Gaithersburg Fine Arts Festival Draws Over 75 Artists

Artists from all over the East Coast gathered in the parking lot outside Macaroni Grill in the Washingtonian Center for the annual Gaithersburg Fine Arts Festival on June 25 and 26.

The festival featured over 75 booths with the work of painters, sculptors, metal workers, wood workers, glass artists, potters, photographers, fiber artists and jewelers from Maryland, Virginia, Washington, DC, North Carolina, Florida and Vermont, among others.

"I drove 15 hours to get here," said Kimberlee Forney of Burlington, Vermont. She made the trip to visit a friend and participate in the art festival. Forney, whose mother grew up in Gaithersburg and whose grandfather was an astronomer employed at the historic Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory, counts over 500 original acrylic paintings in what she describes as a her signature style.

"As I was painting a realistic portrait of Janis Joplin, an abstracted image of musicians came to my head. Ever since, I have been painting musicians, sheep, cows and couples in this new style. It makes people smile and laugh," said the Burlington artist who makes prints and bags from her original acrylic paintings.

Baltimore-based film photographer Bill Wierzalis keeps a dying art alive. He shoots film on a 40-year-old camera and develops his photographs in a darkroom.

"It's about spending more time with my art to make it my own," he said. "I pretty much know what I want before I click the shutter. I really stress composition because there's no close editing in Photoshop with this process."

Wierzalis's wife is from Reggio, Italy, and the artist has traveled the country far and wide to capture quaint waterfronts, cobblestone alleys, outdoor markets and rolling landscapes in Venice, Rome, Siciliy and other picturesque destinations that tell their own story.

Another Baltimore artist, Christos J. Palios, pays homage to the burgeoning art of digital photography and digital manipulation. He composes fisheye panoramics of aging urban artifacts and contemporary structures printing them at large scales.

When asked about how he chooses his subject matter, Palios referenced serendipity.

"Whatever I was to see personally, that's what ends up making it into my photographs," said the artist who takes frequent outings in search of his next piece of urban cultural landscape. "Retro Bus," an image of an abandoned 1970s bus, emerged from a trip to a junkyard in his native Greece and required 387 individual photographs to piece together.

Edward Loedding of Vermont began his career as an oil painter and then took his work into the digital medium. For many years, he created giclee prints of work by other artists, but now he focuses primarily on his own prints. He photographs flowers close-up and prints digital limited editions on a printer modified to accomodate twelve colors and pure pigment.

"I am essentially printing with paint," said Loedding who has titled his collection "Visual Choreography." "It's all about the dance of lights and shadows."

His prints are crisp and vibrant, and he can replicate them at any size up to 120 inches. Loedding still prints digital reproductions of about twelve other Vermont artists, including Forney's work.

An infinitely popular subject for artists, flowers offer many creative avenues. Erica Eriksdotter of Reston, Virginia converts bridal bouquets into original artwork.

"They are great as anniversary or wedding gifts," said the artist who is preparing to drop off her painting of the Crown Princess's bridal bouquet at the Royal Palace in Sweden, her native country.

Creating a pastiche of light and shadow, Nihal Kececi of Bethesda, often uses just a palette knife to apply oil paint to the canvas. Whether painting whirling dervishes, dramatic landscapes, or impressionistic figures, Kececi masks the known with the unknown and explores the transcendental. She is currently showing recent work at the Blueberry Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia through July 2011.

Jacobe Noonan of Northern Virginia takes a more direct approach to his acrylic paintings.

"Mine is simple. I paint objects from everyday life. Things at my house or anything that inspires me," said the artist who renders anything from coffee cups to wine glasses and oranges and pears from a real-life perspective.

Archie Smith traveled from North Carolina to lure visitors into his tent full of hand-crafted musical instruments by demonstrating how to play a bowed psaltery, which according to the artist gives access to each note in one location along its taught strings. Smith will return to the local area on October 15 and 16 for the Bethesda Row Festival.

Robert Friedenberg of Roundhill, Virginia explores an imaginary world through pen and ink illustrations.

"Some have called my work techno-primitivism," said Friedenberg. "But it basically comes out of my imagination. I love putting smaller pictures inside of bigger ones."

Friedenberg calls his business Not Wolf Productions after his dog, which is a shepherd husky malamute mix. Featured in many of the artist's detailed and whimsical illustrations, his dog is often mistaken for a wolf by the general public.

Other artists from the Washington, DC metropolitan area in the festival included: Gary Carver, Carol Fogelsong, Ric Grossman, Kelvin Henderson, Stacey Krantz, Smadar Livne, Kirk Lutz, Xiong Tan and Kathy Thompson.

According to the organizer's website, Paragon Art Festivals offers artists and corporate sponsors the opportunity to showcase their work and expertise in the heart of densely-populated Montgomery County where the median income is $106,000 as of the 2007 census.

The Washingtonian Center, a vibrant hub of activity, provides access to 530,000 sq ft of retail and over 200,000 sq ft of entertainment uses.

Booth spaces for artists cost $375 and provide ample space to exhibit artwork of any size.

With central headquarters in Centerpoint, New York, Paragon Arts Festivals organizes fifteen major arts festivals up and down the East Coast. Upcoming in Maryland is the Silver Spring Arts Festival on September 17 and 18, 2011.