When Stephanie Wallendjack of South Hanover Township decided to take a ceramics class at HACC for those 65 and older, she never thought it would lead to her winning prestigious art awards in Florence, Italy.

Wallendjack had retired back in 2017, and after a lifetime of what she says was “left-brained” work (more logic-based versus right-brained people who are typically deemed more creative), she discovered she did have a creative side after all.

“I started working with hand-building objects, and my goal was never to make anything functional,” Wallendjack said. “So really it was just a way to express my creativity, which was a whole discovery in itself. I didn’t know I was creative; turns out I am.”

Wallendjack took Ceramics 1 and 2 for a full semester before switching to a program that

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