BridgePerspective
The Laurel Highlands in southwestern Pennsylvania may be Lindsay Ketterer Gates’ home now, but the seeds of her life there were planted in Bucks County. Her encouragement to pursue the arts, her passion for the natural world, her flair for the analytical and her unique perspective that sees things in a different way were all nurtured throughout her childhood in Dublin, Sellersville and Perkasie.
“I was always encouraged to look at how things had potential. I look at everything as potential art material. That comes from being around both of my parents,” Lindsay, 50, said. “My dad was really resourceful with using different things if we needed to repair something, like repurposing things. My mother was the same way, really good at looking at discarded furniture or other random materials and repurposing them for the home or making something artistic out of them. It was a natural way of me moving through the world.”
Lindsay’s mother Beverly taught art for 15 years at schools throughout the Pennridge School District while father Larry was a math teacher for 35 years at Doylestown’s Lenape Middle School in the Central Bucks School District. Growing up, there were outings to Lake Nockamixon for canoeing or kayaking and, when not on the water, Lindsay would dip into her stash of creative supplies. “Instead of playing video games, I was always making things,” the Sellersville Elementary School and Pennridge High School graduate said. “I remember having a giant garbage bag, a trash bag, full of scrap paper of different colors and sizes. I would spend the day cutting things apart, gluing things together, making all kinds of random assemblages and images and exploring that side of things, so I really feel like I was always an artist.”
The passions and pastimes forged in Bucks County has led the award-winning artist, whose work has been showcased across the globe, to the Touchstone Center for Crafts. Since 2018, Lindsay has been guiding the 230-acre creative paradise that sits 60 miles south of Pittsburgh as its executive director. “I always loved learning environments. I love nature and use nature as inspiration,” Lindsay, who was awarded the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in 2005 and the Smithsonian Craft Show Award for Excellence in 2003, said. “I always say craft schools in general bring together everything I love, which is art, nature and the building of community.”
Touchstone Center for Crafts, which was founded in 1972, offers immersive arts education for ages 18 and older, with additional programs and designated weeks for the younger set. Scholarships, residencies, internships and retreats open the campus to all types of artists while community events, tours and exhibitions let others take a peek behind the magic. The “crafts” in its name includes contemporary and experimental approaches to an array of disciplines, such as blacksmithing, ceramics, painting, drawing, mosaics, fiber arts, and more, for beginners and seasoned artists alike. Workshops are led by nationally known talents and can range from a few hours to several days with on-campus housing and a dining hall available to those participating in the latter.
The trek to Touchstone may seem a lengthy one for Bucks County residents, but the craft school nestled in the Laurel Highlands is just one jewel in a crown of many. Nearby are the architectural wonders of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, miles of cave passages in Laurel Caverns, history at Fort Necessity National Battlefield and the call of the wild at Ohioplye State Park, where Lindsay herself likes to hike and bike, just to name a few. “It's a beautiful area surrounded by great things,” Lindsay, who serves as vice chair of the board of directors for the destination marketing organization GO Laurel Highlands, said, adding, “Our campus is very peaceful and serene. We get a lot of artists who come and do two-week artist residencies just to be in the environment of our campus because it is so peaceful. You have that tranquility of it being in a rural, wooded setting with access to a lot of hiking and outdoor water sports like whitewater rafting and kayaking and all of that and then you have well-equipped studios. It's a really wonderful place to be. Anybody who comes to our campus, whether it's for an artist residency or a workshop, all they have to think about is being creative.”
Lindsay, who earned a bachelor’s degree in crafts/fibers in 1996 from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in Berks County and a Master of Business Administration in 2018 at Ramapo College of New Jersey, describes her own art on her website as “transforming mundane materials into something extraordinary.”
“I was always drawn to the idea of working with random materials. I loved going to hardware stores — I still do — buying things you could buy by the pound, like scoops of old washers and things like that. I would incorporate them into different art pieces,” Lindsay, whose work has been featured in numerous magazines, including on the cover of Metalsmith and in the pages of American Craft, Fiberarts, Fiber Art Now, Surface Design Journal, and Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, said. “I just see a shape and a surface texture. If I could layer a hundred of these together, what would that do? What would that look like? What kind of surface would that make? With my own artwork, I like the tediousness of figuring out how to make a structure work. That is kind of that side of the brain, the mathematical side of the brain.”
Lindsay’s work has crisscrossed not only the country but the globe, including in the permanent collection of theU.S. Embassy in Djibouti, as well as the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin and the Yale University Art Gallery in Connecticut. Lindsay, whose pieces were also featured in the books “Fiberarts Design Book 7” and “500 Baskets: A Celebration of the Basketmaker's Art” while she and her work were in the 2017 book “Making Good: An Inspirational Guide to Being an Artist Craftsman,” had her work on loan to the U.S. Embassy Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei Darussalam and in the national touring exhibition “Innovators and Legends: Generations in Textiles and Fibers” that showcased artists in the field of fiber art.
The artist herself travels to Bucks County several times a year, and it’s always a special trip. Topping her must list are visits to family (her father calls Perkasie home) and friends and to some of her favorite haunts, including the James A. Michener Art Museum, TileWorks and Fonthill Castle. Yet, Laurel Highlands is where she hangs her hat and, when not shaping the future of Touchstone, Lindsay is shaping her own haven, a 1939 log home, that was purchased two years ago. “That's been the most recent project, renovating this house and doing all of the gardening and the interior as well. It’s another creative avenue I guess,” Lindsay, who has three cats and a dog, all of them rescues, said. “I've really enjoyed doing it. Not that there haven't been some tears. Learning how to do tile and all of that. That's been really challenging, but rewarding.”
Taking something with decades of history behind it and bringing it into the future with creativity, skill and vision sounds an awful lot like Lindsay’s day job at Touchstone Center for Crafts, but don’t tell her that. “It doesn't feel like a job. I talk to so many people who are unhappy with what they do as a career. I never feel that way. Not that there aren't challenging days. It's not an easy thing to be doing, but I like the challenge of it. I like the people I work with. I like the team. I like interfacing with other arts administrators in the field,” Lindsay Ketterer Gates said. “I’m definitely excited about the future for Touchstone. We've spent the last six years making some great improvements. Touchstone is going really well and our audience is expanding, and we're working on expanding what we are offering to the community. I think we're just excited about the future in general.”
For more information about Touchstone Center for Crafts, 1049 Wharton Furnace Road, Farmington, or its upcoming events, call 724-329-1370, email info@touchstonecrafts.org or visit www.touchstonecrafts.org. For more information on Lindsay Ketterer Gates, visit www.lindsaykgates.com, or on the Laurel Highlands, visit www.golaurelhighlands.com.
Cynthia Marone is a freelance writer who lives in Philadelphia.