The other day I was updating an old post, click here to see it, about a Fall 2017 visit to my Southwestern-Pennsylvania roots. The primary reason for the visit was the marriage of my grand-niece, Amanda and her groom, Ryan. Annyth and I were living in Merced, CA at the time. She couldn’t accompany me because she was attending a conference in Montreal, Canada. So I made the trip alone and stayed with my sister, Micki in Washington, PA. In addition to attending the wedding gatherings, I made several stops along Memory Lane. [Note: I discovered that Memory Lane has recently been widened and renamed, it’s new name, Memory Boulevard.] These stops included excursions to my hometown, Canonsburg, PA, a visit with Dave and Brenda, a tour of Sarris Candies, a stop at Rusty Gold Brewing, a Steelers-Bengals game at Heinz Field, and a pilgrimage to my alma mater, Washington & Jefferson College, in Washington, PA.

While I was on W&J’s campus on that cloudless afternoon in October, I sat down on the grass in front of Old Main, as I had done hundreds of times from 1974 to 1978, and contemplated the Washington Trust Building.

I recalled a time when I was sitting in the same spot with a friend and classmate also from Canonsburg, an art major named Sandra. We were both looking at and talking about the Washington Trust Building. So, I was a Spanish major, and at the time I was up to my ears in and in the middle of reading Don Quijote de La Mancha. I must have said something to the effect that, if Don Quijote was sitting next to us looking at the top part of the building, he just might have seen a threatening human-like figure the way he mistook the windmills of La Mancha for monstrous, evil giants.
That experience evidently stuck with Sandra, because in her senior art exhibit a year or so later she included the following piece, a 3D découpage/collage, entitled Longo’s Don Quijote:

Longo’s Don Quijote by Sandra McPeake

Sandra gave me that piece, and sadly it was damaged while in storage. Only the fond memory remains.

A few days after returning from that 2017 trip I commemorated this enchanted experience with the Washington Trust Building with the following iPad painting (see also the time-lapse, progress video below):

Washington Trust Building done in Procreate (click on image to enlarge)

Time-lapse progress video

A Celeste Van Kirk photo from the Observer Reporter showing the view from the Washington Trust Building looking back towards W&J’s campus, ie, the view from Longo’s Don Quijote!

Amand and Ryan’s wedding and Italian cookie table.

Sarris Candies production line.