Lillibridge Road, Wolf Run, Deer Creek, Bear's Cave- these were familiar places to Wendy in her growing years... picnics with family members high on a hill or down along Dodge Creek... where they could feel the crawfish squiggle between their toes and yes, play at battles with dried cow patties.

    Life, especially in the summer months, in the ancestral environs of Portville, New York was a continuing learning process - a joyful osmosis of sight, sound and aroma - be it fragrant lilies or just plain horse manure.  Because horses were available for hire the whole family would saddle up at times and enjoy the world.  It was possible to sight a fox on occasion or stir up a grouse or spy a quail cutting across a dark twisting road near the top of Lillibridge Hill.

    Wendy became ever more familiar with that high land of Portville which her father acquired in the 1930's.  For five decades, the hilltop beckoned Wendy and her husband Clive to visit when they could, which was at least for a few weeks each year.  These early weeks of vacation became four months of live "up Lillibridge" when Clive retired and when in 1971 she inherited the acreage which is now the Pfeiffer Nature Center.

    At home in Maryland, Wendy studies pottery making and life sculpture with several teachers.  She began yearly trips to the Southwest in 1981 to learn about the prehistoric inhabitants of Arizona and New Mexico, as well as to make contact with contemporary Native American potters.  With a friend in Portville, she was able to produce "sawdust fired" pieces in a process similar to traditional methods.

    Wendy moved permanently to the Olean area in 1992 after the death of her husband. She enjoyed her new friends and surroundings immensely and became involved in many local activities.  As a volunteer with the Quick Art Center at St. Bonaventure University, Wendy worked behind the scenes building and installing exhibits.  Her own work was exhibited there and at the Olean Public Library.  Wendy is regarded as the inspiration behind the formation in '97-'98 of the Olean Visual Arts Alliance.  She supported the formation of the new group with a small endowment to promote the arts, particularly in area schools.

    As Wendy walked the woods she would scout out sites with clay worthy of molding into small owls she would create and give as gifts. In her gardens she would set small clay human figures among the flowers, as if in a search for the proper scale and frame of reference.  She took from her reading and study a vision of conveying an experience of nature involving both scientific and artistic interpretation. She believed in the inherent value and aesthetics of quite immersion in a forest.

    I have found a poem that my sister had saved, written by Jean Bell Mosley  The first line reads:

        "Give me a woods to walk in and you can have all the tangible riches of a Kubla Khan."

    She often sat beneath her special great Eastern Hemlock for hours - perhaps contemplating a large yellow spider web- weaving her own thoughts and visions into the designs for her pottery and sculpture... and possibly catching the dream that would someday become the Pfeiffer Nature Center.

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