The Fresh Ground Coffee House is a free, low-key, public event, held once a month in the Willow Grove Bible Church.

The next coffee house will take place tonight, Jan. 27, from 8 p.m. – midnight.

Every month, a local visual and performance artist will be featured during the coffee house.

This month, Jeremiah Coyne, a Christian singer/songwriter from Manheim, PA, will perform original, contemporary music at the event; while Barbara Surick, an award-winning artist from Hatboro, will exhibit her artwork.

Surick will also be creating a water-color painting, live at the Fresh Ground Coffee House.

Surick has sketched and painted from childhood. She has designed needlepoint and rug canvases for a local distributor, and is well known in Hatboro for her watercolor paintings of the town. 

Originally working in oil and pastel she was forced to learn watercolor while undergoing an alternative treatment for cancer.

Her works have hung in Phillips Mill Art Show, The Woodmere Museum, The Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania (Confronting Cancer Thru Art).  

And also has been part of a traveling exhibit sponsored by Abelson and Taylor for Amgen’s show: “The Art and Science of Surviving Cancer.”  Her paintings are in several private and corporate collections both here and in Europe.

Locally her paintings are exhibited in the Chamber of Commerce offices. Penn Mutual Insurance Company and La Fontana Restaurant and other local restaurants, as well as Abington Bank.  She has participated in shows at Abington Memorial Hospital and the Fox Chase Cancer Center.

Barbara belongs to several local art leagues and regularly exhibits her work in art festivals and juried shows and has won awards locally and nationally. She also has had many one person shows, as well as being a participant in the “Miles of Mules” program .. her mule Merry-go-Mule resides at the Logan Inn in New Hope.

For the past 13 years Surick has taught watercolor classes at the Hatboro-Horsham Adult Evening School.  Teaching both beginners and advanced students.  The past February she added a 5 day work shop with children accompanied by a adult , Ages `6-12  at the Horsham Library.  She has been a guest speaker before the Women’s Auxiliary of Abington Memorial Hospital and the art classes at the Hatboro-Horsham Middle School, displaying her paintings and discussing the value of Art in overcoming health problems.

Surick is also an avid supporter of Hatboro’s Main Street Program since its inception, donating the use of her painting to help promote the Hatboro program.

Surick has continued teaching at the Adult Evening School classes and also teaches a program for seniors on Monday afternoons for Horsham Township.  This is considered a workshop and is open to all levels.  And during the summer she, along with her grandson, teaches an Art camp for children 6-12, also at Horsham Township.

She also continues painting private home portraits, along with people, animals, landscapes and flowers.  And just this spring she judged an art show for the Bux-mont Art League.  

She can be reached at bjsurick@verizon.net

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Information courtesy of Fresh Ground Coffee House.

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For more information, visit the Fresh Ground Coffee House Facebook.