Posters

Please continue including the Eagles cheerleader posters in the Daily News. It is truly a wonderful feature. Larry D. Mast Leola, Pa.

Upper Moreland's primary election candidates and their supporters took their campaigns to the streets last Sunday, tacking up political posters on the poles and lawns of Ward 4. The red, white and blue posters urged voters to re-elect a Republican commissioner, Michael J. Weinrich, and the black and white posters introduced Dick Booth, who has been endorsed by the Republican Party. The effect was short-lived. By Monday morning, large numbers of the posters had been torn down.

Iwant to thank Gary Barbera for the early Christmas present he gave us by having the Daily News print a large poster-size photo of that gorgeous Eagles cheerleader in the paper of Oct. 30 for the readers. I can't buy a car from you, Gary, but I love your advertising. Can't wait for the rest! Ed Galing Hatboro

A year after closing his trendy Walnut Street toy store, Einstein Presents, Wilbur Pierce is running a new company that started with a fairly simple idea: making posters from the art on his walls. Pierce, an avid collector of rare art and posters, said the walls at Einstein Presents often garnered more attention than his toys. "For years people would come in and offer to buy art from me," he said. When the toy business did not prove profitable after 16 years, he finally gave in. Pierce is now chief executive officer of Buyenlarge.

A variety of sales in the next week will offer auction-goers a chance to bid on objects tied to entertainment and recreation. On Wednesday, the silver screen will be the inspiration for bidding at Freeman's, which will offer more than 160 lots of movie posters at an 11 a.m. sale at 1808 Chestnut St. Unfortunately for the serious collector, many of the posters, particularly those bundled up in multi-poster lots, were trimmed, thus leaving issue...

Back in the '60s, posters were trumpeted as art for the masses, a mass- produced affordable alternative to the paintings that only the elite could buy. But hang on to the right one for a few years and even a poster can sell for a four-figure price. That, at least, is likely to happen this month when Freeman/Fine Arts of Philadelphia Inc. offers a color French advertisement for a brand of absinthe at one of its periodic print sales. The framed 48-by-35 1/2-inch lithograph is likely to sell for $1,000 to $1,500.

The Winter Games in Turin are well under way, but some collectors are focusing on classic posters from the snowy fields of earlier Olympics - a time when skis were long and ice skaters wore more clothes. Vintage-poster connoisseurship presents some thorny problems. These days, colorful posters with interesting graphics are considered perfect for interiors, with countless framed reproductions of old travel and food designs available at decor stores. But in pretelevision days, posters were just outdoor advertisements, designed to last a few months, until a specific event or season was over.

There it was, an oasis in the desert. When She's Gotta Have It, Spike Lee's feature debut, burst onto the scene in 1986, it represented a bright, juicy mango amid the dull-as-cactus films of the day - those bang-bang male-bonding vehicles starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. She's Gotta Have It was a romantic comedy that promised something entirely different from 48 Hrs. and Stir Crazy, and its poster said as much, with a quartet of young, hip and beautiful black faces, the block letters of the title seemingly bouncing to their own beat, the colors as vibrant as kente cloth.

"Wanted" posters for two physicians who perform abortions have been pinned to windshields of suburban cars recently, alarming and angering abortion-rights activists. Similar posters were being distributed in Pensacola, Fla., before a physician there, Dr. David Gunn, was slain in March by an anti-abortion extremist. "This is not a game. This sort of thing is dangerous," said Joan Coombs, who heads Planned Parenthood. "When you start doing 'Wanted' posters, that's really psychological warfare.

Andrew Castrucci and the members of Bullet, a Lower East Side artists' collaborative he co-founded six years ago, believe in "art as a means of resistance. " The phrase is underlined in the foreword to Bullet's Your House Is Mine, a bound-in-lead book (weighing in at 18 pounds, 7 ounces) of silk-screen street posters that also line of the walls of an exhibit at the Print Club through June 22. Resistance to what? One of the posters is titled Democracy at Work. On it, New York artist David Wojnarowicz ticks off the things Bullet is against.

Perennial candidate Warren Bloom pulled the top ballot position for Philadelphia Traffic Court in Tuesday's primary. Which is troubling because, six years ago, Willie Singletary was first on the ballot and, despite being spectacularly unsuited, won the job. Bloom is the poster candidate for why voters are wretchedly served by this multicar crack-up of an institution. Nine former "judges" on this "court," including Singletary, were charged last fall with conspiracy and fraud for fixing tickets.

Ursula Augustine has big dreams; make that universe-size dreams. The Philadelphia makeup artist wants to grow her business - internationally. She wants to win professional awards - as in an Academy Award. She wants to meet certain people - Muhammad Ali, Michelle Obama, Motown's etiquette queen Maxine Powell, to name a few. On that last one? Mission accomplished. On Saturday, Augustine shared the stage with Powell during a self-esteem/beauty workshop. Happy coincidence? Not according to Augustine.

If anyone out there has a giant (27-inch by 41-inch) original MGM-issued poster for the 1929 King Vidor film Hallelujah! , John Kisch would very much like to meet you. The director of A Separate Cinema, an archive of almost 35,000 posters, lobby cards, film stills, and graphic images chronicling the history of black cinema in America - from the Silent Era to the not-at-all-silent Tyler Perry - Kisch is still on the prowl, 40 years since he began...

LEMONT, Pa. - Helen Hargleroad made many gifts in a long life spent working in clay. On her potter's wheel, Hargleroad's fingers shaped pitchers and plates, birdhouses and bowls. Her popular handmade pieces brought joy to those who frequently shared them as presents over the past 40 years. But none of those gifts had more meaning than the four that were unwrapped Christmas morning. Hargleroad, who died in May at 89, left something special hidden for those who meant the most to her. Tucked in a box of her old tools sat four Advent candleholders, one each for her husband, Jack, and their three children.

"REAL HOUSEWIVES of New York City" cast member Ramona Singer signs bottles of her new wine, Ramona Red, at Canal's Bottle Stop (10 W. Route 70) in Marlton from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday. Last year, Singer launched her own line of pinot grigio, which can be found in Pennsylvania Wine & Spirits stores, which will also carry Ramona Red, priced around $14.99. Of course, Pennsylvania residents would buy them only at state stores and wouldn't dream of traveling to New Jersey to buy alcohol.

Mario Armond Zamparelli, 91, an internationally renowned artist who for nearly 20 years created the distinctive, often colorful logos, images, and posters for reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes' many companies, died Saturday of heart failure, his family said. He had homes in the Los Angeles suburbs of La Canada-Flintridge and San Marino, Calif. Mr. Zamparelli, who worked in numerous styles and forms, was an illustrator for major magazines and movie posters in the early 1950s when Hughes came looking for someone to design posters for his RKO Pictures' movies.

Collecting travel posters is as much about historical evaluation as it is about aesthetic appreciation. Certainly, the vivid colors and intricate designs make these posters visual masterpieces and a focal point for any room. But if you were at the Olympic Winter Games in Grenoble or honeymooned in Hawaii, posters featuring those places will ring more bells when you find them in the marketplace. There are some great examples that boost Pennsylvania - especially Philadelphia - on paper: The Philadelphia Sesquicentennial International Exposition in 1926 celebrated 150 years of American independence with a poster of the Liberty Bell against the American flag, "a very strong image," says Nicholas Lowry, who appraises posters for PBS's Antiques Roadshow and is the president of Swann Galleries in New York City.

Norah Jones and Brian Burton, the producer who is also known as Danger Mouse, recorded Jones' sterling new album, Little Broken Hearts, in Burton's Los Angeles studio. The album, which is Jones' best and most distinctive since her Grammy-grabbing, mega-selling debut, Come Away With Me, in 2002, conveys a coolly retro-pop feel touched with a hint of darkness, and even menace, which is surprising coming from the sweet, sultry, and sometimes soporific Jones, who plays the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Fairmount Park Thursday night.

MINNEAPOLIS - There was no use dancing around the subject for Charlie Manuel. The manager had presided over a dominant pitching staff in 2011, and with much of the same personnel returning in 2012, he envisioned something similar. "For our staff to be struggling," Manuel said Thursday, "that's kind of unexpected. " Granted, it was hard to expect the Phillies to post the same numbers as in 2011, when they allowed fewer runs per game than any Phillies team since 1917. But the starting staff had a 5.70 ERA in its previous 24 games entering Thursday.

It only took about a decade for the rally towel to become the Philadelphia sports giveaway of choice. Like all great Philadelphia ideas, it's a ripoff: In this case, we ripped off Pittsburgh and their famous yellow terrible towel. (Pittsburgh's terrible towel is a ripoff, too, of a regular towel.) Philadelphia rally towels are white, not yellow, and every local sports team has given them away. The earliest towel I have is the Dec. 31, 2000, Eagles' Wild Card playoff win over Tampa Bay. (This was so long ago one of the heroes of that game was Mike Mamula.)