Last Thursday was Blob day for Town Tours and Village Walks in Historic Yellow Springs in Chester County, Pennsylvania. In 1952, a young film director-producer purchased the historic village of Yellow Springs in Chester Springs and set up studios here. Irvin (Shorty) Shortness Yeaworth, Jr. (bottom right), saw this location as ideal for the Christian and educational films that he was to make with his Good News Productions. He strayed from the strictly Christian movie-making path with 1957’s The Blob, starring Steve McQueen.  On our walk Thursday, a local actor portrayed Shorty and even Steve McQueen's double was there in order to tell the story of the making of The Blob. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts once taught classes here, and now the Chester Springs Studio (top right) carr... 07/14/2013

   Last night Historic Yellow Springs supporters led a tour of sites in the Chester County, Pennsylvania village which were important from 1917 to 1952, when the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts established the Country School for art students. Re-enactors portrayed such early artists and teachers as Daniel Garber (center), NC Wyeth, Albert Laessie (bottom), Roswell Weidner, and Arthur B. Carles, who taught here. D. Roy Miller was an early school director (top left corner), One of the revolutionary ideas was to copy the French "en plein air" outdoor painting, and even more revolutionary--they posed nude models outdoors (shielded by bamboo fencing, but local boys figured out how to peek). Surrounded by nature and in a landscape created with marshes and plantings, they worked and play... 08/03/2012