Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer, with all of that season’s familiar yardsticks: beach trips, backyard barbecues, baseball and outdoor concerts.
And in the Valley, Memorial Day Weekend marks another tradition: the Paradise City Arts Festival.
Each year since 1995, the three-day event has brought some 250 artists of all types — sculptors, painters, furniture and jewelry makers, clothing designers, photographers — to the Three-County Fairgrounds in Northampton. It’s been a consistent mosaic, too, made up of local and regional artists and others from across the Northeast and much further afield.
Over the past 10 years, the festival’s founders and longtime co-directors, Northampton artists Linda and Geoffrey Post, have also added specially themed exhibits to the event, and this year is no exception. “Flower Power” is a nod to the joys of gardening and the consistent appeal of floral designs and images in a wide array of art, says Linda Post.
“A lot of our artists work with floral themes, and many of them are avid gardeners, too,” said Post, who has a green thumb herself.
And Post offers another suggestion — that art, over time, can blossom from an initial stray thought or creative impulse into a fully fledged work, just as a plant or flower grows from a tiny seed.
And with all the rain that’s fallen this spring, Post added with a laugh, “We have so many flowers coming up now, so the theme seems really appropriate.”
That special exhibit includes the work of about 35 artists who share what she calls the “magic of flowers” in varied mediums: paintings, photographs, glass art, ceramics, even furniture. Case in point is a “Delphinium Bed” by Tom Dahlke, a Maine furniture maker who has designed a four-poster bed in which the posts are topped with carved, painted blue delphiniums.
The exhibit, in building #2 at the festival, “gives artists an opportunity to be particularly creative and think outside the box,” said Post.
The arts festival, as in past years, offers three main exhibition buildings, all now connected by covered walkways, and a large festival tent under which a variety of food is available. Many artists offer workshops and demonstrations as well as items for sale.
Also on the schedule is live music from The O-Tones (swing, Motown and R&B), The Blend (jazz standards and classic pop), and The Jazz Divas (ballads, swing, bebop and blues, and tight harmonies).
Among several new or relatively new artists at the festival this year are a number from this region or other parts of Massachusetts:
Clothing designer Sandhya Garg, who was born in India, graduated from the London School of Fashion in 2011, and now works in Boston, has won attention from Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and other publications. Garg, who is making her debut at Paradise City, uses rich colors and floral designs in her work “that are just so vivid and beautiful,” said Post.
Also making his first appearance at the festival is Conway furniture maker Patrick Moriarty, who makes elegantly sculpted hardwood chairs. Post said she and her husband first saw his work at a another show and thought, “Maybe we can replace our dining set with this!”
Newcomer Tiffany DeAngelo of Southampton designs sculpted metal “treescapes” from wrapped wire, which she mounts on rocks, frames or various found objects. And Katherine McClelland of West Springfield, who first came to the festival last fall, uses wet and needle felting techniques to make colorful fabric paintings rich in detail and texture, Post says.
Exhibitors at Paradise City are also making their mark elsewhere: Post notes that jewelry designer Chihiro Makio of Northampton, a longtime festival participant, has just been named one of 20 nationwide “Jewelry Luminaries” by American Craft Magazine.
“Every artist here,” Post said, “has a story to tell. I think that’s the real appeal of the festival.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
The Paradise City Arts Festival takes place May 26-28 at the Three-County Fairgrounds in Northampton. For ticket prices, admission hours, and other information, visit festivals.paradisecityarts.com.