Kati Sowiak, Newtown Friends Meeting member and graphic designer, will discuss the legacy of Edward Hicks, renowned Quaker folk artist and co-founder of Newtown Friends Meeting in 1815, at the adult class at historic Newtown Friends Meetinghouse at 219 Court Street, Sunday, April 10, at 9:45 a.m.
Kati Sowiak was a member of the small “Hicks Committee” at Newtown Quaker Meeting which secured the rights from the Abby Rockefeller Aldrich Museum in Colonial Williamsburg for Newtown Meeting to copy many of their original Hicks paintings for exhibit in the Newtown Meetinghouse.
In 2009, Kati also helped sponsor an art competition among Newtown elementary school children to draw their own “Peaceable Kingdom” paintings. Over 300 were received and exhibited in the Quaker Meetinghouse on Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Edward Hicks Day, April 26, 2009, proclaimed by Governor Edward Rendell. It said, in part:
Edward Hicks, 1780 – 1849, Quaker minister, coach painter, folk artist acclaimed for his paintings of “Peaceable Kingdoms,” and considered by many art historians to be America’s greatest and most influential folk artist, lived in Newtown most of his life, co-founded Newtown Friends (Quaker) Meeting in 1815 and is buried on its grounds….
A tradition Newtown Quaker Meeting has maintained since is that during Quaker Homecoming” over the Christmas Holidays, an 8” by 10” copy of a Hicks Peaceable Kingdom is given to each young adult member who turned 21 that year as “symbolic of their becoming adult members of the Newtown Quaker Meeting.”
Kati Sowiak has operated her own graphic design studio since 1991, with projects varying from corporate identity and record packaging to environmental graphics. Clients have included George School, The Peace Center, Newtown Library Company, the Philadelphia Zoo and Pearl S. Buck International.
Kati Sowiak is a founding member of Newtown Borough’s Recreation Board and led the team in the design and installation of the Peaceable Kingdom Playground, showcasing Newtown’s first public sculpture, “Homage to Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom.”
Ms. Sowiak is a graduate of Tyler School of Art, where she has taught classes in Graphic Design. Her work has been published in Art Directors’ Club of Philadelphia annuals; Print Magazine Annual; Print Casebooks 9, The Best in Environmental Graphics; and Noah’s Art, a book reviewing exemplary zoo graphics worldwide.
Newtown Friends Meeting co-founded by “Peaceable Kingdom” painter and Quaker minister, Edward Hicks, in 1815, is open to all who wish to attend. Regular First Day Education classes (Sunday School) for all ages begin at 9:45 a.m. and Meeting for Worship (in person or on zoom) begins at 11 a.m.