May 26 was the opening day of Northampton’s three-day Paradise City Arts Festival, a twice-yearly showcase of fine art and contemporary crafts. This year, 260 artisans from 30 states displayed their creations — paintings, jewelry, fiberart, metalwork, glassware, leather goods, photography, and furniture — in spacious exhibition halls at the Three County Fairground off Route 9 in Northampton, MA.
Festival-goers browsed the booths, sampled international cuisine from Northampton’s diverse restaurants, and enjoyed New Orleans Jazz performances by Samirah Evans and Her Handsome Devils, and Charles Neville of Neville Brothers fame.
Carol Stefanik and Michael Condon of West Springfield, MA, visit the festival every year. “I come for the music and food,” says Condon. But for Stefanik, it’s all about the art. “I’m into jewelry and scarves,” she reveals. “The quality of the workmanship here is fabulous. There’s so much to see and to appreciate. You can just relax and walk around. All the artists are willing to talk to you. We love it.”
Stefanik and Condon purchased a walnut-and-sunken-maple letter opener made by Northampton artisan Ken Salem. The maple, explains Stefanik, was salvaged from a Canadian riverbottom. Stefanik values the fact that the artists are happy to do custom work, and says festivals are a great place to buy one-of-a-kind gifts.
Paradise City Arts was founded by local artists Geoffrey Post and Linda Horvitz Post in 1995 to provide a venue for artists and craftspeople to sell their work. The couple organizes four festivals a year, two in Northampton, and two in Marlborough, MA.
Exhibitor Peiliang Jin, a Shanghai-born watercolor artist, specializes in vibrant, nature-inspired watercolors that blend the artistic traditions of East and West. Now based in Queens, NY, Jin has been coming to the festival for seven years. He appreciates the diversity of art to be found at Paradise City, and the opportunity to network with other artists, meet potential new collectors, and make new friends.
Noting the economic challenges artists face, Jin believes it is important to balance artistic goals with business sense, and take advantage of the exposure offered by festivals. Ultimately, however, what drives him is the desire to convey through his dreamlike landscapes and playful dragons his deep love for the beauties of the natural world: “I make very colorful paintings for people to appreciate, to collect, and to see every day. I hope that I can bring my personal feelings with my painting to make people happy.”
Peter Muller of Guilford, VT, and Joe Peters of Chicopee, MA are glass-artists who, like Peiliang Jin, value the personal contact with the public that festivals offer. “It’s a nice way to get out there and get an immediate response to your new work,” says Muller. Peters adds, “It’s rewarding meeting the people that are going to own your artwork.”
Using a blowpipe and an oxy-propane torch, the pair collaborate to create graceful, exquisitely detailed glass sculptures, often with an aquatic theme, that reflect their love of nature and the whimsical. They are always eager to add to their considerable skills and develop new techniques, and they see festivals as a great opportunity to expand their repertoire. “When you come to a retail show like this with new work,” says Muller, “you’re getting that immediate public feedback on your new ideas and new processes, and you can see if something’s working and if people are interested in it.”
Muller continues, “It was actually a Paradise City show that was the first show we showed our collaborative work, and the response was so overwhelming it’s become most of what we do at this point.”
The collaboration, which Muller likens to the call and response of jazz music, allows the pair to create something together that neither one could make alone, catching the eye of collectors around the United States in the process. “We’ve done some public installations that have been really rewarding,” says Peters, referring to installations at children’s hospitals in Boston and Chicago. He is pleased their work is displayed in spaces where everybody can enjoy it.
Metal sculptor Robert Alan Hyde is another frequent visitor to Paradise City. In his welding studio in Washington, MA, he creates sculptures of animals and trees out of brass, steel, and copper rods. “I started working in clay,” he says, “and at the age of 20 I decided to work in steel, so I took a welding course and learned the basics of welding and it took off from there. I’ve been doing it for about 45 years.”
His work has a magical animate quality that is all the more impressive when he reveals that he works from his imagination not from sketches. “I work with both hands and take a steel rod and a welding torch, and I heat and soften the metal while bending at the same time with my left hand. My left hand does all the fashioning of the metal and I just go into a trance and I lay the metal on my visions.”
Hyde has exhibited at the Northampton and Marlborough shows for the past four years. This season, his life-size wolf sculpture “Lobo” was featured in the festival’s special exhibit. The theme of the festival and exhibit was “Wild Things” and to honor this, a silent auction benefitted the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society.
Pat Ford Yurkunas, Director of Development at Dakin, was on site throughout the festival. “The Posts, who run the show, adopted two of their cats from Dakin,” she explains, “and the theme of the show was “Wild Things”, so they thought they’d put that together and have us be the beneficiaries.”
This is the first time Dakin has been involved with the festival, and Yurkunas was delighted with the response. “People were really very generous. The artists donated the items. There was just an onslaught of donations coming in, and Dakin got 100% of the proceeds.” Dakin, with centers in Springfield and Leverett, provides animal services including sheltering, pet adoptions, spay and neuter clinics, and dog training classes. It relies solely on contributions to operate.
If you would like to make a donation to Dakin, information is available at http://www.dpvhs.org.
And if you missed this season’s Paradise City Arts Festival, don’t despair. The next festival in Northampton takes place over Columbus Day weekend, on October 6, 7, and 8. Visit http://www.paradisecityarts.com for more information.