Celebrating Bethlehem's Southside Culture
Give me Back my father, give me back my mother;Give back my elders;Give me my sons and daughters back. Give me back myself,Give back the human race, As long as this life lasts, this life,Give back peaceThat will never end. On April 11th, Keiin Yoshimura visited Touchstone Theater for her performance of Sakura, meaning “cherry…
Joe Lule, a lifetime Bethlehem resident, spent his late teenage years playing the guitar and singing on Bethlehem’s main street, trying to make a couple bucks here and there. Now, as a graduate of Lehigh’s Master of Arts program in Environmental Policy and City Planning, he continues to perform in Bethlehem. The Southside resident has…
My first spring in Bethlehem has been delightful: the flowering trees alone have made this one of the most beautiful springs I’ve ever experienced. After the Southside Arts & Music Festival, I’m even more excited for what summer in Bethlehem has to offer. Thanks to ArtsQuest, spring in Bethlehem signals not only the start of…
During the twenty years I’ve been on this earth, I’ve spent roughly eight of them knowing I was part of the LGBTQ+ community. Within those eight years, I’ve spent two of them feeling secure in my identity as gay. Finally, I’ve been openly out about sexuality for the last one and a half years of…
Seldom do we think of the little things in our daily lives. Sounds in particular, such as offhand remarks, unusual questions, overheard exclamations, and lingering phrases, bounce off the ear without a second thought. However, artist Martha Rich appears hyperconscious of these moments. Rich is a Philadelphia-based artist whose art primarily involves drawing, painting, and…
Printmaker Keith Garubba is one of the Banana Factory’s newest resident artists. Garubba currently teaches at the Baum School of Art, in the Allentown School District, and at Lehigh Carbon Community College. In addition, Garubba works for Durham Press as a printer. The Bethlehem artist completed his undergraduate degree at Keystone College and received a…
There’s no doubt that art has a sort of transformational quality—an ability to transport us to places we fondly miss and those we’ve always hoped to visit—and Linda Dubin Garfield’s art is certainly no exception. On view right now at ArtsQuest, her Japan series takes us to the other side of the world, capturing the…
From February 23rd to April 14th, the Banana Factory’s 9th Annual Hope & Healing Juried Art Show is on display in the Crayola Gallery. Students in the Lehigh Valley created the artwork for this exhibition, focusing on the themes of healing and comfort. Healing Through the Arts, a non-profit organization in Allentown, sponsored the art…
Reading a poem can be an individualistic experience. The imagined pitch of the narrator’s tone, the length of the pause at a carefully placed comma, the speed with which the lines flow from one into the next are all determined by our own voice as we consider the artful collection of lines on the page…
Every month, five to ten people gather at the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center to talk about books. More specifically, we meet to discuss LGBT memoirs, as one small part of the organization’s arts and culture initiatives. The Bradbury-Sullivan Center, as the only such LGBT-focused organization in the region, provides crucial support for LGBT members of…