Creative women will be the subject of a First Friday exhibit at the Lancaster Literary Guild.

Lebanon County artist Teri Traner, a creative woman herself, picked an eclectic group for her 17 works, among whom are included Virginia Woolf, Flannery O'Connor, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Frieda Kahlo, Georgia O'Keefe, Mata Hari, Annie Oakley, Janis Joplin, Emily Dickinson and a triptych of Mae West, Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe.

Traner, whose paintings and assemblages combine images, objects and words in unexpected and provocative ways to explore cultural icons and mythology, jumped at the chance to do the show when the guild called.

"I hadn't done portraits in a good while," Traner says.

Her portrait of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, for example, is made from a desk drawer and includes a photograph of Stein and Toklas walking their dog, a map of Paris, objects that refer to Paris, and two tiny chairs bearing images of the two women.

The exhibit will be on display at the guild, 113 N. Lime St., through Oct. 15. Receptions will be held Friday night from 5 to 9 and Oct. 1 from 5 to 9 p.m. Regular hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. or by appointment. See www.litguild.org for details.

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Over at the Isadore Gallery, 228 N. Prince St., woodcut prints by Maryland artist Max-Karl Winkler will be on display, along with some watercolors and drawings made in preparation for prints.

"All the landscapes derive from drawings and sketchings from trips I and my wife took," Winkler says, including visits to Paris, Florence, the Outer Banks, the Gulf Coast and west Texas.

Woodcut printing is a difficult medium, but "I like the challenge of producing a woodcut that captures the sense of light and atmosphere that's hard to render," Winkler says. The advantage is the ability to produce multiple images.

He uses between seven and 11 colors in his prints, and some of these are reduction woodcuts, in which the artist prints one color, cuts into the block, and prints again, repeating the process until the print is done. "That's why they call it a suicide woodcut," Winkler says. He also works in black-and-white, and frequently in unusual formats, such as a rectangle with a curved top or an unusually elongated frame.

Winkler, who worked as a scientific illustrator in the National Science Resource Center at the Smithsonian Institute and now teaches in the Smithsonian Associates Program, says

"I'm just an old-fashioned artist who likes to make an image that is identifiable, as a person or a landscape," Winkler says.

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The Christiane à Paris boutique, 136 N. Prince St., will be exhibiting the work of photographer Verena Huetteneder, "300 Moments in Photography," a project in which she took a photograph a day for a year. Inspired by the book "Half the Sky" and the importance of education, Huetteneder will use the proceeds from the show to sponsor school costs for a girl in a third world country, according to a press release.

A reception will be held tonight from 5 to 9. The exhibit runs through September.

Works by Lititz photographer Larry Lefever will be on display at the Liz Hess Gallery, 140 N. Prince St., as well as paintings by Liz Hess based on Lefever's photographs. Opening reception is tonight from 6 to 9, and the exhibit runs through September.

Phocus on Philly: Nicholas P. Santoleri's watercolors depict many historic landmarks of Philadelphia, including Independence Hall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Elfreth's Alley (the oldest continuously-occupied residential street in the U.S., according to a press release). His works will be on display at D&J Scott Galleries, 323 N. Queen St., beginning today and running through September.