At 50 years of age, Charlie Harr has spent nearly half a century with a paint brush in his hand. Just ask him.

“I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t creating something,” he says. “I teach art. I run painting events. I’m a full-time artist.”

His craft landed him a spot among the Pennsylvania artists tapped to paint a Liberty Bell replica, which is currently on display at Friends of Fulton County, 101 Lincoln Way West, McConnellsburg. Named “Our Town, Our Nation,” the bell features scenes of small-town life, including images of the county’s courthouse, local farmers and the area hospital.

Harr’s creation came together quickly, he says, noting he had only a weekend to illustrate a design draft and present it to the program’s committee members. “I really like working under pressure like that, so it was kind of cool,” says the artist, who opened Charlie’s Art & Soul Studio in McConnellsburg in 2014. “I had been training for this my whole life, and it turned out pretty much like I envisioned it would.”

His participation ranks high among his life’s artistic achievements.

“Everybody around town seems to really enjoy it,” he says, “and it’s kind of cool because when I drive past it, I always see someone taking a picture with it or of it.

“Now, I get messages from people who see other bells around the state,” he adds with a laugh. “It’s a really neat thing; we’re all like a family now.”

Some artists featured in the “Bells Across PA” program chose to use their designs to pay homage to the landscape that paints their counties. Monica Smatlak Liao chose to use her canvas to create a tourist map of Punxsutawney, the home of Punxsutawney Phil and the site of Groundhog Day celebrations.

“I wanted people to see the areas of interest around Punxsutawney,” she says, “and we needed to have Groundhog Day featured, too, so I thought, ‘Why don’t we do the different seasons of the year?’ So, as you go around the bell, you go through different parts of town and the different seasons.”

Liao, who currently lives in Allegheny County but is a former Punxsutawney resident, worked closely with borough Manager Bill Spencer to pick out the places to showcase on the bell, which can be found at the Punxsutawney Civic Center, 301 East Mahoning St. The replica features images of Christmas trees in Barclay Square, as well as scenes from the town’s Fourth of July festival. She also consulted with members of Punxsy’s historical society.

Liao says she worked on the bell about six hours a day for a month. Her routine of waking up with her morning cup of coffee, heading down to the basement and painting became such a highlight of her day that by the time she finished working on it, she missed the bell’s presence in her home.

“Bill just told me to go for it, so I did,” Liao remembers. “It was all just so much fun. I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t painting, so to be able to do this was such an honor.”

While Kathy Trexel Reed had known about the statewide bell project for months, she didn’t think she would actually create the one representing Somerset County.

“I asked two people who I admire and respect to submit their work,” she says. “When they chose not to and the county commissioners asked me to do it, I gave it very deep thought for a few days before agreeing.”

The 82-year-old’s specialty is paper-cutting, so part of her parameters for taking on the project was the assurance that she would be able to use her specific skills to create a design that would be much different from others across the Commonwealth. The glued paper designs featured on the bell, she says, represent Somerset County as the home of businesses, families and recreational activities.

Located at the Somerset County Annex Office Building, 300 North Center Ave., the bell features Uncle Sam riding across a county map on a penny farthing bike, Somerset’s famous covered bridges and the Tower of Voices at the Flight 93 National Memorial Park, a nod to 9/11 and the county’s role in that part of the nation’s history.

To accomplish the project, Reed, who returned to the area to retire, worked with a sign-making company that photographs art and transfers it onto vinyl material that can be wrapped around three-dimensional objects.

The result was one of Reed’s most cherished accomplishments.

“I wanted the various vignettes to be a tribute to the county and its citizens,” she says, “and I wanted to represent all of my county, which I dearly love. I told the committee when the piece was unveiled that it was a high point in my life in Somerset County, and I still believe that.”

When Robert Heinrich Jr. sat down to concoct a plan to potentially design and paint Sullivan County’s Liberty Bell replica, he thought about the nation’s five founding principles: equality, rights, liberty, opportunity and democracy.

“I wanted to base so much of what I did on our Founding Fathers’ five principles,” explains Heinrich, a member of Sullivan County REC. “They said if we follow those, our country should be OK, and I wanted to replicate that and honor those same things with this bell.”

It wasn’t a quick journey to land the job as Sullivan County’s bell artist. Heinrich, who was born and raised there, initially submitted an application in 2022. When he didn’t get a response for a couple years, he began to wonder if the bell project was even going to happen.

Then, after he received a call that he had been selected to paint the bell, he faced a new challenge: the limited window of time he had to complete the project. He had three months, from October to December 2025.

“At first, I didn’t think I could do it because I had to move some stuff around to find the time,” he says. “And then, when I got the bell in October, the weather wasn’t cooperating. If I would have been able to work on it outside, it would have been a lot easier, but we got it done, and it turned out all right.”

In addition to images that pay tribute to the Founding Fathers’ principles, the bell, which can be found at the Eagles Mere Inn, 29 Mary Ave., also features a fair share of keystones, a nod to Pennsylvania’s moniker as the Keystone State. Sullivan County’s heritage also played an important role in the artist’s vision.

“In our county, we have a lot of good heritage,” he says, “and I just wanted to replicate that and those principles on this bell.”

Growing up on a farm in the York County area, Andi Simpson was happy to lean into where she’s from with her bell’s design. And where she’s from includes farms, fields, valleys and hills that she believes are some of the most beautiful in Pennsylvania.

“I was a farm kid who didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life,” she says. “But I had some good professors in college and went down the graphic design/fine arts path and never looked back. This project was a perfect way to combine my history with my passion.”

She was required to submit three potential ideas for the bell; however, once she got started, Simpson used them only as a guide, opting instead to design and paint as she went along.

Because she couldn’t fit the bell up the steps that lead to her art studio, Simpson decided to make a sun room off the side of her house the bell’s home while she worked on it. Painting it while being surrounded by her plants and the light that trickled through the glass was an experience she called “amazing.”

The landscapes featured on the bell, which will eventually be located at the Brillhart Station along the York County Heritage Rail Trail, don’t just speak to her family’s history, but to the history of the Commonwealth, she notes. The beauty of Pennsylvania’s farmland, Simpson says, was too pure to pass up as she mulled the things she wanted to showcase. 

“I’ve worked on some pretty cool projects,” she says, “but this one is very special to me.”