WAVERLY TWP. — In honor of National Women’s History Month, the Waverly Small Works Gallery at the Waverly Community House (Comm), 1115 N. Abington Road, has prepared a special exhibit featuring the works of four local women artists: Marylou Chibirka, Trudy Gerlach, Nuzhat Sultana Ibrahim and Pam Parsons. The women were invited by the gallery to display their work in celebration of women artists everywhere.

An opening reception for the exhibit, which will run through March 31, will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, March 16 in the South Wing of the Waverly Community House. Light refreshments will be served.

Chibirka, who resides on her family farm in Dalton where she was born, is a full-time professional portrait artist. She studied at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and has degrees in Painting and Art History. Since opening the Chibirka Gallery in 2007, designed and constructed by the artist, she has commissioned more than 400 portraits.

Her work is known by regional audiences from her solo exhibitions at the Everhart Museum, Lizza Gallery, Misericordia University, the Wyoming County Courthouse and federal building in Scranton, including many group shows. Most recently, her portraits were on exhibit at ARTWORKS at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Chibirka was awarded a one-person show by the 2008 NE Regional Exhibition.

Trudy Gerlach was born in Sayre, in 1941, and raised on a farm near New Era, to which she returned in 1985 after living in New York, Chicago, Norman, Oklahoma and El Paso, Texas.

Influenced in great part by her parents’ deep love of nature, her mother’s vocation as an artist, and her father’s interest in science, since her early 30s, she’s been increasingly absorbed in the natural world, art, and science. In the past few years, Gerlach’s interest has been focused on the anthracite (and social) history of the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valleys.

Ibrahim is from Bangladesh, a densely populated riverine country in South Asia and home to the world’s largest delta. She has been living in Northeast Pennsylvania for the past seven months with her husband, a Fulbright scholar at Keystone College.

In Bangladesh, she studied Human Resources at North South University, but has always had a lifelong attachment to art. She completed a semester in drawing and sketching at Keystone College and is determined to pursue her interest in the days to come.

Parsons is art department chair at Marywood University, where she teaches courses in drawing, painting, collage and art history survey. She earned a BFA in Painting from Boston University, and an MFA in Painting from Indiana University in Bloomington.

Parsons’ works in oil painting and collage derive much from her travels in northern Italy.

She is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and the F. Lammot Belin Arts Scholarship.

Her works are represented in private and public collections nationally, including the Sheldon Swope Art Museum and the Greater Lafayette Museum of Art in Indiana.

Works by area artists Pamela Parsons, (top left), Marylou Chibirka (top right), Trudy Gerlach (bottom left) and Nuzhat Sultana Ibrahim (bottom right) will be exhibited in the Waverly Small Works Gallery at the Waverly Community House through March 31, with an opening reception scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, March 16.
https://www.theabingtonjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/web1_ABJ-Comm-Show.jpg.optimal.jpgWorks by area artists Pamela Parsons, (top left), Marylou Chibirka (top right), Trudy Gerlach (bottom left) and Nuzhat Sultana Ibrahim (bottom right) will be exhibited in the Waverly Small Works Gallery at the Waverly Community House through March 31, with an opening reception scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, March 16. Submitted photo