Art School

AFTER GRADUATING from the Tyler School of Art in 2007, Aaron Mannino found himself at a standstill. He had a lot of time, a lot of experience and a lot of vision — but no outlet to express it.   He then realized he could try to combine what he loves with a place he loves: the Shofuso Japanese House and Garden in Fairmount Park. Mannino had first come to the house for a tea ceremony during college, and he eventually realized a lot of his artistic ideas were stemming from things he had picked up on while there.

THE FIRST DAY of classes at the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School last fall had "kind of an Oprah moment," recalled Jason Corosanite. All 250 of the school's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders were gathered at its Broad and Oregon location. Each was presented with an iPad to use throughout the school year. "You could hear the shrieks for blocks," said Corosanite. Clearly, it's not every student who gets to start (as opposed to end) the school term with the chant "no more books.

Antiques/Art/Crafts 36th Annual Quilt Show Presented by Medford Historical Society. Boutique, museum shop & refreshments. Kirby's Mill & Museum, 275 Church Rd., Medford; www.medfordhistory.org/. 6/2. Arts in the Park Festival 50 juried artisans, live music, children's activities, hands-on arts & crafts, garden club plant sale, food, refreshments. Rain date 6/12. High School Park, High School Rd., Elkins Park. 6/3. 10 am-5 pm. Bucks County Designer House & Gardens Premier designers & landscapers revitalize an 1850s Dutch Colonial house, barn & pool into a timeless Bucks County estate.

The Wharton Esherick Museum's exhibition "Poplar Culture, the Celebration of a Tree" at Historic Yellow Springs is an inspired use of a towering tulip poplar that had to be cut down. The end result: the 75 artworks now on display, crafted from the tree that stood outside eminent woodworker Esherick's studio door on a wooded hill in Paoli. None of the works at Yellow Springs, which range from large furniture to a little spoon, tell the full story of what can be done when you can't save a tree.

HARRISBURG — State-owned colleges and universities confront crushing cuts in state funding. Students face higher tuition, along with hikes in interest rates for subsidized federal loans. Meanwhile, private liberal-arts schools are holding their ground, even growing. Dickinson College is the latest to announce a major expansion. Projects totaling $46 million make up the school's largest upgrade plan. It seems an astonishing outlay, especially now. Higher education increasingly is perceived as an extravagance.

Haddonfield artist Natalie Italiano is painting a documentary. Her "100 Portraits of American Teenagers" is a kinetic collection of close-ups - on canvas and online - of local high school students. "I plan to do a gallery show and a book as well," says Italiano, 57, whose subjects also write about themselves. Their musings, and digital images of her portraits, can be seen at www.natalieitaliano.blogspot.com . I met Italiano at Repenning Fine Arts in Audubon, a school and studio that has supported the project since she started it in September 2010.

Stella Elkins was a lucky bride. For her spring wedding to George F. Tyler in 1905, her parents built her a cottage in their apple orchard in Elkins Park. A 50-room cottage. Named Georgian Terrace, it was designed by Horace Trumbauer, architect to Philadelphia's Gilded Age potentates. Mom and Dad - Stella and George Elkins - lived next door at Chelten House, a stone-and-timber estate also by Trumbauer. Grandfather William L. Elkins, a onetime grocer who smartly plowed his profits into oil, gasoline, streetcars, and railways, built an even more sublime Trumbauer creation, Elstowe Manor, just a robust croquet stroke away.

Temple University's latest art installation is drawing quite a few quizzical stares from students taking lunch breaks at the food trucks lining Norris Street. Against the crisp lines and white facade of the Tyler School of Art, a hut of mismatched wood and Plexiglas has become a gathering place for the university's most creative. Fortunately for the student who called it "ugly," the hut will be dismantled Saturday. For the students who've embraced its eccentric design, this week has meant an effort to keep it standing beyond the weekend, starting with a petition attached to the outside.

After she moved into the Beaumont at Bryn Mawr retirement community in its early days, Helen Stephens took into her hands the first repairs to a deteriorated organ there. "She climbed up into the organ loft," her son, Richard, recalled, "and handed down the pipes to strong men below. " Some of them had declined to go with her, he said, "the ceiling partly having fallen down. " But, her son said, "for the three or four years that project went on, she was one of the organizers.

THERE IS AN expanding genre of movies about women who can't remember the men who can't forget them. "Away From Her," "The Notebook," "Fifty First Dates," and now "The Vow," starring Channing Tatum as Leo, a man whose crash-victim wife Paige (Rachel McAdams) can't remember their four years of marriage - in fact, can't remember him at all. Her mnemonic clock has been reset to law school, when she was single, dating a rich guy (Scott Speedman), living happily as a pampered sorority girl.