By LUIS FIELDMAN
Artists from the Pioneer Valley and across the country will come together this weekend for The Paradise City Arts Festival at the Three Country Fairgrounds in Northampton.
From Oct. 8 to 10, nearly 250 painters, sculptors and fine craft makers from 22 states will convene for the 22nd annual festival that showcases artists’ works under three buildings and a tent at the grounds on Fair Street.
Founding director Linda Post and her husband, Geoffrey, both Northampton residents, worked together for 20 years to bring their fiber art to craft festivals around the country. Then, in 1995, they decided to start one of their own.
From their experience, Linda Post said, they formed strong opinions about what they did and did not like about these types of arts festivals.
“One thing we did not like was when the artists were not treated well,” she said in a phone interview last week. “They were taken for granted by promoters and we wanted to do events that were user friendly for the artist.”
Post said one of the reasons she decided to start this festival is because she wanted to make it as easy as possible for artists to show their work in an effective way.
“We create neighborhoods of artists whose work coordinates well with each other,” Post said.
She said her shows look different from other art shows because she pays special attention to the layout of where all the various types of art and artists go.
The festival’s layout is also designed to create an environment that helps the audience have an interesting experience as well, she said. For example, an artist’s booth of ceramic platters might be placed next to another artist’s booth whose coffee tables would compliment the plates nicely, Post said.
The festival’s organizers transform the equestrian arena of the fairgrounds to help deliver that experience. Nearly 70,000 square feet of wall-to-wall carpeting is rolled out on the dirt floor, decorative draperies are hung on the walls, and custom electricity is temporarily installed for each artist’s mini-gallery.
Post said another thing she did not like about other art shows she has attended in the past was the lack of quality food. So instead of typical convention center food such as hamburgers, hot dogs, and French fries, Post decided to do something else.
“Here we are in Northampton, we have these fabulous restaurants, so why not build a mini-food festival,” she said.
Chefs from restaurants in the local area prepare food under a 10,000-square-foot dining tent that “blows the artists away,” Post said. Attendees can expect sample food from Sierra Grille, Mama Iguana’s, Local Burger and India House, to name a few.
Also, a different band will occupy the dining tent every afternoon to provide accompanying jazz and world music.
There’s always something new at each festival — something audiences haven’t seen before, Post says. This time, for example, there will be a themed exhibit, “Transported: Trains, Planes and Automobiles,” at the festival, of artistic depictions on how humans have traveled throughout history. Everything from tiny wooden trucks, to colorful paintings of bicyclists, to sail boat drawings will be on display at this special exhibit.
Post says she hopes audiences will walk away with the stories behind the art they see.
“When they take something home, whether a coffee mug or a necklace, they’ll think, ‘I remember the person that made this and the work that went into it,’ ” Post said.
Emily Rosenfeld has been a part of The Paradise City Arts Festival since it began in 2001.
Rosenfeld, of Florence, says the festival is constantly bringing in new artists and new audiences. She credits the Posts for their success in attracting people from across the country as well as keeping things fresh year after year.
“They get a good mix so that there’s something for everyone,” Rosenfeld said in an interview at her studio in the Brushworks Arts and Industry in Florence. “They have a range of prices and products that make it really fun, and they support it with great food and music.”
Rosenfeld is a production jeweler who creates original pieces made from sterling silver or 14-karat gold that, she says, are small, affordable, but meaningful works with contemporary designs.
She says her prices range from a $28 key chain to a golden necklace for $150, but she hopes her crafts of talismans, bracelets and earrings hold some type of personal narrative for their eventual owners.
“The idea of making charm necklaces where people can tell a story from the charms they choose, that idea of a narrative is very inspiring to me,” Rosenfeld said. “When I’m designing charms, I’m thinking about how they can be combined to tell a beautiful story that looks good on, too.”
The charms Rosenfeld crafts to add to her necklaces or bracelets feature themes of family, botanical images, name initials, and symbols of joy and love, she said.
As an example, she points to a necklace she made recently. It’s a sterling silver one, with little charms in the middle that include one with someone’s name initials, an emerald birthstone and a pearly one, and another charm with a tiny “tree of life” engraved.
Rosenfeld said people can personalize her jewelry with these charms, and from it, hopefully create some deeper significance.
“I feel like my work is meaningful to people, whether for spiritual reasons or personal reasons,” she said.
In her booth at the festival, she said she has many real exchanges with people, and it’s one of the reasons she still enjoys participating after all these years.
“Its an amazing forum for creating friendships with customers.”
Every day, Marlene Rye says, she is inspired by the wooded scenery she sees around her when she’s out walking her springer spaniel, Potter.
October is Rye’s favorite month, and the fall foliage near her Easthampton home is the basis for the abstract portraits of trees she will display at The Paradise City Arts Festival this weekend.
This will be her first time participating.
Rye uses a colorful array of soft chalk pastels to make purposeful, deliberate marks on sandpaper-like sienna paper for vibrant, energetic works of art. She says she works mostly from the photographs she takes in the month of October as a way to remember what she felt initially. “I work from photographs I take but I depart from [them],” she said during a phone interview last week. “There’s a lot of trying to get in touch with my subject in terms of what it feels like to be in the woods, what the temperature is, what the air feels like.”
She has framed more than 40 pieces of tree portraits and a few sky portraits, something she has only recently started painting, to bring to the festival.
“The mark-making is very apparent and kind of frenzied — it’s not quiet,” Rye said. “And I play with lots of different types of marks to change that rhythm. I think of the drawings as being musical because of the way the mark is put down and it has to do with the energy.”
Rye moved in 2000 to Easthampton, where she works in her studio at the Paragon Arts Industry. She says she’s looking forward to sharing her work at the festival, and “having a lot of awesome conversations.”
“I think that when people know the story behind something they connect with your work more than just seeing a pretty picture on the wall,” she said. “It’s going to be like having an art opening for three days.”
