2018 Souvenir Plate Honoring
The Quaker Cinema
Auction in Tuscora Park at the Al Maloney Midway Stage Wednesday, July 4th @ 6:30 PM
Each year, the First Town Days Festival Committee selects a local landmark, event, organization, or person that has had a significant impact on our community and a place in its history, to honor through our commemorative souvenir plate. For the 2018 plate, we have chosen to honor the Quaker Theater for the significant place it holds in the history of New Philadelphia and the memories it has created in the hearts and minds of the residents of Tuscarawas County. This year's plate depicting the Quaker is the creation of local artist Jayne Swartzwelder of New Philadelphia. It is a watercolor painting of the Quaker Theatre as it would have appeared at the time it was opened in 1940. The "title" she has given to the painting and the plate is "Old Fashioned" which delivers us back to those days gone by when the Movies were in their Golden Age and the local Theatre was the place to be. It also has a more recent history with the Quaker showing the premier of the movie "Old Fashioned that opened in 2015 in the town where much of the movie was filmed. Our thanks go out to Jayne for providing this wonderful view of this grand old theater.
About the Artist...
Jayne Maxwell Swartzwelder is a multi-talented, multi-media artist, teacher, and mentor, from painting, drawing, sculpting, and every art medium imaginable. Jayne was born in Tuscarawas County but has traveled extensively throughout her life as a result of her artistic abilities. She studied as a third grader with Ether Keppler of Dover and later with Dr. Al Kieselbach and Pearl Gardner at Kent State. Jayne also studied with the nationally renowned Mrs. Sheng, a Chinese Artist brought to America by Frank Lloyd Wright as his assistant. She is well known for her murals, many of which were painted over a seventeen year period up and down the Florida Treasure Coast. She has painted over 1,500 murals in businesses, public libraries and schools, and in multi-million dollar homes in Florida and elsewhere. She served on the Board of the Tuscarawas County CVB for over ten years where some of her craft is still displayed including a number of "replicas" of local historic sites that she and the late Roy Huebner designed and built. Today she owns and operates the Factory Street Art and Pottery Gallery and Workshops in Sugarcreek where she also continues to teach. Be sure to stop in, enjoy her art, and say hello.