Falls Active Adults display their talents

When a bystander asked Atsuko McHale about the meaning of the Japanese calligraphy she had created, the artist smiled and translated: “Whenever you do anything, you do your best.”

That sounded like good advice from McHale, whose artwork was on display Friday morning at the Falls Active Adult Center, sponsored by the Area Agency on Aging for Luzerne/Wyoming counties.

And it seemed that McHale’s fellow seniors, who also enjoy spending time at the center, had taken that motto to heart.

Their arts and crafts were on display Friday, along with cookies and other refreshments for any art lovers who might visit that day.

“We have a lot of talented people here,” center director Twila Watkins said, noting she is grateful to Gina Rice for teaching Art in Education classes, to Diane Stizza for teaching watercolor and to Ida Ferguson for guiding the active adults in the making of crafts.

“This is pour painting. You don’t need a brush,” Ferguson said pointing to various goblets and jars that crafters had decorated simply by pouring the paint over them.

One pour-painted piece she had done herself was in the shape of two geese. It had once been a plain gray lawn ornament, she said as she draped bracelets around the necks of the geese to show off the hand-made jewelry.

The pour painting has become popular among folks at the center, Ferguson said. “They’ll come in and ask, ‘can we pour paint today?’ “

Here and there among the crafts were paintings of pears. “I set up my easel and showed (the group) step by step how to paint the picture,” watercolor teacher Diane Stizza said.

Other craft projects involved weaving fabric bracelets from colorful hair ties, fashioning flowers from fabric and making figurines from bottles, most of them water bottles.

The majority of the figurines looked like pint-size humans, but one was a long-eared rabbit and at least two were cats.

Being a cat lover with two feline friends — Bonnie and Clyde — at home, Pattie Gregorio of Harding naturally crafted a cat head for the top of her bottle.

The group also makes and donate items that can help someone in need, Ferguson said.

“I like to take a pillow sham, stuff it and sew it and donate it to Blue Chip,” she said, explaining that can be a bed for a dog or cat at the animal sanctuary.

Other craft projects are designed to brighten the lives of veterans, the homeless or seniors in assisted living.

The Falls Center for Active Adults is open 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. It is located on Route 92 in Falls, in a building that once housed the local elementary school.

“I was here for eight years,” Allen Keyes said, recalling his grade school days. “Fifth through eighth grade was on this side. First through fourth on the other side.”

Unlike most of the other early arrivals at the center on Friday, Keyes did not have art to display.

“I can paint if you give me a roller,” he said with a laugh.

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