Marsha Neal Studio Longwood Community Tree Ornaments

Marsha is a multi media artist with a background in Entomology focusing in Ceramics, Jewelry Making and Fiber Art.

She thrives working in small scale and has always been fascinated by the smallest of things and their interactions (materials, ecosystems, cellular, colors, textures, etc).

After we accepted the offer to decorate one of the community trees for A Longwood Christmas, Marsha spoke with Valerie about making a tree topper in memory of Damon Betz to oversee the shop tree.

Words cannot express what an amazing person Damon was, and in time, we will have more information about his adventures in other blog posts. He was a co-founder of Bellefonte Arts along with Valerie White, worked at Longwood Gardens for 20 years, and was Valerie's Soulmate. At Longwood during the holidays, he could often be found in the ballroom where the pipe organs played and singalongs happened. It is fitting that the community trees have been located in that room in the past few years and his tree topper will be there again with the tree from the art shop he brought into being. His energy abounds.

Here is a little insight into the process of Marsha's ceramic beads (flowers from the garden are pressed into clay, fired and that becomes her texture plate, where she gets reverse impressions in more clay, then cuts out her pendants). A lot of pieces have a black underglaze brushed on then wiped off before hand painting the glaze, then firing in her kiln to Cone 5 (over 2232F). Jewelry making techniques are used to make the ornaments.

These little owl ornaments and the whimsical gnomes, santa, pickle, penguin and Krampus are something Marsha makes and teaches classses on every year.

Marsha also works part time at Sarafina Fiber Art where she has learned to wash and dye sheep curls for their customers. Inspired by the Longwood theme of Gems and Jeweltones for 2025 A Longwood Christmas, and from her many trips to Longwood Gardens, Marsha made a special batch of curls this summer that Charlese Phillips was able to spin into 32 yards of handspun art yarn to adorn the Bellefonte Arts Community tree as garland.

You can often find Marsha selling her work or teaching, volunteering at Bellefonte Arts or working at Sarafina Fiber Art.

You can view these beautiful ornaments on the Bellefonte Arts community tree at Longwood Gardens, during the annual A Longwood Christmas (Nov 21, 2025 through Jan 11, 2026). And you stop by Bellefonte Arts there is a good chance you will run into her and see her artwork. And if you sign up for one of her classes you get to join other creative people and make cool things and learn a lot.

Longwood Gardens is located at 1001 Longwood Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348.

Bellefonte Arts is located at 803 C Brandywine Blvd, Wilmington, DE 19809.