Penny Knobel-Besa
Penny Knobel-Besa is a playwright, director, and producer: as well as an award winning photographer. In 1991 she was named Maryland Photographer of the Year by the Maryland Your Beautiful Program and received a national award from the Big Sister/Big Brother for her photography. Her photos often appear in the national award winning literary magazine, “Antietam Review”. She has been a press photographer and now enjoys creating unique senior class portraits, fine art wedding photography and teaching “The Art of Photography”.
After other regional awards and exhibitions she put aside photography to continue her theatre studies attending Yale University in 1992 for post graduate work. In 1994 she produced and directed a musical she had written Off-Broadway in New York which is now being considered for a film.
In 1995 she was approached by the Allegany County arts community to organize a Children’s Theatre Project in Cumberland which she did; establishing a theatre arts academy, producing plays at the Cumberland Theatre in 1995, the Palace Theatre in 1996 and at the old Embassy Theatre in 1997-98. In May 1998 having accomplished these goals she returned to photography.
To build new photographic bodies of work she drove 18,000 miles alone, camping across the United States and Canada to the Arctic Circle. “I was interviewing “Women in Laundromats” with the intention of writing a book called, “Dirty Laundry”. I couldn’t leave out other people I met, like Jack the trapper in Cold Foot, Alaska or the poet security guard in New Orleans. A Hollywood gas station attendant gave me a better title when he asked me earnestly, ‘Are you anybody I should know?’ I told him, “not yet” and thought it’s a great title for a book full of photographs of people that nobody knows!
Knobel-Besa prefers candid hand-held shooting and has recently converted to mostly digital photography. She has been known for 35 mm photographs that look like paintings that have not been computer enhanced or manipulated. Now of course with digital she enjoys creating art work from her photography, printing on canvas (giclee) and charcoal like drawings on watercolor paper. Sometimes she shoots from a moving vehicle and a past exhibition was entitled, “Drive By Shootings”. She shoots B & W social commentary, capturing people and signs with a quirky twist.
Past solo exhibits include; St. Paul’s, Austria, Maryland Ornithological Society at Wisp Resort, Hampshire County Arts Council, Romney, West Virginia, Historic Customs House in Chestertown, Maryland and is a founding member of the artist’s co-op Arts At Canal Place in Cumberland. Her most recent show was at Frostburg Museum.
She was selected as one of only eight “Women In The Arts” for a regional show for Washington County Arts Council. Presently her work can be seen at Rocky Gap Lodge & Resort in Western, Maryland, The Art Gallery in LaVale, Maryland and Arts At Canal Place in Cumberland, Garrett County Arts Council in Oakland, and at her own Sanctuary Studios.
In 2007 Penny was featured by Maryland Public Television and won First Place in the 2006 Allegany Arts Council’s Members Juried show against watercolors and oil paintings. She offers photo classes and week end workshops.