PITTSTON — If there’s one thing Scott Linde enjoys, it’s art — so much so that all four floors of his office building’s hallways are filled with original art.
Linde, president of Linde Corporation Armstrong Road, has had his hand in art for the last 20 years. In 2005, he and his business partner, now deceased, brought artists from Turkey to Wilkes University.
“In 2005 at Wilkes, my partner brought his six or seven artists and I had six or seven local artists and our concept was, we bring them together, they’d paint in the morning and all week long, we would take them and show them the countryside,” Linde said. The idea was to let the artists be free to create art.”
Linde held an open house at his building Dec. 2 to display artwork titled Wabi-Sabi from Verve Vertu Art Studio in Dallas. Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese philosophy of perfectly imperfect. Verve Vertu Art Studio is developed in conjunction with the Deutsch Institute, an adaptive community recreation.
About 30 of the studio’s artists’ artwork lined the hallways at Linde, with the idea of promoting the arts of intellectual, physical and emotionally challenged individuals.
Linde International staged a few showings at the office building to date and plans to exhibit art shows four times per year, rotating the art for new works.
“We give our walls to do whatever they (artists) want to do,” Linde said. “It’s an exhibition that we sponsor but we don’t do anything with it other than provide the wine, cheese and fruit on a Sunday when we’re not busy.”
Linde enjoys the interaction with artists and the public during an open house.
“It keeps the art in the building changed and the people that do work here wouldn’t necessarily experience that kind of art because we’re a pipeline contractor,” he said.
Gwen Harleman, arts coordinator with Verve Vertu Art Studio, had her art students on display this time around.
“Leigh (Pawling) and I are friends and she thought it might be a nice idea to show our students,” Harleman said. Pawling is an artist and art coordinator at Linde where she also has her artwork on display.
“All the artwork by the students is primarily on display at the studio and for sale,” Harleman added. “It’s nice to get out into the community to showcase our work.”
Verve Vertu Art Studio is also open to the community to take workshops with in-house artists facilitating those workshops.
One such artist was on hand with her family to see the artwork by her fellow artists. Megan Howanitz, 22, of Shickshinny, specializes in fabric. She particularly loves horses and incorporates a horse theme into her work.
“I like doing fabric and I like to ride horses,” explained Howanitz who has been with the studio for just about six months and has made many friends while at the studio. “I liked all the people and how they make their artwork.”
Vic DeLuca, of Moosic, is no stranger to taking in the art at Linde. “I like to support the arts as much as I can,” he said. “Some of the artwork is pretty amazing, actually, very imaginative.”
