Category: State College

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Arts Fest Poster


The Arts Festival promotes itself with a collectible poster that is a work of art in its own right. For the past thirty years, the poster has been created by Lanny Sommese, a Penn State graphic design professor and an internationally known poster artist.

Here area some of Lanny’s past Arts Festival posters:

And some other examples of his award winning posters:


Coexistence: A Bridge To Understanding

Coexistence is an annual traveling exhibition started in Jerusalem dedicated to spreading the message of diversity and acceptance. Lanny is one of only three artist to have more than one poster in the exhibition. Here is his other one:

Click on the photos for the poems that go with the artwork.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet won first prize in the International Triennial of Stage Poster in Sofia Hungary in 1995.

No!

No! is part of the Library of Congress’s Witness and Response collection of materials related to the tragic events of 9/11.


HELP

HELP is Lanny’s contribution to the Hurricane Poster Relief Project, an effort dedicated to raising funds for Hurricane Katrina victims.

By now it should be evident that social consciousness plays a big role in Lanny’s art. Lanny teaches his students that their art should first and foremost have a message to convey. In this article about design heroes, one of Lanny’s former students says

The approach to graphic design was conceptual, always about communication, and always with an idea.

Why this sudden interest in poster art you might ask?

Because, in addition to being a famed artist, Lanny is also my partner in the Toftrees Men’s Golf League. While my knee probles have severely limited the amount of golf that I play (I’m down to a round and a half a week), I still make sure I get my 9 holes in on Wednesday nights. So far, Lanny and I have managed to have a decent season in spite of my injury. Halfway through the season, we currently sit in 7th place out of 24 teams.

Lanny has had an interesting life. He went to college on an athletic scholarship to play basketball at the University of Florida, last year’s national champions. I first met Lanny in the early 70s here at Penn State. At the time, Lanny had quite a reputation as a lady’s man and most certainly did not fit the image of a staid college professor. Quite the contrary. He was recently divorced and was often seen with a beautiful girl on his arm.

That’s all changed now. He’s quite settled down, happily married, albeit for the third time, and raising two cute young kids. Here’s a photo of Lanny (he’s in the red tie) and his wife Kristen (she’s the blond). Of course, the fact that she’s a former student of his and younger than his first daughter only adds to the Lanny legend. That age disparity also leads to his grandchildren actually having an aunt and uncle younger than them.

Lanny’s first wife, Donna Gibbons, actually appeared in one of my all time favorite movies “About Last Night” starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore (pre boob job when she was a cute youngster). “About Last Night” really captured the Chicago singles bar scene in the early 80s. Several scenes in the movie took place in Mothers on Division Street just across from my favorite Chicago haunt, the Lodge. If you remember the movie, Donna Gibbons played Alex, the older women who seduces Rob Lowe.

This seems like a good place to end this post before I start telling Lodge stories. I will make sure to update everyone on Lanny and my’s performance coming down the stretch in our league.

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Arts Fest

This is THE big weekend of the summer in State College. 40 years ago, the borough of State College and Penn State joined forces to create The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, an event that would showcase the visual and performing arts. The event quickly became embraced by all. Arts
Fest, as it became known colloquially, soon spread well beyond the town. It is now one of the largest Arts Festivals on the East Coast and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to the area each July.

The first event consisted of primarily local artists that hung their art on a snow fence that was strung along a stone wall on College Avenue, the main drag in town, in front of Old Main, PSU’s main administrative building.

From those humble beginnings, the event has taken over the town for pretty much the whole second week of July every summer. While the first event just took place on the block long wall mall, the event has now spread across both the campus and the downtown area. Several downtown streets are shut down to handle exhibits, performance stages, and food stands. Pretty much every venue in town that can handle an audience (Beaver Stadium excepted – JoePa doesn’t allow anyone on HIS field) is utilized at some point for the event.

To give you a feel for the extent of the festivel, here’s a schedule of today’s performing artist events. Other days schedules can be viewed by the links at the top of the page. And here’s a list of the over 300 exhibiting artists by media type (the event is now juried so you don’t get near the crap that showed up in the early days of the festival).

The variety of stuff that you can see here is just amazing. Some examples:

Comedy Juggling –

Michael Rosman, a former Ringling Bros clown who is now out on his own. He does a lot of corporate and cruise ship entertaining and has also appeared on Letterman. He actually makes a smoothie by juggling fruit into a blender on top of his head. Check out his video for a glimpse of what he does.

Puppetry –


The National Marionette Theater will be performing their award winning production of Peter Pan (shown here on the right). Their shows are nationally reknown for the detail and complexity of their puppets and the flair of their performances.

A Trash Can Band –

Lidz – is a is a five-man trash can band from Altoona. They make music using trash cans, buckets, paint cans, and other things you can buy at the hardware store. Parents with empressionable young children might want to pass on this show if they ever want to sleep in on another Saturday or Sunday morning.

Musical Variety –

Country – Poverty Neck Hillbillies
Brazilian – Minas
Acapella – The Bobs
Zydeco – Zydeco-a-go-go
Gospel – D’vine
Folk – Patty Larkin

plus many more.

One of the neat things about Arts Fest is that it has become a defacto reunion weekend. The university has tried to artificially create Reunions Weekends with very little success. But the Arts Fest has become the weekend of choice for old friends to reconvene in State College (I can’t remember an Arts Fest weekend that I ever missed even after leaving town – heck I even missed a Phi Psi weekend once – something about getting married got in the way – but I never missed an Arts Fest). Old local bands take advantage of that by getting back together for once a year appearances back in State College. The members obviously love getting together for a set or two and their old fans back in town love seeing them.

I’ve got a few other Arts Fest stories to tell but this post could go on forever. I cut it off here and break my other stories off into other posts.

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What does $2.5M get you these days?

The baseball park that was just built here was started through $2.5M in seed money by Anthony Lubrano, a former Penn State baseball player. As a result of his donation, the university choose to include his name when they named the ballpark “Medlar Field and Lubrano Park”.

So you would have thought that $2.5 million might have been enough to get people to pay attention to your name. Evidently not. Check out this sign from the concession area.

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We lost – but it almost didn’t matter

The new State College Spikes fell 5-3 to their “arch” rivals, the Williamsport CrossCutters. Starting pitcher Brad Furnish struggled earlier, walking the first batter, then hitting the second, as he fell behind 3-0 in the first inning. The Spikes tried to rally a couple of time but just fell short.

The real star of the game though was the ball park. It drew rave reviews from all. Doug Smith, a sportswriter from Grand Island NY said it best “I’ve been to 169 different professional ballparks but this one honestly is just different. It has this aura and feel with it that in my experiences is unmatchable.”

Minor League baseball has been doing stories on ball parks around the minors and Medlar Field was their featured story last night. In this photo from their article how can see how much the real stadium looks like the artist rendition that I used in my previous post.

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Take me out to the ball game

It’s Opening Day

For the last year or so, State College has been anxiously awaiting today. It’s Opening Day for the State College Spikes, a short season baseball team in the New York/Penn League. About 15 months ago, Penn State announced that they had structured a deal with a minor league baseball group (fyi – Jerome Bettis and Mario Lemieux are part owners) to build a new stadium that would be shared between the University’s baseball team and a, to-be-named-later, short season team.

That started a whirlwind of activity. Fifteen months ago, the deal to place a team here was announced. Thirteen months ago, they broke ground on the stadium. A year ago today, the site looked like this:

Six months later, things were taking shape:

Today we have this:


(ok – a slight lie – that’s an artist’s rendition but it does look exactly like it).

As hectic as building the stadium was, so was putting together a team. The plan wasn’t to put together a brand new team but rather to buy an existing franchise and move it to State College. Last summer was spent shopping around for the appropriate team and in December, it was announced that the group had bought the New Jersey Cardinals and would move the team from Augusta NJ to State College. The NJ ballclub is a St Louis Cardinals affiliate and the State College team will be also (at least it will be for one year, the duration of the contract that the team still has with the Cardinals – there is a substantial rumor going around that the Spikes will sign a new deal with the Pirates next year – that rumor is fueled in part by the fact that the Spike’s ball park dimensions are exactly the same as PNC Park, Pittsburgh’s home field – many think that’s no coincidence).

So by last winter we had a ballpark and its way and a team. Well, sort of a team – we had the rights to a team but really didn’t have any players. Short season teams are filled primarily with new players who have just been selected in Major League Baseball’s draft. This years draft was held Tuesday and Wednesday a week ago. Players were assigned to the team last week and started arriving in State College over the weekend. Stragglers are still coming in (example – tonight’s opening game starting pitcher arrived from California last night). The team’s actual roster wasn’t announced until Sunday night.

Everything culminates with opening night tonight and the town is abuzz. Tonight’s opener has been sold out for months (I have season tickets so I’m set) as have the next two weekends. The town definitely has baseball fever as witnessed by all these articles.

Spikes Run Starts Today

The excitement has been building, the tingling sense of anticipation turning central Pennsylvania baseball fans into kids on Christmas Eve.The State College Spikes open their inaugural season in a brand-new ballpark tonight.


League Absorbs Off Season Changes

The Renegades’ general manager, Dave Burke, said relocating the former Cardinals to the Keystone State will greatly benefit the league as a whole.”I think it was a fabulous move,” Burke said. “The hype in State College is unbelievable. They’re going to sell out most of their games.”

Pair of Spikes know how to adjust

Tulane baseball coach Rick Jones guarantees State College Spikes first baseman Mark Hamilton and outfielder Nathan Southard are prepared to handle the rigors of professional baseball.”There’s no question about it,” Jones said. “Baseball is a game of adjustments and these guys made the ultimate adjustment.”

Southard and Hamilton were forced to make the ultimate adjustment last August when Hurricane Katrina swept through Tulane’s New Orleans campus.

Spikes finally open season after whirlwind 13 months

Tickets were sold a month ago. Players arrived three days ago. The opponent will arrive sometime this afternoon.Yes, this professional baseball stuff in State College has finally become real.

Short season rosters constantly changing

The New Jersey Cardinals — the team the Spikes are replacing — used 51 players, including 27 pitchers, in 2005.Some players that appear in tonight’s opener against the Williamsport Crosscutters might not be here next week. Some players that are playing elsewhere this week could be here next week.

I’m hungry for baseball – even moreso after seeing the Spike’s concession menu. For dinner tonight I think I’m going to have a “Walking Taco” followed by a “Deep Fried Twinkie” for dessert. 🙂

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US Open

We run an interesting competition on US Open Sunday at my golf club. We normally have a Sunday skins game that anywhere from 10-20 of us will play. On US Open Sunday, we toss an extra five bucks into a winner take all kitty. The winner is determined by the lowest score of your net handicap score combined with the score of an Open player of your choice.

I’ve been playing pretty well recently (other than today) which makes me think I’ll have a good chance tomorrow. I decided to pick Jim Furyk as my pro thinking that I can go low on my handicap score and just have to pick a pro that won’t go high on me. Furyk is pretty consistent and I expect him to shoot around a 72 tomorrow. I plan on netting out about a 69 myself.

Tomorrow I’ll report back on whether I managed to live up to my boast or not.

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I made the local paper !!!

State College golfer pulls off rare feat
By John Dixon
For the CDT

OK – admittedly the headline isn’t about me. But buried down deep in the article is this blurb:

At Toftrees, State College’s Lanny Sommese collected his third career hole-in-one using a 25-degree hybrid club to ace No. 15, a 185-yard, par-3 hole. Playing partners were Tom Minisker, Larry Fall and Fred Riley.

Of course, as with most holes-in-one, there’s a story involved.

The hole is a long par three that’s fairly flat. As you can see, it’s well bunkered but there’s an open runway in the front of the green. The tee was located at about #3 in the photo and the pin was at the back of the green but centered so it was clearly visible between the two front bunkers.

Lanny thinned the shot and it never got more than maybe five feet off the ground. It just made the short fairway but was dead on line for the green. As it hit the fairway, Tom jokingly yelled “Get in the hole”. Amazingly, the ball kept rolling. As it got up onto the green, Tom remarked “You know, these are the kind that go in.”

Sure enough, it just kept rolling and rolling but it looked like it stopped right at the hole. We thought it was awfully close but we didn’t think it was in. Driving up the cart path, our view of the pin was hidden by the right front bunker until we actually got to the green. It was a real surprise when we got there and there was no ball in view – that’s when we realized it had gone in. It was pretty windy and I suspect that the ball was initially caught against the flagstick. Undoubtedly, the blowing wind shook the stick just enough for the ball to drop in.

When we got to the next hole, I turned to everyone and said “Any zeroes? No? I guess you’re up, Lannie.” I borrowed that line from my buddy Tod Jeffers who used it when he had a hole in one with me on one of our Florida Bowl trips.

I’ve never had a hole in one but I did hole out a 130 yard shot. I was playing a course in New York and hit my tee shot slightly to the right on a hole that had a blind landing area. The hole basically went out 180 yards, then went downhill into a valley. The drives collected at the bottom of the valley and then you had a blind uphill shot to the green. When I got down there, I couldn’t find my ball even though it clearly should have been in play. There was casual water near where the ball should have been and my playing partners said to just drop a ball. I said I wasn’t going to because technically my ball was lost and since I had a match going with a guy in the group behind us I was going to play it by the rules.

I went back to the tee and reteed. By the time I got to my ball my playing partners had all hit their second shots and were up around the green. Because I was low in a the valley my shot to the green was a blind one also. I took an eight iron and hit it pure right at the green. All of a sudden my buddies on the green started yelling “It went in!”. So the net result was a spectacular par (and, oh yes, I won the hole from the guy behind me that I had the match with).

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Happy St Patricks Day

While I know that State College can’t hold a candle to either NY or Chicago when it comes to celebrating St Patricks Day, we do quite well on our own.

I took these photos tonight as I left the Phyrst, probably the most Irish bar we have in town. I apologize for the quality but they were taken by my phone on a semi-lit street. The first photo is tomorrow’s band line-up. The bar opens at 7AM and they have bands continuously until they close at 2AM.

While I do know Scott Mangene (8AM-9AM) and Tommy Wareham (10:30-noon), I am probably going to hold off on starting my St Patty’s Day celebration until JR and Natalie play from 3PM-4PM.

But I just might be in the minority. This is a photo taken at 2AM of the line that has already started forming to get into the Phyrst when they open at 6AM. You can’t tell too much from the camera photo but there were about 25-30 people already in line.

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Wall of Flame

Quaker Steak and Lube has just opened a new restuarant in town so I went there to celebrate my birthday last night. One of their gimmicks is a “Wall of Flame” where you can get your name posted if you eat six of their “atomic” wings. Naturally I had to step up to the challenge. The first wing had a definite bite to it. After I finished the second I had to take off my glasses because my eyes were tearing up. By the fourth my nose was running and I was having difficulty swallowing. I did manage to eat all six but I might not have been able to handle eight.

I did learn a little secret though. After I finished the wings, the bartender gave me a shot of Hershey’s chocolate syrup which substantially helped clear up the burning sensation in my mouth. I obviously couldn’t spread chocolate all over my face but the wetnap he gave me helped somewhat (still left a residual sting however). But I really didn’t realize that I hadn’t gotten it all off my hands. On the way out, I stopped in the bathroom to take care of all the Rolling Rocks I had had. Fortunately, this was about an hour after I finished the wings so most of the sauce had worn off my hands but there was definitely enough left to leave an uncomfortable tingling down there.