With a clear passion and an inspired imagination, Ruth has been creating scenic photography in Bucks County since jumping ship from the pharmaceutical industry. Though she is not the first to make that transition, she definitely feels it has been a calling. “From Pharma to Photos” begins to describe the journey that took Ruth from being inside corporate America to being inside the lens of a camera. 

With several artists in the family, Ruth started exploring her creative side several years ago. Her mother was a charcoal artist; her great grandfather was a sculptor in Paris; an aunt was an oil painter; her cousin does watercolor; and there are also musicians in the family. Ruth always enjoyed looking at art and found herself thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool to be a photographer?” She couldn’t quite imagine it though, partially due to the high cost of equipment and film at the time. Once digital technology became the mainstay, it became affordable to give it a try. She hasn’t looked back since.

Ruth’s work is both beautiful and elegant, and though there is no question that her pieces are photographic, people occasionally ask if they are paintings. This seems to genuinely please Ruth, as it, perhaps, offers some mystery to her technique. Ruth’s photography is a reflection of the surroundings she calls home. She has a unique ability to capture scenes, often returning to the same location multiple times to grasp color and light and translate it into the tranquil moods that collectors of her work find truly special.

A resident of Bucks County since 1986, Ruth got serious about photography in 2004. Mostly self taught, she learned by asking questions within the online photography community. People had very positive feedback to offer, commenting about her composition and style, and that was just the beginning. She continued to hone her skills and got more involved with one particular community: bytephoto.com, which she and her husband, Steve, eventually purchased and are now expanding. At 8,000 members strong, bytephoto.com is positioned as a preeminent online source for the photography community at large.

In November 2007, the coincidences were staring Ruth straight in the eye. She got laid off from work the same day that her Nikon D-300 arrived in the mail—the camera that she had been wanting for some time. To drive the point home even more, a couple of days prior to that, she saw a beautiful scene while driving, but she had to get to work and couldn’t stop. She thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could be a full-time photographer?” Two days later, she was laid off. “I took that as a good omen that this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Ruth’s customers come from art shows, Google searches, and gallery exhibits, including The Delaware River Gallery in Yardley (www.delawarerivergallery.com). She has won many awards, including awards from the Sellersville Gallery of the Arts, Lansdale Festival of the Arts, Peddler’s Village Fine Arts, and the Prallsville Mill’s Images of the Mill show, among others. Her work is being licensed in puzzles and calendars, and she has been featured in many publications over the last several years.

Ruth gives back to the community through donations of her photography to places like The Michener Art Museum Senior Artist initiative, CB Cares, and the Bucks County Designer House. Recently, she was the featured artist at TYLER TASTING at Buck County Community College, an event to raise money for upkeep of the Tyler Mansion. She was asked to photograph the mansion in all four seasons, and she then took those photographs and created one photograph for the event. The opportunity arose through the Countryside Gallery in Newtown, PA, where Ruth’s work is displayed. Owner, Barbara Wolfe—who also provides framing for the event—handles artist selection, and she chose Ruth as the first photographer to be represented.

Though her heart is in Bucks County, Ruth and Steve often take trips in their motor home, which also doubles as a lounge during weekend-long shows. She is most appreciative of Steve’s support, both in front of and behind the scenes. Ruth admits that she may not be making the same kind of living that she was in pharmaceuticals, but she’s happier following her passion and wouldn’t have it any other way. Clearly, she epitomizes what can happen with positive thinking and putting one’s thoughts “out there.” In fact, she even confessed that she would occasionally flip through the pages of Bucks County Woman magazine and think, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could be in this magazine?” Well, Ruth, be careful what you wish for; who knows what is next! 

www.reflectionsbyruth.com

Story by LisaBeth Weber

Ask Materese Roche a question about her painting, and you’ll get a thoughtful but sure answer—there are no “I don’t knows” from her. And no matter what your query, at some point, she will give credit to her classical training and the vast freedom its discipline allows her to experience at her easel.

As the featured artist for the 17th Annual Galaxy Art Show & Sale, taking place this November 4 through 7, at the Bucks County Courthouse, Roche will exhibit a wide selection of her oils—both still-lifes and landscapes. All of the proceeds from the show and sale, presented by First Federal of Bucks County, benefit Network of Victim Assistance (NOVA) and its many programs.

“When I do a painting, it’s sort of in a series of stages, starting with the moment of inspiration when I say ‘I have to capture that,’” says Roche. “There’s that emotional response. Then I swing back to a little more right brain and a long period of analysis. Then, there’s a point where I just break free. All the back work is done, and now I know it’s going to work. It’s an almost meditative state—some people would call it ‘communion.’ For me, it’s where all the creative freedom flows.

“About a year ago, I jumped off and experimented with abstract work. I got a very good response to it. But I realized I couldn’t get to it without laying out the classical foundation first—the backbone of understanding drawing and basic color theory.”

Into art, out of art, and back in for good
“I’ve painted and drawn since I was a kid,” says Roche. “It’s really something I’ve done as long as I can remember—I used to wake [up] in the middle of the night because I had to paint.”

And so Materese (pronounced “Mah-treese” to rhyme with “Patrice”) studied art at Temple University.  But she “chickened out” after one semester and ended up with an undergrad degree in psychology. Before she knew it, she found herself entrenched in a business career—on in which she was far too successful to just walk away.

And then September 11 changed things dramatically. Her job in finance for GMAC simply didn’t hold the appeal it once had. Art, less patient this time around, began to shake things up.

“Right after 9/11, I dove right back into painting again, seriously and very intensely,” she explains. “I couldn’t not do it.”

After studying with esteemed local artists, including Frank Arcuri, Niko Chocheli, and Linda Guenste, it was actually a layoff from GMAC that lifted Roche out of her business career and encouraged her to follow her artistic path without reservation. She immediately began classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where she fell under the spell of several teachers who had studied in Italy.

“They taught me how to paint realistically through abstraction. A big part of that was removing all my preconceived notions of what I thought something looked like: drilling down to what was really there, what is the truth of this thing. It changed everything for me.

“The most dramatic impact came from my PAFA classes with Peter Van Dyck.” Van Dyck is an American classical painter who studied at Wesleyan University and the renowned Florence Academy of Art. “He changed the way I approached drawing, the way I approached painting.”

And while Roche is thrilled with the direction her life has taken in bringing her back to her painting full time, she doesn’t begrudge the time spent in the financial field. It gave her a solid grounding in business that allows her to fully engage in her art—and support herself.   

Now a successful painter, she is the first to admit that this career, like any business, is also “a lot about relationship building, maintaining contacts, being professional.”

Connecting, teaching, learning, doing
Besides painting and exhibiting her own work, Roche teaches: “Next to sitting down in front of my own canvas, it’s one of the most fulfilling things I do.

“Because I’m classically trained, I teach a lot of standard classical approaches, such as proportion and quality of line. But my goal is to get my students to go beyond their preconceived notions of what is really underneath. In many ways, I’m guiding them along to find their own means of expression. When it clicks, it’s wonderful.”

Although Roche’s “absolute favorite subject” is the human figure, she admits that landscape work sells better in this region. Her style has been evolving over the last few years so that her representational landscapes are beginning to show a “more abstract influence.”

“My favorite part of that is doing the sky. [I think,] ‘I can feel the air moving in this one. Good, now I can move forward.’ It’s hard to wrap your brain around what Nature does; I feel a strong need to capture that because my reaction is so strong.”

She finds painting to be “a very sensuous process,” full of feeling. When she does small studies out in the field to convert into a larger image back in the studio, her notes include whether it was cool or warm, how the air felt, what her emotions were.

“Every time I walk out into the field or into my studio, I think that technically I know how to do this. But I have to get into that emotional state where I can take facts and make them into something that is more true than reality. Without that, we get a picture, not a painting.

“Oil is such a sensual, tactile medium,” she enthuses. “You can dive in and really have fun with the paint. In that final process where I let go and there’s that creative freedom, there’s also an incredible connection to life. That’s very important to me.”

Materese Roche is represented by Artists’ Gallery at 18 Bridge Street, Lambertville, NJ 08530, www.lambertvillearts.com. For more information on the artist, visit www.GhostwoodStudio.com.

By Anne Biggs

Your medical doctor comes into her waiting room, settles herself at the piano, and begins to play a soaring and enchanting song that soothes you deeper into your chair and causes a tingle to run up the back of your neck.

No, this is not your average doctor appointment. It isn’t even the usual treatment dispensed by holistic practitioner Deborah Bernstein, MD, in her Lahaska office. But for several months this spring, it was a way for Debbie Bernstein the pianist to practice the piece she had composed and would be performing with the Central Bucks West High School Chamber Choir on May 27. And her patients loved it.

“Cherish Our Earth,” music and lyrics by Deborah Bernstein, grew out of the composer’s deep desire to bring people together to heal the environment.

“We have this planet in common,” she explains, “and we’ve come to a point where we need to be there, as a people, for the Earth.” She wrote the piece a year or more ago, and then “just felt the need to put lyrics to it.” An improvisational musician, Bernstein typically allows a composition to be a free-flowing collaboration between her musical instincts and the musical instrument, building on it each time she plays it. Except for the addition of lyrics, “Cherish Our Earth” was no different, initially.

However, what began as a wish to share something special with her older daughter, Jennifer, in her final year of high school quickly took Bernstein down a path she had not quite anticipated. Because Jen sang in Dr. Joseph Ohrt’s Chamber Choir at Central Bucks West, Bernstein was aware that Ohrt believed in exposing his students to different composers and a variety of music.

“I approached him with the idea of using ‘Cherish Our Earth’ in the spring concert,” she recalls. “I played it for him. He asked if I’d written it down and if it had four-part harmony.” She hadn’t, of course. “So I took a while to do that, and I presented it to him. Dr. Ohrt was kind enough to make some changes that he felt would make it sound better for the choir, and he put me in the concert.

“It was somewhat unexpected and miraculous,” she says, her surprise still apparent weeks after the successful and well-received musical performance.

The healing path of medicine
When it came to her career in medicine, Bernstein, who lives in Doylestown with her husband, Paul Weinstein, and daughters, Jennifer and Stephanie Weinstein, knew she was interested in a more natural approach. Searching for the best route to communicate that, she earned a Master’s degree in Bio-Nutrition and became board-certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

“My dad had early-on health conditions. His attitude and how he took on changes to improve his health inspired me,” she says of her earliest influences. “At the time, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation was more holistically oriented [than other choices I could have made]. I felt the MD would give me more credibility and enable me to affect people in a more meaningful way.”

Bernstein is dedicated to seeking the root cause of her patient’s health issues, a course she considers one of her strengths. “Rather than looking at a problem in isolation, I try to look at the whole picture and get to the underlying cause. Then I’ll suggest changes in diet, lifestyle, exercise; nutritional and herbal supplementation; stress management techniques; or homeopathic treatments…as well as referring patients to specialists I respect who provide energy work, counseling, chiropractic, massage and more.”

She believes in what her father demonstrated: people can make changes that improve their health and quality of life. Her “ideal patients” are those who are “motivated to help themselves, interested in treating conditions from a natural perspective, and willing to make lifestyle changes that will benefit their health and well-being.”

The healing path of music
As a child, Bernstein took piano lessons. “But I was always much more oriented to playing by ear, which made lessons challenging. ‘That’s very nice, but it’s not on the page,’ my teacher would say. So my sight reading is not great.

“I started composing probably in my early teens, and I played and sang at that time.” She played much less in college, but picked it up again when in medical school. Right after med school, around 1989, she recorded her first album. Her husband has written a couple of plays, for which she wrote all the music, and these were performed at Buckingham Friends School. The family-oriented fare, with parts for children and adults, was a nice way to combine their talents.

With a range of musical styles that interest her, Bernstein mentions only one dislike: “nothing discordant. I like beauty in general, nature, my gardens, Ravel, Debussy, the Impressionists, Rachmaninoff, Dvořák, Big Bands, classical and some New Age, gospel, music that moves people.”

Her uplifting, anthem-like compositions and interpretations of others’ pieces express the poignancy, hope and joy that she feels in her own life experiences. “Sometimes it just comes through me,” she says. “I’ll sit at the piano and totally improvise; I may never play it again that way.”

Whenever there is a piano in the room, people who know Bernstein tend to expect an impromptu performance. “It’s a means of communication, of sharing, that I enjoy,” she says. She loves to play for her patients: for one who was unable to get to church, she played an uplifting, lyrical improvisation of “Amazing Grace” on Sunday mornings.

Joining the healing paths
“My commitment to the environment is related to my practice of medicine. Insults to our environment directly impact our food supply and our health and well-being. Sustainable farming practices, organic produce, grass-fed and free-range animals raised humanely are all better for the environment and at the same time much healthier for us to consume. 

“I just wish I had more time to get my music out to others. It is a powerful, inspiring tool to move people on important issues. It’s not just the environmental cause; it’s working together for something bigger than ourselves.”

So let’s all take a stand to remember
That we all are together and are one
That our planet is our most precious resource and
It’s here where we all started from
—from “Cherish Our Earth,” music and lyrics © 2010 Deborah Bernstein

If you are interested in Deborah Bernstein performing “Cherish Our Earth” for your related cause or initiative, please call her at her office, 215.794.7880.

To learn more about Deborah Bernstein, MD, and The Holistic Healing Center in Lahaska, visit her website: www.drbholisticmd.com.

Story by Anne Biggs

The psychedelic feeling is all there: The graceful bird, whose feathers flow into the curving lines of an unfurling roll of film and then fluidly ease into the waves of a woman’s wild hair; the peace symbols; the bright, buoyant blues and golds; that waving, surging, mystical aura. It’s a classic Bonnie Maclean 1960s poster. Only this one is brand new. It’s also the first one Maclean’s made in forty years.

Maclean is the famed artist who helped turn promotional rock band posters into high art during the 1960s. While advertising bands like Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, and The Doors for San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, she created ethereal illustrations that papered the town and were an emblem of the surging, sexy, sixties rock culture. Her memorable posters have since appeared in museums around the world, from Paris to Denver, including the Whitney Museum in New York City. Now, she is creating one of her signature posters for Lambertville’s Artists’ Visions Film Festival, an upcoming event featuring screenings and art experiences and running from July 22nd through July 25th. “It was the first time in forty years that I did one [of the posters],” said Maclean. “It was familiar and not familiar.”

For Maclean, it all started somewhat accidentally. Growing up in Philadelphia, Trenton and Yardley, she always dreamed of being an artist, but she convinced herself that it was just that: a dream. “We were middle class,” recalled Maclean. “It was not conceivable to be an artist.” She studied French at Pennsylvania State University and then moved to New York City, but said she found it too overwhelming. So she got on a bus and headed for San Francisco with no job and no plan. “I just got on a bus, and I went,” she said, matter-of-factly. It was 1964.

Maclean ended up living at a friend’s apartment and working as a secretary at Allis-Chalmers Equipment Manufacturing, a heavy machinery company. She ultimately married her boss, Bill Graham, and when he became interested in promoting local rock bands, Maclean went along with him. Graham became a legendary rock promoter, an icon of the 1960s music counterculture. When he needed a new poster-maker to promote his concerts, Graham turned to Maclean.  “I was an amateur,” she said. “But I plunged in.”

She picked up where other poster-makers left off—with whirling color palettes, peace symbols, and psychedelic images—but added her own personal touch. Her work is frequented by serenely beautiful faces, their gazes radiating a tranquil mellow that is oh-so-sixties. There are Medieval and Gothic images and cultural emblems like Totem poles—all done with her flawless illustrations. She was clearly influenced by what was going on at the time. “It was make love, not war, and I liked that,” she shared. “I didn’t care for the drugs part. But the women’s lib thing, I liked that, and I liked the music.” She made more than thirty posters from 1967 to 1971. They are still popular and collectible today, capturing an era, an aura, and a feeling that is pure 1960s rock.

While the posters were a large part of Maclean’s career, her life as an artist had, in many ways, just begun. Maclean and her husband split up, and while she was taking art classes in California, Maclean met painter, Jacques Fabert. Maclean and Fabert came to Buckingham, Pa., together in 1972, moving into a home and converting an adjacent barn into upstairs/downstairs art studios. They have been painting there together for thirty-eight years.

Maclean is upstairs. The bright, lofty space has large picture windows looking out on treetops and sky, and a lazily spinning ceiling fan perches at the apex of the peaked ceiling. Paintings are everywhere—stacked on high shelves, lining the walls, and still at work on easels. The air is dense with the smell of oil paint and turpentine, but Diego and Frieda, Maclean’s cats, don’t seem to mind at all.

Maclean has painted countless nudes—women in contemplative poses with candid, thoughtful faces that somehow make them seem simultaneously centered and lost. The paintings are layered, honest, and strong. The color palette is pure and organic. The sunlight on skin is captured exquisitely. Maclean is also inspired by nature, especially chickens and flowers. “Maybe I got tired of the color palate with all that flesh, so I shifted to chickens,” she said with a smile. “They’re colorful, cute, perky. They have zip. I like painting things that live. Flowers, fruit, animals, plants, people. Manmade things don’t appeal to me. They’re too far from nature.”

Her paintings are currently shown at Riverbank Arts, a gallery in Stockton, NJ. “Her work is incredible,” enthused Susan Roseman, the owner and curator there. “Her paintings have a sense about them, an air. You can feel the space about her work. It’s clean, simple, and beautiful.” Roseman discovered Maclean as a painter and then learned about her poster-making past. “I was a hippie, and it blew me away,” she laughed. “I think I had one of those posters… She’s so modest. I was like, ‘You were my idol.’”

And now Maclean is coming full circle, returning to posters. Her Artists’ Visions poster reveals many of her familiar themes—the prominent feature being a woman’s meditative face. “It’s beautiful,” said Sara Scully, Program Producer for the ACME Screening Room in Lambertville and the Artists’ Visions film festival. “I feel like the woman’s face and flowing hair and the bird and the film reel all connote life, creativity, and flowing ideas. It’s almost like a flowing river, and this is a river town—not to get too poetic about it.”

For Maclean, doing the poster was like reviving a dormant talent. Usually, she looks back at her sixties posters as “ancient history.” Now, that part of her has been reawakened. “When I paint, I paint what I see,” she said. “With this, I was making it up as I went along. I enjoyed that as a change. Now I wonder how I can incorporate that into my other work. I have no conclusions yet, but we’ll see.” Yet whether she is looking back or looking forward to her next work, Maclean will undoubtedly approach it with the same abundant talent and thoughtful eye she has always had. “I always wanted to be an artist,” she said. “It was something in me from who knows where.” Wherever it came from, the 1960s rock fans, the Fine Art fans, and now the Lambertville film fans are certainly glad it did come and that it stayed.

Story by Lauren Eckstein

Connect the dots of any artist’s career—indeed, any career—and you’re more likely to create a new constellation than a beeline. And just a constellation is drawn with lines that start and end at the same point, an artist’s path can come around to the spot from which it all began.

Sculptor Elizabeth Miller McCue recollects her childhood as a builder and avid model maker. Although always interested in drawing, painting and sculpture, after earning her Bachelor of Arts from Vassar she entered a postgraduate degree program in southeast Asian archeology at the University of London. When the career she’d envisioned was thwarted by the Vietnam War, she was fortunate to be recommended by one of her professors to coordinate the Asia Dance Project for the Rockefeller Foundation. In film, video and print, it documented Asian dance sources on the verge of extinction. With its flexible schedule, she could to enroll in art school where her training was devoted to life drawing and study of the masters.

“Then I was able to pursue my sculpture and art work,” says Miller McCue in her Yardley studio. With encouragement from her instructors, she continued to develop her visions through perception, examination and experience.

“I think it takes a long time, once you finish art school, to find your own voice,” she says. “Matisse said it takes about eight years after art school until you can walk into your studio and no longer hear your teachers’ voices. What do you want to say, and how do you want to say it? It’s a big thought process.”

Miller McCue says she found her voice about 25 years ago. Since then there have been more than three dozen awards and grants, seven regional solo exhibitions, and 14 commissioned site-specific works. A builder once again, she says she puts things together rather than cutting away material as a carver would.

“I usually cast my work in bronze, my preferred medium, and also fabricate in bronze wire. Bronze is a very rich material, a very flexible medium. You can assemble things, cast them, and then burn them out. It has more intrinsic beauty for me than steel or aluminum.”

The artist’s first public art commission was Ball of Leaves, a cast bronze sphere wrapped in leaves that Miller McCue patinated with a dense, blue-green finish. The sculpture, awarded the Environmental Sculpture Commission in 1994 for the Salomon Brothers Inc. headquarters at 7 World Trade Center, was destroyed September 11. What has survived is the smaller scale maquette in the artist’s own collection. Ball of Leaves, a cohesive composition suggesting growth and abundance, exists in counterpoint to her Ball of Thorns, No. 2, a painted cast bronze piece that evokes chaos barely held in check.

While Miller McCue independently explores her own ideas, “I like working with a site-specific focus.” Pursuing a commission “challenges you to go deeper into yourself than you might otherwise do.”

Many have seen Miller McCue’s Haystacks in the Field, No. 1, a Michener Art Museum temporary outdoor sculpture installation in 2000, sited on the grounds of the First National Bank of Newtown at Bridge Street and Route 202 in New Hope in 2006. Dramatic not only for their size and ingenuity, the of series of haystacks made of steel wool over painted steel armature weathered, exposing new colors and textures as the untreated steel wool disintegrated.

Miller McCue is currently working on a project for the Adkins Arboretum in Ridgeley, Md., creating her vision of large bronze screen dragonflies floating in ponds. Bronze wire comes into play for the Village Green Sculpture on the Green Bi-Annual Invitational Exhibition in Cashiers, N.C.: Nesting Ground features seven large nests to be installed in the flora around the grounds.

Looking ahead, she is interested in doing a linear series of more open, spatial structures that play with positive and negative space. “This is something I want to go back to soon, large linear structures for outside and smaller ones on a more intimate, gallery-sized scale.”

That means Miller McCue will soon be building again. 

Elizabeth Miller McCue is represented by Sidetracks Art Gallery in New Hope, Pa.; Highlands Art Gallery in Chester, N.J.; and art4business in Philadelphia.

She is a member of the Pennsylvania State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; the National Association of Women Artists in New York; Phi Beta Kappa; and a Founding Member of the Arts & Cultural Council of Bucks County. For more on the artist, visit www.ElizabethMcCue.com.

 Story by Anne Biggs

Arriving at Christine Figueroa’s historic farmhouse, it is at first difficult to figure out where, among the gathering of small, white barns, to find her. That is, until you hear the noise. It sounds like a cross between a careening locomotive and the deafening pounding a migraine might make if it suddenly became audible. BAM! BAM! BAM! Follow the cacophony, and that’s where you’ll find Figueroa.

Wearing a leather apron, and with a suede kerchief taming her wild auburn curls, Figueroa raises a metal hammer in her hand and slams it repeatedly, like a blaring metronome, on a small metal shape. Her worktable is an old tree stump, whose surface is marred by basin-like craters made from years of hammering. When she pauses from her labor, she carefully picks up the metal form, which now begins to resemble a graceful flower, and returns it to a blazing oven to heat it up again, so that she may pound it over and over.

Figueroa is an artisan blacksmith. She, along with her husband, Noel, operate Elm Grove Forge in Holicong, a blacksmith shop that specializes in unique decorative gates, railings, furniture, wall hangings, garden installations, and trellises that feature botanical designs. “We developed a look, which we call metal tapestries,” said Figueroa. “When we are commissioned, we visit a property and interpret the environment in metal. We are reinterpreting and weaving elements into a larger image, which becomes a tapestry of metal.”

For all the violence that goes into blacksmithing, Figueroa’s creations are surprisingly delicate. One large garden planter in their studio is generously adorned with metal irises, poppies, orchids and intricate pinecones. The craftsmanship is exquisite. And considering that each pinecone or flower takes about two to three hours to create, the work is clearly more passion than profession. “This is what I love,” said Figueroa. “I love that it’s tactile and you’re creating something beautiful by slamming it with a hammer. It’s a very precise art form, but you’re taking this hard piece of metal and through heat and brute force turning it into something elegant and fine.”

Figueroa grew up in Pennsylvania, Sweden and Belgium. Her first experience with blacksmithing came from her father, who did metal work as a hobby and taught his daughter to weld. Figueroa was hooked and started experimenting with metal sculpture as a teenager, but never had formal training. During her high school years in Europe she said she was struck by the permanence of metal work, especially in Paris, that was hundreds of years old yet still in near-perfect condition. “It’s the kind of art that endures,” she said. She later settled in Bucks County, near her mother’s family. She met her husband, a machinist by trade, when he was doing some work on her house. “I realized I was in love with him,” she said.  “So I told him and he said he was just waiting for me to realize it.” They married and started their blacksmith shop ten years ago.

Entering their shop is an exciting assault on the eyes. Dozens of hammers, metal tongs of every size, and countless metal pokers line the walls and tables. There are stolid, stocky anvils dating back to the 1700s, deer skulls hanging on the walls, and no heat. The rustic feel and the rows of large tools make it feel like part Colonial Williamsburg and part medieval dentist’s office. Yet for Figueroa, the anachronism is part of the appeal. “We work in an art form that is nearly extinct,” she said. “Every day we’re resurrecting an art form, preserving an art form.”

Preservation is, in fact, very important to Figueroa. She sits on the board of the Heritage Conservancy of Bucks County and believes strongly in protecting the historic wealth of this area. She and her husband also own and operate the Barley Sheaf Farm bed and breakfast, which they have lovingly restored. And if that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, she is also enduring teething… in triplicate. Figueroa has 8-month-old triplets and a 2-year-old toddler to keep her occupied when she’s not creating metal artwork, running a bed and breakfast, or preserving the county’s local heritage. Yet she seems to find a way to make it all work. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s three times the love and three times the heart. It’s exponentially more work and truly very exhausting, but we’re just very happy. I’m with my best friend and I’m in love with him, and we’re working together and there’s nothing better.”

At times, it feels hard to reconcile this mild-mannered mommy-and-me type, whose intelligent eyes peer from behind her square-rimmed glasses, with the woman who just moments ago was thrashing away, sparking metal on metal, with the force of an angry ogre. Yet all that physicality is just the process. “It does seem violent,” she said. “Actually, it’s creating something very delicate. It’s just an interesting path to get there.” It is this dichotomy that makes her all the more intriguing. Sure, she may be a mommy of four kids in diapers. But she is also the kind of girl who can say without reservation that she really knows how to make sparks fly (hammering hot steel will do that), regularly wears leather (as long as aprons and kerchiefs count) and is seriously into heavy metal.

For more information, visit: www.elmgroveforge.com.

Story by Lauren Eckstein