In a Reading Eagle article titled “Amity Township artist paints a picture of Berks,” Ron Devlin muses that any list of things that define Berks County, Pa. would have to include “Pennsylvania Dutch delicacies like scrapple, ring bologna, shoofly pie and dippy eggs.”

But the list would also have to include “Luden’s Cough Drops, a 5th Avenue candy bar and Godiva chocolate” along with “Tom Sturgis Pretzels,” he writes.

“John Updike, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Rabbit, Run, and ’80s street artist Keith Haring—both grew up in Berks—are musts on the artistic list,” along with singer Taylor Swift, he says.

Have a look at what Amity Township artist Steve Scheuring thought defined Berks County enough to include in the 3×6′ painting he did as an homage.

“A stickler for detail,” Devlin writes, Scheuring bought every item in the collage and arranged them meticulously “in intricate patterns that tell a story.” He admits “the copy of Updike’s Rabbit, Run near the center of the painting is not an original first edition. It’s a library copy he bought online for $40, a fraction of what an original sells for.”

Scheuring’s Berk’s County “has been named one of the 10 finalists in International Artist Magazine’s Art Challenge 2017. A photo and an article appear in the magazine’s February issue.

Scheuring is a largely self-taught artist who has exhibited at Penn State Berks’ Freyberger Gallery, the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, and the Allentown Art Museum. The above photo is by Susan Keen of the Reading Eagle. Below is a photo of Scheuring by photographer Ben Hasty from the Eagle article “Steve Scheuring raises ordinary life to the level of art.”