Thursday, October 1, 2026
Patty Lane loves jelly beans — not to eat, but to make beautiful, colorful works of art.
Lane, 69, a security guard at the JCC in Plainview, grew up in Brooklyn and eventually got married and moved to Long Island, living in East Rockaway for the last three years. A retired postal worker, Lane decided to take on a part time job as a security guard. Always passionate about art and expressing her creativity, Lane has dabbled with just about every type of medium one can imagine, from snow to sand, clay, wood, beads and even canvas. “I left the womb with a pencil in my hand,” she joked.
Lane said that those around her at work are always inspiring her to embrace her talent and creativity. Her boss, Gayle Levy Drab is no different. Lane recalls Levy Drab encouraging to try creating out of jelly beans, since she had seen this type of artwork at Schneider’s Children’s Hospital and was sure this was something Lane could do. Lane had never heard of using this method before, and being a self-proclaimed perfectionist, she went over to take a look for herself. “I was really unsure how I could work with a medium such as this.”
Her husband, Lawrence, died several years ago, and Lane has four adult sons. Although he didn’t share Lane’s love of creativity, her husband certainly fostered it. It was he who built her own workshop in their yard, and it was fascinating to her husband and sons to see what creation Lane would come up with next.
Her first jelly bean project, a piece she calls “Infant Sea,” took her two months and 7,000 jelly beans to create. Working with a medium she was so unfamiliar with, it took her some time to sort out the logistics — where to get the jelly beans, what sort of canvas to use, how to attach them.
Lane found the jelly beans in a Cedarhurst candy store. “Jelly Bean only makes 50 colors,” she said, “which, as an artist is limiting.” That would not stop Patty though. She went out and tried to get every color possible. She doesn’t use plain old jelly beans though — she uses Jelly Belly brand because the smaller the jelly bean, she said, the more detail you get in the work of art.
