WAYNESBORO, Pa. – Gallery 50 hosts an Artist Talk with award-winning photographer, author and playwright Penny Knobel-Besa on Saturday, March 21 at 1:30 p.m. at 50 W. Main St. in downtown Waynesboro. Knobel-Besa will talk about her life in the arts as she reviews 12 of her photos, which are currently on display as part of Gallery 50’s “Faces and Places” exhibit. The talk is free and open to the public.
Knobel-Besa was recently awarded second place in the Washington County Fine Arts Museum’s 2025 Cumberland Valley Photography show in Hagerstown. Also in 2025, she was invited to show her photographs at the Chamber of Commerce in Hagerstown and at the Washington County Arts Council.
She was previously named “Maryland Photographer of the Year” and has shown her work from Maine to New Orleans — and even Vienna, Austria.
Originally from Baltimore, her background is in theater. In her hometown, she founded the Maryland Theatre Arts Company before she moved to her present home in Flintstone, Maryland. She has fond memories of Waynesboro as she was hired in the early 1990s by the Board of Education to direct a play as a fundraiser, “You Can’t Take It With You.”
She hopes that anyone who took part might drop by to say hello. She also has fond childhood memories of visiting Waynesboro from her family country home in Emmitsburg, Maryland, to see the large Christmas tree in the town square. She later envisioned it as the center illustration for her first book, “The Forgotten Bear.”
She published her second book, “Under Your Pillow,” based on a musical children’s play she wrote and directed Off-Broadway in New York, which explores the life story of the Tooth Fairy.
She has traveled extensively, photographing exotic Istanbul, Turkey, as well as Greece, South Africa, Great Britain, Zimbabwe and most of Europe. At age 55, she went on a solo journey, tent camping across the U.S. to Alaska. Along the way, she interviewed and photographed people from women in laundromats to a trapper at the Arctic Circle. She’s been published in many literary journals, most recently with covers in the Maryland Writers Association “Pen In Hand” journal.
Knobel-Besa welcomes visitors at her own gallery “Sanctuary Studios” with her husband, international artist Hilmar Gottesthal. She offers private sessions in “The Art of Photography” that includes a photographer’s scavenger hunt. More information about Knobel-Besa and her art can be found online at www.pkbphotos.com.
Knobel-Besa’s artwork and more of Gallery 50’s “Faces and Places” exhibit will be on display through April 18. Gallery 50 is open Fridays from 5-8 p.m. and Saturdays from 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. The exhibit is also available to browse and purchase on the gallery’s online shop at www.gallery50-aagw.square.site.
Gallery 50 is owned and operated by the Arts Alliance of Greater Waynesboro and spotlights fine art and high-quality crafts from local artists and artisans.
For more information, email [email protected] or visit www.artsalliancegw.org.
