The Gettysburg Salon: Where Women Shape Culture Through Art, Dialogue, and Presence

By Patricia Green, MSW, MSPR, The Patricia Green Group

GETTYSBURG, Pa., Dec. 31, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Salons first emerged in 17th-century Paris as spaces where women—excluded from formal power—shaped culture through intellect, artistic expression, and conversation. These gatherings were not social clubs or performances, but incubators of ideas and influence. Women were valued not for titles or roles, but for insight, imagination, and presence. Centuries later, this lineage is finding renewed life in an unexpected yet fitting place: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Founded by Linda Toki, Karen Land, and Patricia Green, the Gettysburg Salon was not so much planned as recognized. Each founder had been independently imagining a gathering devoted to women's awakening through art, reflection, and dialogue. When the three met over coffee in Gettysburg, they realized what felt like coincidence was something more intentional.
"We were all asking the same question," said co-founder Karen Land. "Where do women go to explore heart, mind, and soul without hierarchy or judgment?"

Each founder brings a distinct perspective shaped by lived experience. Linda Toki, a visual artist and retired, award-winning graphic designer and photographer for the federal sector, grew up in a small Hungarian coal-mining town where girls were not encouraged to dream beyond the familiar. In retirement, she stepped fully into her calling—founding Gettysburg Goddesses, creating the Gettysburg Witches Walk, and working as an artist, teacher, tarot reader, and priestess. Her work is grounded in the belief that creative expression is essential to truth.

Karen Land, a theatre educator and director, bridges spiritual philosophy and performance through The Zen of Improvisational Acting, where presence, imagination, and authenticity converge. Known affectionately as "The Buddhist WooJew," she blends disciplined intellect with metaphysical insight, inviting women to trust lived experience and the power of deep listening.

Patricia Green, a public relations strategist, writer, and StoryWeaver, brings a lifelong commitment to bridge-building through narrative. Raised in segregated Richmond, Virginia, in a patriarchal household where early artistic dreams were deferred, she learned to navigate systems while holding fast to imagination. Her work centers on reclaiming voice—personal and collective—and creating spaces where stories become instruments of connection and healing.

Gettysburg lends the Salon its gravity. Known worldwide as the site where a decisive Civil War battle helped redefine American democracy, the town carries a legacy of reckoning, freedom, and unfinished becoming. Here, the Salon offers a different but related form of transformation—rooted not in conflict, but in connection.

Intentionally small, invitation-only, intergenerational, and multi-ethnic, the Gettysburg Salon brings together women from their twenties through their eighties. The guiding criterion is not profession or status, but a willingness to engage a timeless question: Who am I, beneath expectation?

Since its founding, the Salon has hosted three gatherings shaped by voices within the circle and invited guests. Among them was award-winning Pittsburgh fiber artist Tina Brewer, who guided participants in creating story quilts—transforming family memory into textile art. Another was Dr. Smitha Nair, an Indian physician who reclaimed an early calling to dance, teaching Indian movement traditions and actively shaping a retirement devoted to embodied expression.

Like the Parisian salons before it, the Gettysburg Salon is not an endpoint, but a beginning. Once defined by division, women now gather to imagine what freedom looks like when lived—and created—together.

SOURCE The Gettysburg Salon