drawn to planning and creating. Backyard carnivals, life-sized board games, and pretend game shows encouraged a career in art. Psychology won out, and planning turned to two psychology practices, a community theatre, and countless themed gatherings. As she enters her seventh decade with a new grandson, the creative wheels are already spinning!
Joan Bitzer has been a York psychologist for over 40 years. As a lifelong resident of York County, she is currently on staff at UPMC Pinnacle Health Psychological Associates. She spends her workdays teaching strategies to help people sleep better, improve relationships, and manage anxiety and depression. She spends her free time planning fun activities to enjoy with her friends and family. She recently planned a half-birthday celebration for her six-month-old grandson. She has two adult children and lives on the family farm with her husband, attorney Jeffrey Bitzer.
Ry Fryar
Way Find
Ry’s nature is split; he is both a logician and a creative at once. This presentation is an overview of how he uses this division within himself to make art, practice his profession, and strain for some kind of balance.
Ry Fryar is a Professor of Fine Art at York College of Pennsylvania, originally from Portland, Oregon, where he learned to love the outdoors. He is primarily - though not exclusively - a landscape painter. Fryar’s art centers on the effect of overwhelming complexity by the static examination of flow. Fryar's work may be viewed at his website, ryfryar.com.
Rebecca Hanlon
No One Asked You
As a former newspaper journalist who covered breaking news, Rebecca learned that being a storyteller carries great responsibility — not only in telling the stories of others, but in telling her own.
Rebecca Hanlon is the co-founder of Our York Media and The Founder Beat. She runs the business alongside her husband, Will, and they are parents to Joey, 6, and Mara, 2. She has spent a small fortune in developing her home garden and enjoys reading, eating, and going to therapy.
Heath Hardin
Catching Night Before Dawn: Listening to an Inner Calling
For Heath, writing songs is a necessary outlet for his inner voice and dreams; for him, songs often serve as a prayer of sorts, a connection to the spiritual and transcendent, a fighting against the dark night. Feeling like an outsider for much of his life, through music he has found his “tribe,” a place where he belongs, a sanctuary of the soul. Songwriting has helped him define his life’s purpose and given him a clearer understanding of himself. Music has taught him how to be comfortable with his ideas and outlook, and has allowed him to trust his own creative impulses in other areas: photography, woodworking, poetry, and art.
Heath Hardin has taught high school English in Lancaster County for over 20 years and most recently had the pleasure of leading a summer creative writing class for seniors in York at the Windy Hill Senior Center. He has played his music extensively around the Susquehanna Valley, and has been featured as an emerging artist at the Susquehanna Folk Festival, as a featured songwriter as part of Lancaster’s MFE concert series, and a special guest as part of the Kable House Presents concert series. He loves playing small, intimate venues. He also designs and creates upcycled barnwood furniture. He has released over 20 albums as Olds Sleeper, and continues to pursue the feeling of inspiration whenever, and wherever, it hits.
Donna Sylvester
My Life As An Artist: The York Years
For Donna, making art is giving physical form to both the deep churn of emotion in her soul and the potent deluge of feeling in response to events in the outside world. By tracing her creative practice while living in York, she discovered the profound ways this place influenced her art and informed her life. It brings her great joy to share these insights with you tonight.
Donna Sylvester is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, installation artist, and community arts activist. Throughout her life, she practiced art as healing and prayer. She lived in New York City for 10 years and is represented in numerous corporate and museum collections from that time. In 1988, she married Fred Flaccavento and moved to York. For the next 25 years, she made art, convened creative process workshops, and served in a public capacity to invite non-artists' involvement in art endeavors. Her intention is always to knit people together utilizing their common threads and innate creativity.
Helen Tafesse
Establishing the Inner Artist
What makes a good artist? They cut straight to the core. They have a great unquenchable thirst – a desire to explore, discover, bend, and crack themselves open for the sake of understanding who they are and why they're here. But this concept does not live solely within the confines of an artist, that is simply where it thrives. Through an exploration of her own journey as a creative individual and highlighting little "big idea" moments along the way, Helen hopes to unravel within other everyday people the mysterious wonder of "know thyself"... and in doing so, extend art beyond the confines of the few we assign it to.
Helen Tafesse is a Creative Director obsessed with storytelling around human complexity. Community building, connecting people with people, and supporting micro and small businesses as they develop in South Central PA has been a passion since starting her business Older & Wiser Co., a collaborative centered branding company that translates stories through wildly imaginative and authentic imagery. She continues to look for any and every opportunity to speak the mind of an outsider finding their own way "in," the oddballs, the lovers of unique, and those who are learning to value their own voice.
FEATURED PRESENTERS AT OUR EVENT ON November 9, 2022. LEFT TO RIGHT: Heath Hardin, Joan Bitzer, Ry Fryar, Donna Sylvester, Rebecca Hanlon, Helen Tafesse.
Photo by Allison Witherow
