FRANKLIN, Pa. – Attendees at last weekend’s Fifth Annual Nature Art Showcase and Sale cast ballots for the “People’s Choice” award while they viewed more than 100 original art items submitted by 60 artists and displayed in the main lobby of the Barrow-Civic Theatre in downtown Franklin during the Franklin On Ice festival.

(Photo: People’s Choice Winner 2020 — Deac Mong and his painting “Big Bear”)

The Council on Greenways and Trails and Penn Soil Resource Conservation & Development Council are pleased to announce that the top vote-getter with 49 votes is an oil on canvas painting entitled “Big Bear” by Deac Mong of Franklin, PA. This large eye-catching painting focuses on the head of a mature bear. As his prize, Mr. Mong received a pottery echo vase provided courtesy of Campbell’s Pottery Store in Cambridge Springs.

This year’s Runner-Up for People’s Choice (earning 15 votes) is a digital photo produced on metal entitled “Lakeshore Tunnel” by Michael Henderson of Titusville, PA. This photograph captured frozen icicles and other formations inside the long-abandoned railroad tunnel which the Lakeshore Railroad constructed by burrowing into the steep hillside on the west bank of the mouth of Oil Creek in Oil City. As his prize, Mr. Henderson received a coffee table book entitled “The Allegheny River; Watershed of the Nation” published in 1992 by the writing/photography team of Jim Schafer and Mike Sajna.

(Photo: NAS 2020 Runner-Up People’s Choice — Michael Henderson with photo ‘Lakeshore Tunnel’)

Sponsors for this annual event included the following: ARTS Oil City; Barrow-Civic Theatre; Campbell’s Pottery Store; Clarion Area Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Council on Greenways and Trails; Ernst Conservation Seeds; Franklin Fine Arts Council; Franklin On Ice; Oil City Arts Council; Oil Region Alliance; Oil Region Coalition of Artists; Penn Soil Resource Conservation & Development Council; Titusville Council on the Arts; Titusville Renaissance, Inc.; Venango Area Chamber of Commerce – Be Here; Victorian City Art & Fram; and anonymous friends. For more details, see www.nwpagreenways.org.

This free public event was supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The PCA grant to Penn Soil RC&D is awarded via Erie Arts & Culture.