Artist, 15 paints street piano

The teenage artist who painted a street piano in Jim Thorpe used the mountains surrounding the town as inspiration.

Now the piano has a home where anyone can sit and take in those mountains while enjoying a tune.

The nonprofit ART­isaSHIP held a reception Wednesday to officially unveil a new street piano outside the Harry Packer Mansion in Jim Thorpe. The piano is available during the daytime hours to anyone who wants to play it.

“It’s for the young, it’s for the old, if you know how to play piano, you want to listen to piano, it’s there for the community to enjoy,” said Cheryl Rodger, president of ARTisaSHIP.

During the reception, the artist who painted the piano, 15-year-old Arielle Stabin, celebrated with family members and supporters of the arts. Meanwhile her sister, Skyler, a trained jazz pianist, showed the instrument’s potential.

Arielle Stabin is a visual arts student at the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts, and her parents own a gallery and restaurant in Jim Thorpe. She said it was an honor to have her work displayed at the mansion.

“I think it’s pretty cool to have something I did at such a famous historic site like this,” she said.

Street pianos can be found in parks and public spaces around the world. Rodger said the pianos encourage people to break out of the mundane routine of phones, and to inspire people to communicate and create.

“It’s made to jump start a conversation, jump start creativity between people and just give everybody a chance, whether it’s just a minute or two, to enjoy life for that day,” she said.

ARTisaSHIP is a nonprofit which strives to use arts to strengthen the community. The street piano project is their first project, and they hope to see it spread to other communities in Carbon County who want to use music to connect the community.

After the first location for the piano fell through, the nonprofit thought they would have to move it to another town. Luckily they found a home at the Harry Packer Mansion.

Patricia Handwerk, the mansion’s owner, said she supports the nonprofit’s mission and the street piano project.

“I think it’s great for the town. ARTisaSHIP is a blessing for Carbon County,” she said.

As part of the project, ARTisaSHIP wanted to find a young local artist who could practice their craft by painting the piano.

Stabin’s mom suggested to her that she reach out to the nonprofit, and they chose her for the job.

The piano was provided by the Northampton Piano Gallery. Over a few humid days in early September, Stabin and three classmates from the Lehigh Valley Charter School for the Arts painted it with acrylic paint.

She had never painted something as large as a piano, so having assistants helped to finish the job.

The abstract design for the piano was something different for Stabin, who prefers more realistic work using alcohol-based markers and oil paint.

But she embraced it, choosing nontraditional colors to give the piano a more artistic look.

“The red sky, the blue mountains, I think it was just fun to work with all the colors,” she said.

Stabin speaks like she’s been an artist for many years. It could be because art runs in her family. Her sister Skyler, who is only 16 herself, played jazz standards from memory.

Her parents operate Cafe Arielle and the Stabin Museum, where her father, the well-known artist Victor Stabin, displays his own paintings.

Her mother, Joan Morykin, said she enjoyed how Arielle combined the abstract and the realistic.

“Just looking at the mountains and the sunset with the actual fall foliage mountains in the background is stunning. We’re proud and excited for sure,” she said.

The piano will be available 11 a.m.-7 p.m. seven days a week, weather permitting. Rodger hopes to keep the piano up at the mansion until Christmas, depending on weather. They plan to tune the piano on a regular basis.

For more information about ARTisaSHIP, check out https://www.artisaship.org/ or search for ARTisaSHIP on Facebook.