Music, visual arts, dance, puppetry, food, even a forum on banned books: They’re all on tap this weekend as two major art festivals open in South Hadley and Northampton.
In South Hadley, a new community event, Showcase South Hadley, features a wide range of events Oct. 7-8 that have been put together by a number of groups in town and other participants as a means to celebrate the arts as well as town spirit. And most notably, it’s all free.
Meanwhile, the Paradise City Arts Festival, now in its 30th year, returns to the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton for three days of exhibits and sales featuring work by painters, sculptors, photographers, furniture makers, clothing designers and more.
Here’s a look at both events.
Several years ago, South Hadley created a community block party, FallsFest, designed to bring people together in the Falls area, the oldest neighborhood in town. It became a popular annual event, with live music on two stages and other events, before the pandemic shut things down.
Now several groups — town government and school officials, the South Hadley Cultural Council, the nonprofit group Music and Arts South Hadley (MASH), volunteers and more — have created a new two-day festival that takes place in venues and locales all over town.
As Ira Brezinsky, a member of the steering committee for Showcase South Hadley, told the Gazette in late August, “The idea is to bring people from throughout the Valley to South Hadley to see what the town has to offer.”
“We’d like to make South Hadley a cultural destination and build on what we did with FallsFest,” Brezinsky said.
Some building on FallsFest has definitely taken place. There are are more than 40 events, indoors and outside, scheduled on Saturday and Sunday, beginning with discussion on a topic very much in the news: the continuing effort in some parts of the country to ban books from school and even public libraries.
A 10 a.m. talk on Saturday at Center Church will examine how book-banning can be addressed, led by a panel made up of South Hadley professionals involved with books, including Joan Grenier, owner of the Odyssey Bookshop.
Saturday’s other events, all taking place on or in the vicinity of the Town Common, include dance, comedy, and multiple music performers: the Young@Heart Chorus, the South Hadley Chorale, the Pioneer Valley Community Band, The Kevin Sharpe Group (jazz, funk, gospel, blues), and several others.
On Sunday, Oct. 8, events move mostly to the south of town, including the South Hadley Public Library, and include a jazz brunch at Iona’s Kitchen Banquet Room, as well as puppetry and other events for children.
All of this is free — but donations are gladly accepted. And it takes place regardless of rain, which is forecast for part of the weekend. As the festival website puts it, “We plan to dance regardless of weather.”
Except for a hiatus in 2020 and the spring of 2021, every Memorial Day and Columbus Day weekend for the last 30 years has witnessed 200-plus artists unpacking their wares at the Three County Fairgrounds for three days of exhibits.
This weekend, Oct. 7-9, some 220 artists have again set up shop there, among them a number making their first appearance at the festival, including Westhampton oil painter Logan Kirkpatrick, who specializes in waterscapes and cityscapes.
Kirkpatrick is one of a handful of artists who Paradise City Co-founder Linda Post has highlighted as the “Directors’ Picks” for this fall, noting that Kirkpatrick “thinks of the expressive buildings and ships often featured in her oil paintings as portraits, using colors and textures to shape their personalities and emotions.”
The artist’s paintings “fuse impressionism and abstract art, frequently paired with bold expressive color schemes,” Post writes in exhibit notes. “The graphic shapes of pastel-colored buildings, evoking a Mediterranean dream, reach for the sky. But the reflections are the key to her work.”
Post is also impressed with Brooklyn, New York jewelry maker Jinbi Park, a Korean artist who has also lived in Japan and whose work “would feel right at home in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef,” as her earrings, necklaces, and rings are inspired by the intricate structures of coral reefs.
As in past Paradise City festivals, a specially themed exhibit, “TWO x TWO,” will feature work by multiple artists, in this case artwork that naturally goes together or in some cases can be direct opposites.
There will also be a silent auction to benefit the Northampton Chamber of Commerce, and the festival’s 12,000-square-foot dining tent will feature a range of food and drink from local restaurants, as well as music from three different bands.
More information on tickets and visiting hours is available at festivals.paradisecityarts.com.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.