|
|
|
|
|
|
Local Life
By MARIE FOWLER An artistic dialogue has been going on for 27 years between the two talented sculptors in a studio at 47 High St. in Germantown and there is not always agreement. Like legendary French sculptor Auguste Rodin, Gianni Benvenuti is older, male and opinionated. And like Rodin's muse and fellow sculptor Camille Claudel, Elfie Harris is younger, female and outspoken. And both Benvenuti and Harris are fiercely passionate about the other's art, just as Rodin and Claudel were. It makes for a most creative, if tempestuous, environment! Harris and Benvenuti work in a cavernous, light-filled space that she notes was once the oldest American Legion Post in the country, just across the street from Germantown High School. Stone has now taken center stage in what was once the building's theater. The sculptors work in marble -- from Vermont, the Alps, Belgium, Africa and of course, from Carrara, Italy, where Michelangelo quarried his stones. Amazingly, even stones from the Americas... Hard to forget 'Memory' at Allens Lane Theater by DAN BUSKIRK The sweet sound of the Nat King Cole Trio's "You Call it Madness (But I Call it Love)" is the first thing we hear as the curtain rises at the Allens Lane Theater's nicely realized production of Shelagh Stephenson's comedic drama, The Memory of Water. It's a fitting theme: nothing can drive us crazier than our well-meaning family, a fact explored through this trio of unfulfilled British sisters returning home for the funeral of their overbearing mother. The title of the play stems from a discussion between Mary, a doctor, and the sister at the center of the piece and her married doctor boyfriend. They remark on a study that shows that even when all traces of a homeopathic remedy has been removed from water, it still retains the power of the curative substance, as if the water maintained a memory. The ingredient now removed is the three women's mother, and yet her presence remains a guiding factor in each of their lives. Not that her spirit has guided these women to happiness. With their... Award-winning Hill bakery gets its just desserts by ED MAHON Five-year-old Emmett Deicther ran around The Night Kitchen Bakery, staring at luscious desserts before getting distracted by each new creamy one. His mother, Nancy LeClair, a former Chestnut Hill resident who comes to the bakery whenever she gets a chance, already made up her mind: lemon bars. But she understood why Emmett was having so much trouble. "Everything is so good. Everything." Emmett and his mother are not the only ones who love the bakery's desserts. The bakery recently won "Best Dessert" in Philadelphia Magazine's annual "Best of Philly" issue. It's not the first time the bakery won an award -- in 2002 they won the "Best Brownie" award -- but this victory tastes especially sweet because it was in the readers' choice category. Normally, the editors of the magazine decide. What also makes this prize even tastier is that it was a surprise (a nice surprise, not the kind of surprise where you get hit in the face with a pie). Amy Edelman first heard she won the award when a friend's mother called. Normally, Philadelphia Magazine tells the winners ahead... From Down Under to Mt. Airy, Peg has done it all by PAMELA ROGOW This is the second of a two-part series about how international fundraiser Peg Thatcher, a Mt. Airy resident, came to develop the perspective and determination that have propelled her to a life of bounty and service. "I was always interested in money. We weren't short of money at home -- there was no poverty -- but from an early age I watched its flow," says Peg, a native of Australia who is now a Mr. Airy resident as well as a longtime fundraiser for the Hunger Project and now OIC International, based in Germantown. "When I was five, a half dozen of us self-styled gymnasts started charging for demos at kid's parties. I was the treasurer. We made t-shirts -- Kid Kat Klub -- and kept minutes of our... Customers help solve thorny problems American Dream realized at Hill shopping center by LEN LEAR Imagine what it must be like to come to a new country thousands of miles from your home, as an adult. You don't speak the language or know the customs or the culture, and you have no relatives in your new country. Imagine what it must be like to get the simplest tasks accomplished like shopping for food, finding a doctor, traveling from one place to another, finding housing, etc. This was the situation that faced Young and Sarah Kwon, now 63 and 56 respectively, when they came to the U.S. in 1989. "God led us to Philadelphia, even though the only thing we knew about it was that it was an old city," said Young. The Kwons are the archetypal American Dream story. Natives of Seoul, South... |